As a reader: This may come off a little blunt, but the problem for me was simply quality. I didn’t find any fiction that was any good. I know the whole idea was to be quality-blind and democratic, but without some kind of curation it is still too much of a mixed bag to make the plowing through it worth the time and attention. As one of your curators, I searched it hard and never found anything I could actually recommend. Sorry to offer a problem and not a solution. Plus the idea of a genre search itself seemed strange to me. Do our readers just want genre tropes? Don’t we want the fiction itself to take us somewhere we never knew we wanted to go? As a writer, I was never able to find myself in the terms that I would think I could be found. I tried all my themes and vibes and only found vampire stories. I really admired the project though, and think that it was starting to have its own momentum and it would have become its own creature if you’d have let it grow.
I wonder if some kind of rating system would help with that. Letting readers add ratings and/or looking at the likes or restacks on a post? It wouldn't necessarily have to surface the rating to the viewers, but it could display things in a particular order based on those ratings or something. I know everyone hates the idea of rating writing, but we do it all the time on Goodreads and amazon and Yelp and everywhere else lately. And it can offer genuine insight into at least some aspect of quality.
Not sure, just following this comment with the thought that it brought up for me.
As the guy who built SmallStack and the SmallStack Library (with an amazing team of volunteers), this hits home for me. We wanted to create something similar, and we did it at very limited cost financially (not in terms of labor). It's sustainable even now, but I don't really think anyone USES the library, and that chafes. My biggest takeaway from building a library of listings was that everyone wants to get listed, but nobody is searching the listings. And as much as people like to say in notes "show me the people with 50 subscribers," turns out those are mostly just words, rarely actions. There's another comment here about writing quality, and I think that's the distinction between a successful destination for readers and... the thing I built. When there is no gatekeeping, the range of quality and ability is vast. That's not to say there aren't amazing finds in our library, just no way to get to them. Fiction is largely similar. I recall spending what felt like years of my life searching on AO3 and similar places for great fiction, and it was like searching for a piece of hay in a haystack.
For us, the end result was to sit back down as a team and discover what we were truly passionate about creating and doing. Was it a library of listings? Not really. Turns out we needed to start publishing books, mostly anthologies, and a lot more fell into place once we identified that. The main distinction is in this concept of gatekeeping, going through submissions, editing, and actually forming relationships with our authors through the work. In the end, our audience and community get something tangible, whether it's getting published for (maybe) the first time or buying a super cool book by authors they might not have heard of.
We're still sorting through those decisions and trying out new stuff, and so I see no harm in leaving our library open, but I'd be lying if didn't say how sad it makes me to see it unused.
I appreciated the project but didn't use it much for a couple different reasons. One is that searching by genre/mood doesn't really work for me. I read across a variety of genres and never really know what I'm in the mood for. I just want it to be good. Which brings up another issue: while I love the idea of writers being able to share their work without gatekeepers in theory, in practice it leaves a lot to sort through to find something that actually leaves a mark. I'm not really sure what the solution to that is, and it's not a problem that was specific to FicStack. Unfortunately, most online platforms incentivise volume and immediacy over quality, and even a lot of the stories I enjoy feel like they could have benefited from a couple extra pairs of eyes on them, or a waiting period for the author to figure out what form the story is trying to take.
I do miss the curations though! I was much more likely to take a chance on a story knowing that someone else had enjoyed it enough to recommend it, and although they didn't all land for me, I did find a couple of writers that I liked and subsequently subscribed to. But I suppose that raises another problem, which is that once a reader is following a sufficient amount of writers (who they are excited about and who are able to sustain their interest), that reader would likely stop engaging with the platform. Sometimes I feel like the best thing we could all do for online writing as a whole is to collectively write less, but with greater intention.
Sorry if this is all vague/discouraging/not entirely related to FicStack, these are just thoughts that have been spinning in my mind in regards to Substack writing in general.
Since I started sharing my writing on Substack, I've given a lot of thought to the question: Where are the readers?
Because I'm not sure the fiction readers are actually all that common on Substack unless they're also writers. It seems like places like Goodreads, Amazon (boo and hiss if you want!), Royal Road, Patreon, etc., have readers who want to read fiction. Substack seems to have a lot of writers and readers who want to read articles about work-related topics or self-help and wellness or politics or whatever.
