Over a year ago I migrated from my longtime WordPress blog to Substack. I liked the ease of publishing, I love the community here, and I felt it made my writing life easier. Also, I was introduced to a new world of writers of all kinds and have been so blessed by the friendships I developed, especially in the NOTES section of the Substack app/website. It wasn’t long until I deleted my longtime Twitter (X) account and just settled in here.
But there was a problem. I would read posts on the app and on the website, saving certain posts because I wanted to revisit or share them. But if I saved a post on the website, it wasn’t saved in the app. In addition, if I read a post in the app, it remained in my inbox on the website. The posts were piling up, and I couldn’t read them all. And every time I subscribed to a new Substack, there were recommendations for others that were similar. I had to learn how to manage this, and I don’t think I’m the only one. I have heard from others who can’t keep up with it all.
I don’t think we have to. That was the first thing I needed to release. There’s a flood of posts and you just can’t read them all - and you shouldn’t. Not every post is of interest, even if you like the writer. We all have x number of hours in a day to give to reading. I not only like to read, I need to read - I’m not the sharpest spoon in the drawer and learning from others is essential for me!
So what I did was limit my Substack reading to the app on my iPad. I had turned off all emails from the beginning. That helped me keep up better, everything was in one place. It was easy and convenient. But then a week would go by when I wouldn’t read much, and the posts began to pile up. Again. I found myself responding to posts that were a few weeks old. The writers didn’t mind, but I felt like I had already missed the parade.
Here is my new attempt at managing Substack (which might be an exercise in futility but it’s the effort I’m making now!).
First, I turned the email function back on. I can get a good view of the post and decide to read or not pretty quickly.
Second, I decided to only use the NOTES function on the app. At this point, it’s the only thing I like about the app. The chat function, I never did understand (and seldom got much interaction).
Third, I had to unsubscribe from some a lot of Substacks. This made me cringe because I knew each author would get an email saying that I had unsubscribed. I couldn’t just slink quietly away like other social media. Ugh. I accidentally unsubbed from someone and had to resubscribe immediately. It was hard to do! But, the criteria I used to unsub was:
Has this person posted in the past 4 months?
Is the subject matter of this substack of real interest to me?
Has this been a person I’ve interacted with in Notes?
If I do not receive posts from this person, would I notice?
Are the posts typically really long? I don’t usually read really long posts unless they catch my attention with something of great interest.
I don’t pay for any Substacks (sorry). If the posts in a particular one were mostly behind a paywall, I just moved on without resentment. I don’t blame anyone for trying to earn some bucks here, I just can’t add subscriptions.
Pretty much, that moved my subscription level down quite a bit. As I look at my list, there are still too many - but several of them post infrequently. And some I didn’t unsub from because I still hope they will start writing again.
Already I feel a little of the pressure easing. If you have some grand strategy for managing your Substacks, let me know!
And if you got one of those “unsub” emails, I’m terribly sorry. Really.
I really love Substack and the assemblage of writers and thinkers. It’s one of the highlights of my day. Thanks for reading (if you got this far without unsubscribing!).
You've hit on a lot of salient points here, and my guess is that most of us are feeling your pain, so to speak. For me, I see so much that I want to read but - as you say - only have so much time. And at the moment, I'm knee-deep writing book 3 of a trilogy, and I feel like any time spent doing anything else takes away from my writing time on the book.
Fully agree on all that, John, albeit saving on app/website doesn't seem to be an issue for me (saving on one has it saved on the other). I think it's possible to turn off being told when someone unsubs - I'm sure I saw that somewhere (but if I did I didn't turn it on!). I've never really got into Notes, only a little here and there, and prefer to use the website rather than my phone (as part of an attempt to use the phone less overall).
What I often do is share articles to my Readwise account and then read them on there at my leisure, along with pieces I've saved from places other than Substack (including PDFs and more). It means I can highlight, add notes, add tags, share with my annotations etc. It costs to sub to Readwise but it's quickly become my go-to research service (and is a decent reading experience whether it's the app or the website). It has a great web clipper too.