We’re Living in the Newsletter Era (who else is on the bandwagon?)
An essay from Courtney Kocak with a list of lit mags who have gotten into the Substack game.
In this week’s guest essay, writer and podcaster Courtney Kocak advocates for writers to start newsletters, citing their potential for significant income, audience building, and career advancement. She discusses some sustainable content strategies and shares her own experiences with Podcast Bestie for you to use as a guide. 2024 is the newsletter era!
Some writers struggle with platform-building, but for me, it's basically an addiction. At the cornerstone, I have three podcasts with over two million downloads and a popular newsletter called Podcast Bestie, which serves as a revenue generator, networking tool, and way for me to continue to develop my podcasting expertise — all while growing my email list.
I’m obsessed with podcasting, but it can be a lot of work. Newsletters, though? I think every single writer should have a newsletter.
"Why?" you may ask. Well, for starters, it's very helpful to have a newsletter to brag about in your book proposals, and when it comes time to sell books, you're going to want a warm email list full of people who trust you and want to help support your work. With a newsletter, you get the benefits I just mentioned, and it's way less production-intensive than a podcast.
We’re Living in the Newsletter Era
It's 2024, so we're not just living in the Age of Substack but the Newsletter Era, in general. Newsletters are providing writers with an owned media channel, and for some, it brings in extra money, perhaps a living wage, or even life-changing exits.
In 2021, The Hustle sold to Hubspot for an estimated $27 million.
Morning Brew “went from a dorm-room experiment to a $75 million media firm in less than six years.”
Milk Road grew to 250K subscribers and sold for 7 figures (estimated $4-5 million) within 10 months.
Yes, business and tech newsletters are generating the splashiest headlines in terms of dollar signs, but some newsletter writers have leveraged their email lists to become best-selling authors. Exhibit A: James Clear, whose newsletter didn’t just help him hit The New York Times Best Seller list, but got him the book deal in the first place. He said to Tim Ferriss: “The truth is they would’ve never let me in the room if I didn’t have an email list of hundreds of thousands of people. That’s the thing that got me in the door.”
Our next example is a newsletter success story I witnessed in real time. I was an early subscriber to Deez Links before Delia Cai moved to Vanity Fair and became the author of Central Places. Her literary glow-up happened fast, and her newsletter was what put her on the map for me and many others. As of March 2020, Deez Links had about 2700 subscribers — a respectable, though not huge number — but through her newsletter, Cai was quickly coming to the attention of mainstream media. As of today, nearly four years later, Deez Links has over 15K subscribers.
Another Substack rock star from the literary community is Sari Botton. I’m sure many of you are already readers, but Oldster has grown to 35K+ subscribers, it’s one of Substack’s featured publications for the third year in a row, and it’s been noted by The Best American Essays, the Pushcart Prize, and Don Van Natta Jr.’s The Sunday Longread. Botton also runs Memoir Land, which has an email list approaching 25K. Oldster — exploring what it means to travel through time in a human body, at every phase of life — is a great non-writing premise for a newsletter, or you could start a Substack related to the writing life, like Memoir Land
There are lots of options for newsletter hosting: ConvertKit, Beehiiv, Ghost, and, of course, Subtsack. I started Podcast Bestie in November 2021, and I went with Substack for several reasons:
They offered easy monetization from day one.
They had some built-in growth opportunities — the most influential has been the Recommendations feature, which has driven a whooping 2K (50 percent) of my subscribers.
The platform was hitting critical mass, which assuaged my fear of setting up shop on a dying platform.
I liked the aesthetic and how it didn’t require a lot of design expertise to look professional.
There's obviously a business upside to having a newsletter, but there's a creative upside too. I’m always striving for sexy bylines in big publications, and those are wonderful, but you can't control which pitches and submissions are accepted by mainstream publications and literary journals. It's nice to have a home base where you can publish as you please.
You can use your newsletter to not only help brand yourself as an author but also develop a body of work around a specific topic. It can be hard to find a full-time job as a beat reporter on a topic you have a lot of interest in but limited bylines. But on Substack, you can carve out your beat without permission from anyone else. Like for me, I’m trying to get into writing about climate change, but it’s been hard to get editors to commission those stories from me, so I might just launch a Substack in large part to have a body of work on the subject that I can point to when pitching.
Sustainable Content Strategies FTW
As bullish as I am on Substack and as much as I believe that authors should have newsletters, I fully recognize that time and energy are finite resources, so sustainability is key. I have a whole philosophy on how to put out an awesome newsletter without it taking over your life and diverting your precious writing bandwidth.
If you're reading this, you're probably a writer — perhaps a writer who wants to start or improve your newsletter, and I want to help you. I've learned so much since launching Podcast Bestie. I've grown that email list from zero to (almost) 4K, gotten 70K downloads on the Podcast Bestie podcast, and made about $4K directly (and much more indirectly since I use it to promote my courses, threw a sponsored event, and have been solicited for well-paid freelance assignments based on my newsletter writing). Overall, it’s a success, but I've made a lot of mistakes along the way that I want to help you avoid.
So, if you're a writer and you're ready to get in the newsletter game, I've got you covered. I'm teaching an upcoming workshop called Start a Newsletter to Supercharge Your Platform, Network & Business, where I will share strategies to launch, grow, and monetize your newsletter, minus the mistakes. It's based on my experience and a ton of research on top newsletter creators. I've been doing this newsletter thing for a while, and still, I’ve learned so much from putting together my own workshop.
I hope you’ll join me on Sunday, January 21st, but either way, let’s connect on Substack. My main account is Podcast Bestie, but if you’re more interested in writing than podcasting, as most of you probably are, you can subscribe to The Bleeders.
If you already have a Substack, drop a link in the comments below. I would love to give you a follow!
Lit Mags that have gotten into the Substack game
*We couldn’t possibly find them all so please let us know your favorites and we’ll add them on!
Who else? Comment your favorites below and we’ll add them to this list!
If you have a newsletter, also let us know. We’d love to follow along on your journey.
 | A guest post by
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When Facebook started becoming "the place" to follow my favorite writers and litmags, I unsubscribed to all their newsletters. Years later, with Facebook suppressing views of posts by pages (meaning all those authors and litmags I followed), I began subscribing to newsletters again, in order to actually see info and news from these folks. Substack came along at the right time to scoop up people frustrated with the "pay-to-play" attitude of Facebook.
I’m here cos I wanted an online presence to put in my author bio when I submitted stories to literary journals... https://wildalton.substack.com but let me shout out https://fictionistas.substack.com as a good place to meet other writers