Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career
Launch & Grow a Newsletter to Boost Your Writing Career
Every Writer Needs a Newsletter
In March, Courtney Kocak taught us how to start a newsletter from scratch.
If you missed it no worries, you can access every lesson we’ve ever published by subscribing for $10/mo (cancel anytime).
In this workshop you will learn ↓
Core Curriculum
Get the vibe - lesson 1 is on us:
Bonus Material
These lessons are available to paid subscribers for $10/mo
Hello writers!
It's your ol' pal , your March instructor for The Forever Workshop. You may have read my rant earlier this year about how we're living in the newsletter era and why every writer needs a Substack. Now I’m going to hold your hand through starting and/or optimizing your newsletter, and I'm really good at holding hands. ;)
What qualifies me for this honor? Well, I have a Substack for indie podcasters called , which just hit 4K subscribers and has nearly 75K podcast downloads. And I’ve done a ton of research on newsletter best practices and experiments. So next month, I'm going to be your newsletter bestie.
Newsletters have big benefits because they give you direct access to subscribers' inboxes and they have a low barrier to entry. They are perfect for authors engaged in the ongoing process of book promotion. We are going to spend the entire month of March working on our newsletters and making sweet sweet Substack magic together.
This course will be broken down into bite-sized chunks that won't even feel like work. In fact, it’s going to be easy. We just need to make a pact to focus on progress, not perfection, and take 15 minutes of messy action in service of our newsletter goals each time a lesson drops.
To supplement the nine lessons, we’ll also be soaking up tips and tricks from established newsletter writers — even some fancy ones like
and #fangirl — to help inform our own strategies.We will think strategically about this. Following your passions and whims as a writer is a beautiful thing. However, a newsletter can be even more important as a business tool as it is a creative outlet. Of course, both can be true, but my point is that putting on our CEO hats as we do some of these exercises is going to be best for our writing careers.
We'll cover the Five Ws (and one H) of newsletters: who, what, where, when, why, and how. Today, I’m giving you a headstart on WHY.
We’re starting with why because it’s our north star. It will orient us to our mission first and foremost, which will guide us through everything else.
The word mission has lofty connotations, but your whys don’t have to be pie in the sky. In fact, it’s better if they’re more grounded and practical. Here’s how I think about my whys for Podcast Bestie:
I launched Podcast Bestie in November 2021 because I wanted a venue to nerd out about podcasting and share this knowledge with other indie podcasters. I had been making podcasts for almost a decade and working in the podcast industry for several years, so people were regularly hitting me up for advice and I wanted a resource I could give to them. I also started teaching during the pandemic and discovered I loved it, so I thought it would be helpful to build an email list to promote my podcast courses.
My why evolved last year when I took a step back from working in the podcast industry to focus on my own projects. At this stage, Podcast Bestie allows me to continue elevating my craft and stay up to date on the industry despite taking a break. It’s also a great networking tool and relationship builder, which will come in handy when/if I’m back on the job market.
And while Podcast Bestie isn’t directly related to my writing career, the platform-building component is important. It’s one of the brags that I use to hype myself up in book proposals.
I've already stated that every writer needs a newsletter, and I believe that to be true. But what are your specific reasons?
Do you want to use your newsletter to develop content? Maybe as a proving ground for a potential book idea?
Do you want to establish yourself as an expert or thought leader in your field?
Do you want your newsletter to help establish you as a writer on a certain beat? (Perhaps if it's been hard to get freelance bylines on that beat or you want to generate recurring revenue for thriving beat reporting like Jessica DeFino’s The Unpublishable.)
Do you want to make connections with other writers?
Do you want to build anticipation for a book launch?
Do you want to build your writer platform more generally?
Do you also teach or coach in addition to writing and want your newsletter to feed into that part of your business?
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 | A guest post by
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Hi Courtney, really pleased you're running this course & I'm just trying to catch up. I've read ahead & really appreciate the clarity of your information & the brain-kickstarter questions.
My ideas for a Substack newsletter are still quite muddled. What keeps coming up for me is: why would anyone want to subscribe to me? Everything I can think of doing is most likely being done better by dozens / hundreds of newsletters & writers more qualified and experienced than me.
I write poetry & fiction & in the last year have begun the journal-submitting thing. I now have around 15 pieces publshed or forthcoming. I have 5 years' experience as a freelance developmental fiction editor. I'm passionate about too many things & struggle to see how they might fit together: creative process, prose poetry, feminist reimaginings of myth & fairytale, writing craft, the lit journal submitting journey & what you learn along the way ... Am I an expert at any of that?Ummm ... no, not yet. Except perhaps editing for fiction - but I'm at a place where I can help beginners / intermediate writers with much of the above. I love encouraging & inspiring other writers to stretch themselves and learn new things. I do enjoy a "teaching" element to connecting with other writers (say through prompts or teaching a type of form poetry).
I write on Medium & feel quite confident there. When I'm writhing in self-doubt about lack of clarity on newsletter ideas, I try & remind myself I have nearly 50 subscribers & almost 2K followers. That's not nothing. I just started a publication (accepting other writers) on Medium dedicated to another passion: ekphrastic poetry & fiction. (the practice of creative writing inspired from visual arts) It's called ArtMusing. Tagline: The Ekphrasis Place. The vibe is all very Art Nouveau / Art Deco. No one else on Medium has a pub dedicated to ekphrasis, so I nailed a niche. The concept coalesced quite quickly.
All the above still doesn't help me get clear on what my Substack focus should be, though! (Except to eliminate ekphrasis) I'm hoping that will change as I progress through your course . And now I'll take a deep breath & work through your excellent "why questions". :)
I have a very simple newsletter with 27 subscribers... it's mainly meant as a way of telling people who aren't big into social media when I have a new story published. (I write flash fiction, and it appears all over the place.)
I work as a translator and have a background in archaeology, and while I could leverage those for content, it would have nothing at all to do with my writing. And I don't consider myself expert enough as a writer to be able to write a newsletter about writing.