Congratulations on a year's work and the steady growth of subscribers. I didn't know about the geographic spread and reader overlap features, so I learned something useful.
Hey William, happy anniversary! I'm curious why you don't lean more into the game posts, especially if you have a lot to say and you do seem to enjoy them? If that's not the direction you want to go, I totally understand. However, I do feel like there's some untapped potential that just needs to be harnessed. The gaming echosystem is massive and it seems like your audience is out there.
As far as the character arcs where you post the dialog and character interactions, it doesn't resonate with me personally. It's hard to see it as fiction since it doesn't have the traditional story structure. I would love to read some more of your short stories here.
Looking forward to seeing some of your experiments.
It's sort of a carry over from twitter, where I felt that my talking about writing and gaming were at odds with each other and had to be carefully balanced. I don't want to lock myself into any particular topic, but carefully arranging topics isn't the most natural either. Just have to accept that readers have to accept that sometimes I'll go three months straight talking about video games.
Battles Beneath the Stars won't resonate with everyone, so that's fine. I'll put the short story tease and others in a different category so people who unsubscribe from the BBtS section still see them. I'll probably make a new 'Misc Fiction' section for them. Is section creep a term? Because I think I'm starting to get that.
I'll make another suggestion, and then I'll be quiet 🤐 Jackie Dana talked about this a little, about the hesitation to start another Substack, but I feel like that's the decision point you're at. Readers like to have expectations set and if a Substack is too broad you might find it's harder to get engagement. Even for those that talk about a wide range of topics it's usually under a primary focus. Just a thought, maybe you should have a "gaming only" Substack.
I appreciate the advice, but I feel narrowing the focus would only increase the difficulty for me in terms of coming up with ideas and maintaining my own interest, especially if it came with running two substacks. I like the freedom of being able to talk about mythology and other subjects when I want to.
If I had to come up with some sort of quick overarching theme statement to promote the non-fiction I think it'd be something like 'contemplations of games, mythology, and storytelling.' Actually that doesn't sound too bad, I should put that or something like it somewhere.
I've thought about starting another substack, but only for other works of fiction, which would only come after Battles Beneath the Stars wraps up.
Congratulations on a year's work and the steady growth of subscribers. I didn't know about the geographic spread and reader overlap features, so I learned something useful.
Thank you. Those features should be under 'audience insights' when you look at your stats. It can be interesting to look at.
Hey William, happy anniversary! I'm curious why you don't lean more into the game posts, especially if you have a lot to say and you do seem to enjoy them? If that's not the direction you want to go, I totally understand. However, I do feel like there's some untapped potential that just needs to be harnessed. The gaming echosystem is massive and it seems like your audience is out there.
As far as the character arcs where you post the dialog and character interactions, it doesn't resonate with me personally. It's hard to see it as fiction since it doesn't have the traditional story structure. I would love to read some more of your short stories here.
Looking forward to seeing some of your experiments.
It's sort of a carry over from twitter, where I felt that my talking about writing and gaming were at odds with each other and had to be carefully balanced. I don't want to lock myself into any particular topic, but carefully arranging topics isn't the most natural either. Just have to accept that readers have to accept that sometimes I'll go three months straight talking about video games.
Battles Beneath the Stars won't resonate with everyone, so that's fine. I'll put the short story tease and others in a different category so people who unsubscribe from the BBtS section still see them. I'll probably make a new 'Misc Fiction' section for them. Is section creep a term? Because I think I'm starting to get that.
I'll make another suggestion, and then I'll be quiet 🤐 Jackie Dana talked about this a little, about the hesitation to start another Substack, but I feel like that's the decision point you're at. Readers like to have expectations set and if a Substack is too broad you might find it's harder to get engagement. Even for those that talk about a wide range of topics it's usually under a primary focus. Just a thought, maybe you should have a "gaming only" Substack.
I appreciate the advice, but I feel narrowing the focus would only increase the difficulty for me in terms of coming up with ideas and maintaining my own interest, especially if it came with running two substacks. I like the freedom of being able to talk about mythology and other subjects when I want to.
If I had to come up with some sort of quick overarching theme statement to promote the non-fiction I think it'd be something like 'contemplations of games, mythology, and storytelling.' Actually that doesn't sound too bad, I should put that or something like it somewhere.
I've thought about starting another substack, but only for other works of fiction, which would only come after Battles Beneath the Stars wraps up.