I wonder if part of the answer is figuring out how to get the fiction that's on Substack out to where the readers already are. I don't know *how* to do that yet, to be clear. Just surfacing the thoughts that I've been mulling over as I've been building my own little fiction ecosystem.
Side note. Have you considered connecting with Noh over at Wrizzit? He's built some great tools for writers over there, though it's still early days, and we've talked a little about the "how to reach readers" questions, as he tries to figure that out for his whole platform, too.
The thing is, as a writer, I'm not looking at metrics all the time. So if I gained any readers from FicStack, I have no idea who they are. Though, to be honest, it probably would've helped if, by the time FicStack released, I wasn't on the tail end of my serial, and I've not written a lot of fiction since. I've been in editing mode instead of creating mode.
And the truth is, readers read my nonfiction pieces more than they have my fiction. I have a small dedicated group who, for reasons unknown to me, actually read chapters of my serial or any fiction that I post. It's kind of to the point that I've debated on what I should be utilizing Substack for, as most people would rather read my attempts at book reviews and my editing progress.
I'm not even sure if I'm going to serialize another novel or how much fiction I can dedicate to writing at the moment. It's not been much this year.
I would occasionally search it for new fiction of FicStack because I wanted to see whatever everyone else was doing, but the fiction community on here isn't as big as one might think, and you kind of just run into the same writers over there as you would here.
And honestly, I think the issue with FicStack is a Substack problem. The way Substack is set up doesn't give fiction many advantages. Substack still lacks advanced searching, discoverability, and proper archiving. It relies on algorithms. So I don't think there is an easy answer for this other than Substack to actually do something, and given the fiction community is the smallest compared to other writers, we don't actually have priority. If they design a feature, it'll be for the whole and in an attempt to try to attract as many creators as possible since Substack suffers from what a lot of social media suffers from right now, an identity crisis.
I wonder if the focus shouldn't be on individual posts like Substack does or trying to band-aid what Substack doesn't do. Perhaps the focus could be on active writers on here and a way for writers to actually be able to, I don't know, edit their profiles so a reader might have a better understanding of what they write and stories they have available as well as things that are going to be published outside of Substack because not every writer, including myself, will just continue having their work available on Substack exclusively. And the reason is that Substack lacks searchability and discoverability. Unless you are constantly advertising, no one is going to discover a finished serial. And that is an issue across many platforms.
I’m a writer. And I’m going to be super honest, and probably hated for saying it, but I know for a fact I’m not the only one. I’m here to write. Not read. I do read on Substack, but the amount of reading I do for enjoyment alone, is nil.
I got a full time job, a wife that stays home, and four kids under 6 years old. I’m in writing mode. Not time for another mode.
When I do read fiction on here, I’m looking for writers to network with. Learn from. Grow with. Or just enjoy talking about the craft I obsess over.
I think the only way it could work would be if the barrier of entry was raised. Not 100 crime thrillers. Or 500 high fantasy stories. 5. Just the ones that are vetted. The finished ones. Or at least the ones from authors that have proven themselves capable of finishing a serial. And just so I’m clear, I would not be among them.
Great, thought-provoking questions. Wish I had some equally insightful answers. The ones that commented before me certainly offered up a few.
I'd like to echo the user account idea. Right now, I have a file of the things I'm reading (or want to read); it would be nice to have that with clickable links right on Substack. And, if I've finished my list, there would be links to pages with suggestions by genre, author, etc. Basically making the FicStack-like tool/site a place that I go to regularly for reading, finding reading material, etc. That habitual use sounds like one of the things that wasn't really happening in the previous incarnation for whatever reasons and, maybe, user accounts would solve (at least a portion of) that.
Thanks for all you’ve done, Gary. I think FicStack was a good endeavour and worth trying, even if things didn’t pan out at the moment.
As a reader, I didn’t use it much simply because I already have so much fiction to read here and so many stories saved in my TBR list from things that people have recommended and shared on Notes, so I was never in a place where I had to look for more. Also because I prefer to read on paper when possible, so if I’m reaching for a new novel I’m more likely to go to physical bookshelves (at home, library or bookshop) — there’s only so much screen reading I can do.
