What the Haters Said About My Book
(correction: what the negative reviewers said, no actual haters so far🤞)
Hey there, hope your week’s been excellent.
If you’ve started getting traction on Substack you might have been touched by a hater or two. Congratulations, getting haters means you’re getting seen. And in internet-land, that’s only a good thing (even if it feels crappy sometimes).
In this post I’m sharing what the haters have said about my book since it was published a couple of weeks ago. Okay, not haters, gentle criticisers.
I couldn’t write a perfect book, even if I wanted to. But all reviews are welcome, even bad ones.
Not enough expert anecdotes or insights
One reviewer said the book didn't have enough behind-the-scenes anecdotes about what worked and what didn't work for me and my publications.
This confirmed my suspicions that some of you guys want to peek into my personal methods and processes. No problems, happy to assist*. But not in the book.
The book is not about me, because what works for me won’t necessarily work for you. This book is about you, and about all the different ways that different creators can serve different audiences.
This book is about showing you the different ways you can choose to use Substack to make an impact, so you can find a style and system that suits you best.
I could tell you all about exactly what works for my food safety publication. Which would be useful if you are one of the 4.5 people in the world who want to start a food safety newsletter.
But what works for my audience probably won’t work for yours. I can spend ten minutes a day on LinkedIn to get 7 new paying subscribers, but that doesn’t mean you can or should.
Should have links to other publications
I can’t control what you’ll find when you click a link to a page I don’t own. Who knows what you’ll find if you click a link in my book in two years’ time? Links in books are different to links in posts because I can’t go back into your copy of the book and change a link if it doesn’t work anymore.
At least half of the publications I used as examples when I started drafting the book two years ago have shut down since then, so I had to remove them from subsequent drafts.
Broken links are worse than no links. That’s why there are no links to other pubs in my book.
Needs more insights from the Substack insider group
I would have loved to share more success stories from the Substack Grow invitation-only intensive I was in two years ago.
The learnings from the group feature heavily throughout the book, I just didn’t call them out explicitly. The success stories aren’t particularly interesting.
Somewhat boringly, of those group members I still follow - those of us who are doing well - are simply following the same methods I teach in the book: posting high quality content consistently and creating work that people value - not rocket science.
The exception is Alex Dobrenko, of Both Are True, who is the most high-profile member of that cohort. Like the rest of us, he succeeds by consistently posting high quality content that people value. Unlike the rest of us he’s off-the-charts talented.
I didn’t talk about Alex in the book because if you spend 5 minutes with Alex’s words you’ll be like
“Wow this dude writes like…. like really…” , then
“No wonder he’s got so many readers and financial supporters” and finally…
“If you’ve got to be that fricken talented to get 15K subscribers, I’ve got no fricken chance”
At least that’s how I feel when I think about Alex. What he does to succeed is not normal and not something most of us average-Joe writers can emulate. If we tried it, we’d probably make an awful mess.
My mission with the book is to share strategies and systems that average creators can use to succeed.
Success stories of ultra-talented outliers who (in Alex’s case) came to Substack with a pre-built monster-sized Twitter following are not helpful to average new Substackers who just want to get started and build an online income.
By the way, if you want insights into Alex’s Substack journey, check out this post by Creator Spotlight featured in Both Are True.
Loving the haters
Feedback is gold, and I’m grateful for all that I’ve received so far - even from the person who said “… this book is a good, general overview,….” and still gave it 2 stars.
Thanks for the reviews. Keep them coming, good and bad.
Karen
*You can get access a VIP pass to behind the scenes of my publications including tours of my dashboards, analytics, traffic sources and promotional strategies by working with me 1-to-1. Interested? Let me know by replying to this email. I have 2 places to fill for January.