Especially when there’s no social following, no website traffic and nobody waiting around for your first email.
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I’ve had a few DMs and comments lately from authors asking how they’re supposed to grow an email list when they don’t already have one. One person was basically saying they’d started a Substack, were writing, but nothing much was happening.
I get why this feels confusing because most email-list advice starts halfway through the story. Build a reader magnet, put a signup form on your site, promote the newsletter. Fine. But who exactly is visiting the site when nobody knows you exist yet?
The first 100 are the annoying part. Once you have even a small group of readers, you have something to build on. Starting from zero is a different monster to wrestle with!
Quick thing before I get into it. If you’re an author figuring out book marketing, reader lists and the business side of publishing, you can subscribe to my FREE newsletter, The Sustainable Publishers. I’m figuring a lot of this out in public anyway.
If You Already Have Attention, Use It
If you already have readers somewhere else, this is the easier version.
Maybe you have a few hundred followers on Instagram. Maybe TikTok is working for you. Maybe you already get some teeny tiny traffic to a blog or YouTube channel. In that case, I wouldn’t spend days obsessing over which email platform is “best.”
Pick one that fits the way you work. Kit, Beehiiv, Substack, MailerLite…
Then give people a decent reason to join. For fiction, that might be a prequel, bonus scene, deleted chapter or character story. For nonfiction, maybe a checklist, workbook, template or companion guide.
And then mention it more than once.
Put the link in your bio. Add it to your site. Bring it up naturally in posts and articles. If you already have attention, your problem is mostly getting some of those people onto a list you can reach again.
I’ve written before about why I think creators should stop collecting followers and start building an audience they actually own, so I won’t repeat the whole thing again here.
Starting From Zero Is a Different Game
If nobody knows you yet, I’d take a different route.
I’d recommend you to start on Substack.
It’s not the fanciest email platform. If you need serious automations, segmentation and all the other business-y email stuff later, there are better tools (Kit and Beehive).
But when you’re sitting on zero subscribers, none of that fancy features matters (atleast for now).
The useful thing about Substack is that it gives you the newsletter and some built-in discovery in the same place. Notes, comments, recommendations, Restacks, Lives, collaborations… there are actual ways for strangers to bump into you without already following you somewhere else.
That gives you a lot of leverage at the beginning.
“I’m on Substack and I’m Still Not Growing”
I’ve seen this too, and I think there’s a difference between being on Substack and actually using Substack.
When I started, I was much more active than I am now. I got to roughly 500 subscribers in about four months, and around eight months in I’m now past 800.
Those are not insane numbers. Plenty of people have grown faster. I also didn’t start with any audience that I could simply move over. I started from zero too!
Most of the early growth came from being VERY ACTIVE inside the platform.
When I was pushing harder, I was posting around five Notes every single day and spending a lot of time commenting, replying, talking to other writers, recommending publications and doing collaborations.
I don’t do all of that at the same intensity now.
But early on, I needed people to keep seeing my name somewhere.
That’s the part people often underestimate.
You can absolutely write one good newsletter a week and leave it there. Just don’t be surprised if growth is slower when nobody has any other reason to discover you between those emails.
The Boring Stuff Is Usually the Stuff That Works
There really isn’t a clever secret here.
Talk to people.
Leave useful comments instead of “great post.”
Reply when people engage with your work.
Recommend writers you genuinely like.
Collaborate (guest posts & Substack Lives) when there’s a good fit.
Post Notes often enough that people begin to recognise you. Ideally atleast 3 notes a day. Yes, everyday!
It’s not passive, and that’s probably why a lot of people stop doing it.
But the small things stack.
One recommendation brings a few readers. A collaboration brings a few more. Someone sees you in comments for a couple of weeks and finally checks your profile. One writer introduces you to another.
Eventually, the list starts moving.
I already wrote a much more detailed breakdown of how I grew a newsletter to the first 500 subscribers, so if you want the tactical version, start there.
You can also check my Substack profile here
I Asked Someone Who Knows This Far Better Than Me
I recently had Philip Hofmacher from Write Build Scale on my podcast show.
They’ve built one of the bigger publications in the Substack education space, and I used the interview to ask him a lot of the things I was curious about myself: growth, Notes, paid subscriptions, what beginners waste time on, and what he would do if he had to start again from zero.
There are a lot of useful bits in that conversation, and I’d rather let him explain them properly than turn the whole thing into a summary here.
You can check out the episode on:
If you’re struggling to grow on Substack, that episode is worth listening to.
Don’t Build a Perfect Email System for Nobody
I think this is where authors can waste a ridiculous amount of time.
Kit or Beehiiv?
Beehiiv or Substack?
Do I need a five-email welcome sequence?
Should I tag people by genre?
Meanwhile the list contains you, your second email address and possibly your mom.
I have absolutely spent time comparing tools before I had enough people to justify the comparison, so this is not me judging anyone.
All of that stuff matters later.
For now, you can use that time to write few Substack notes:)
At the beginning, I’d care more about whether people can find you, whether you’re giving them a good reason to subscribe, and whether the emails are worth opening once they do.
If you already have an audience, use it.
If you don’t, start somewhere that gives you at least a chance to build the audience and the list at the same time.
Then worry about the fancy stuff once there are actual humans inside the system.
I also wrote about the Medium + Substack combination I use for basically this reason. Medium can help with discovery, and Substack gives those readers somewhere to stay if they want more.
If you have any questions related to Substack growth, feel free to drop it in the comments. I would like to know precisely where you are stuck.
See ya,
Vinayak.
And if you’re an author trying to build the marketing side without turning yourself into a full-time content machine, you can subscribe to my FREE newsletter, The Sustainable Publishers.
I write about book marketing, email lists, publishing economics, what I’m testing, what seems to work, and the things I wish I had understood before opening another twelve tabs.