Thank you Gary, Sylvienne and all who worked on this project. I never got a chance to use it, although I am very interested in online reading platforms and how they help writers and readers. https://localunigirl.substack.com/p/the-substack-issue?r=62erw7&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Here is a doc I wrote (maybe out of all the ideas in there, one might be food for thought). This post inspired me to think about the issue more and gather my thoughts enough to write a separate commentary. It's from a gen z perspective who has seen various parts of the internet / internet fandom culture and can point out a few trends I've observed and noticed in real life (at least from the city I live in). It has to do with cultural significance being the main driver of promotion and engagement.
Maybe the solution isn’t to shut down completely but to scale back and pivot until a better time presents itself financially. I often ask myself the question, “can I keep this really amazing thing going if I had to take X away?” For instance with TiF I just didn’t have the bandwidth to do the Medallions anymore. It was a personal blow to have to discontinue them over time but that wasn’t the priority to the mission. Is your mission to have a fancy database that isn’t financially stable or can you provide the same sense of discovery and community in a different way that doesn’t cost you anything more than your time?
As a writer publishing serialised fiction here ( one night every Tuesday), the thing I needed most wasn’t visibility, it was continuity. A listing gives you a moment of being seen. What serialised fiction actually needs is a way for a reader to find chapter one and then be reminded when chapter two lands, because the format lives or dies on the return, not the discovery.
On the curation question, I’m with the comment above about quality over genre tropes. Genre tags help me find a shelf, but they don’t make me stay. What makes me stay is a human saying “this one is worth your Tuesday.” Mood and taste travel further than category. The best bookshops aren’t searchable databases, they’re a person who read the thing and believed in it.
So if anything grows from this: human picks over pure search, and new-chapter alerts for serials. Those two would change my reading life, not just flatter my stats.
Sorry to see FicStack go. It was clearly built with care, and that’s rarer than code.
I don't mean to trigger everyone with the most-dreaded two letters in English today, but can AI be harnessed as a matching engine? Say I dig the writing of Didrik, Blake Wager, Gan and PancakeSushi, but I want prose only, and nothing over 30 minutes to read -- can a search engine reliably help me discover other writers like them? (I would hope, in this example, my own name pops up among the results.)
As I mentioned before, I was unable to utilize FicStack, but if I weren’t waist deep in a biig project I certainly would’ve.
Thinking about it, why reading these articles about its end, and the comments and numbers attached to these posts, I find myself asking something else.
FicStack was intended to be a destination, right? Well, destination sites or services face all the normal hardships, plus more difficult problems.
Destination services NEED traffic. They MUST have regular users, or the road to that destination goes without proper maintenance. Like a road that’s a little out of the way, hazards develop just from the normal and regular wear, tear, weather, abuse, and more.
Destination web services are much harder to run straight out of the gate.
FicStack was clearly worth the travel, hell or high water. Yet, destination services need as many pointers as possible to alert people of their existence. Sure, your readers here knew, but that’s a tiny portion of writers online.
Was there any kind of promotion off SubStack? Could it have been more? Is it possible a mobile interface would’ve gotten it more attention?
I’ve dealt with the traffic issue many times myself. It’s not easy. Getting the word out is a lot of work. And it can always be worked on more.
The internet has changed so much of how we find knowledge. How we find out which email inbox is better than the other. And there’s still do many options we don’t consider.
This is just something to think about.
FicStack is done. Is all the site’s content backed up, including the moving parts and the static pages? It could possibly be picked up by a small group, or maybe you will decide one day to try again with a larger group of admins.
Food for thought. I hope it may shine some positivity in this, because it is truly sad.
I believe you are running into the same problem most of us run into.
You've built a useful tool and I was proud to be included in it.
However, for some reason, the internet generation will use a tool until it goes away, but they rarely want to pay for that tool's upgrade and upkeep.
It's the same thing that leads people to pay 11 dollars to Amazon, but won't spend 5 dollars to buy the same eBook, or in the case of substack, they'll read your story for free, but won't pay for it or buy the book at the bookstore.
As a reader: This may come off a little blunt, but the problem for me was simply quality. I didn’t find any fiction that was any good. I know the whole idea was to be quality-blind and democratic, but without some kind of curation it is still too much of a mixed bag to make the plowing through it worth the time and attention. As one of your curators, I searched it hard and never found anything I could actually recommend. Sorry to offer a problem and not a solution. Plus the idea of a genre search itself seemed strange to me. Do our readers just want genre tropes? Don’t we want the fiction itself to take us somewhere we never knew we wanted to go? As a writer, I was never able to find myself in the terms that I would think I could be found. I tried all my themes and vibes and only found vampire stories. I really admired the project though, and think that it was starting to have its own momentum and it would have become its own creature if you’d have let it grow.
