Many writers and authors, both aspiring and established, are turning to Substack as a way to grow audiences, showcase work and build a new hustle. Substack blends the intimacy you get from a blog with the professionalism of an email newsletter, with the possible bonus of paid subscriptions. But is it for you?

Certainly, there are many examples of writers with successful Substacks. Elle Griffin, who writes about how the creator economy need to find new ways to monetise fiction, published her first novel Obscurity on Substack while earning through paid subscriptions. Historian Heather Cox Richardson has built a big following through her regular Letters from an American. Other writers whose Substacks I enjoy include Tom Cox, Toby Litt, Becky Tuch’s Lit Mag News and The Subtext.

In essence, Substack is a platform you can use to send newsletters directly to your subscribers’ inboxes. It’s like a cross between an email newsletter and a blog – you write posts, publish them online, and get them emailed to signed-up readers automatically. You promote your Substack all the usual ways – from social media to your email signature. With permission, you can also import email addresses from platforms like Mailchimp. And the platform has lots of built in ways to encourage cross-promotion.

‘We don’t need social media to grow our newsletters. We can grow on Substack,’ says expert Wes Pearce. ‘In fact, 30-40% of new subscribers come from Notes (Substack’s internal social feed) & Recommendations (a feature allowing writers to promote other Substacks). Scroll through and find someone new to connect with and swap recommendations. This is the best way to sustainably grow our Substacks for the long-term.’

Substack handles email list management, hosting and monetization tools. It’s free to use unless you opt to charge for your newsletter, for which Substack will take 10% of your earnings.

The free newsletter option gives readers access to all your content and is good for audience-building. With the paid version, subscribers pay a monthly or annual fee (you choose the price) to access premium content. Many take a middle path, making some content available free and premium or in-depth posts behind a paywall. You can start free and switch to paid later too.

Substack is easy to use – you don’t need any web design or technical skills. You’re in direct contact with an email list you own, and you don’t need third-party tools to start earning. And it’s not either/or – you could use it alongside your other tactics and see what works.

On the con side, visual artists, podcasters, or multimedia storytellers may find it limiting. And to get the most from it, you need to keep up a constant stream of content. This works for some – if you’re regularly writing things for another channel you could mirror of extend them on Substack – but for others may be too onerous.

I found getting set up on Substack quite labour-intensive (I’m still only dipping my toes) and I know I’ll need a regular publishing schedule (weekly or biweekly is common), plus time to engage with responses. Fatigue can certainly set in. As novelist Tim Lott recently wrote: ‘I’m not sure I can afford any longer to spend all this time trying drum up subscribers when I could be working on a novel – even a novel that might never be published. A writer who isn’t writing is nothing at all, and it feels that way to me now.’ He’s still keeping up his Writing Boot Camp, for now at least.

Reader fatigue can be an issue too, which we hear less about. There are loads of people on Substack who interest me, but how many do I really have time to read regularly in my inbox? Publishing guru Jane Friedmann also sounds a note of caution. While applauding Substack’s benefits, she argues that its constant encouragement to charge for newsletter content can distract aspiring writers from their writing goals and from the greater power of a simple, free email newsletter.

Because lots of famous people – from Patti Smith to Lena Dunham to Marianne Williamson – use it, it can seem like Substack only suits people with big profiles. But many lesser-known writers say they have built followings from scratch by choosing their niche and working hard at promotion. Certainly the platform is designed to build rewards over time, and to help you scale your approach, however small you start, as Substack’s own Resource Center explains. But it doesn’t come without effort, and each of us has to decide where that balance best lies.

WRITER – Dan Brotzel’s latest novel is Thank You For The Days (Bloodhound Books). He also writes widely on Medium.