I wonder if some kind of rating system would help with that. Letting readers add ratings and/or looking at the likes or restacks on a post? It wouldn't necessarily have to surface the rating to the viewers, but it could display things in a particular order based on those ratings or something. I know everyone hates the idea of rating writing, but we do it all the time on Goodreads and amazon and Yelp and everywhere else lately. And it can offer genuine insight into at least some aspect of quality.
Not sure, just following this comment with the thought that it brought up for me.
As a reader, curated lists, genre pages and new chapter update posts would be appreciated.
As the guy who built SmallStack and the SmallStack Library (with an amazing team of volunteers), this hits home for me. We wanted to create something similar, and we did it at very limited cost financially (not in terms of labor). It's sustainable even now, but I don't really think anyone USES the library, and that chafes. My biggest takeaway from building a library of listings was that everyone wants to get listed, but nobody is searching the listings. And as much as people like to say in notes "show me the people with 50 subscribers," turns out those are mostly just words, rarely actions. There's another comment here about writing quality, and I think that's the distinction between a successful destination for readers and... the thing I built. When there is no gatekeeping, the range of quality and ability is vast. That's not to say there aren't amazing finds in our library, just no way to get to them. Fiction is largely similar. I recall spending what felt like years of my life searching on AO3 and similar places for great fiction, and it was like searching for a piece of hay in a haystack.
For us, the end result was to sit back down as a team and discover what we were truly passionate about creating and doing. Was it a library of listings? Not really. Turns out we needed to start publishing books, mostly anthologies, and a lot more fell into place once we identified that. The main distinction is in this concept of gatekeeping, going through submissions, editing, and actually forming relationships with our authors through the work. In the end, our audience and community get something tangible, whether it's getting published for (maybe) the first time or buying a super cool book by authors they might not have heard of.
We're still sorting through those decisions and trying out new stuff, and so I see no harm in leaving our library open, but I'd be lying if didn't say how sad it makes me to see it unused.
I appreciated the project but didn't use it much for a couple different reasons. One is that searching by genre/mood doesn't really work for me. I read across a variety of genres and never really know what I'm in the mood for. I just want it to be good. Which brings up another issue: while I love the idea of writers being able to share their work without gatekeepers in theory, in practice it leaves a lot to sort through to find something that actually leaves a mark. I'm not really sure what the solution to that is, and it's not a problem that was specific to FicStack. Unfortunately, most online platforms incentivise volume and immediacy over quality, and even a lot of the stories I enjoy feel like they could have benefited from a couple extra pairs of eyes on them, or a waiting period for the author to figure out what form the story is trying to take.
I do miss the curations though! I was much more likely to take a chance on a story knowing that someone else had enjoyed it enough to recommend it, and although they didn't all land for me, I did find a couple of writers that I liked and subsequently subscribed to. But I suppose that raises another problem, which is that once a reader is following a sufficient amount of writers (who they are excited about and who are able to sustain their interest), that reader would likely stop engaging with the platform. Sometimes I feel like the best thing we could all do for online writing as a whole is to collectively write less, but with greater intention.
Sorry if this is all vague/discouraging/not entirely related to FicStack, these are just thoughts that have been spinning in my mind in regards to Substack writing in general.
Since I started sharing my writing on Substack, I've given a lot of thought to the question: Where are the readers?
Because I'm not sure the fiction readers are actually all that common on Substack unless they're also writers. It seems like places like Goodreads, Amazon (boo and hiss if you want!), Royal Road, Patreon, etc., have readers who want to read fiction. Substack seems to have a lot of writers and readers who want to read articles about work-related topics or self-help and wellness or politics or whatever.
I wonder if part of the answer is figuring out how to get the fiction that's on Substack out to where the readers already are. I don't know *how* to do that yet, to be clear. Just surfacing the thoughts that I've been mulling over as I've been building my own little fiction ecosystem.
Side note. Have you considered connecting with Noh over at Wrizzit? He's built some great tools for writers over there, though it's still early days, and we've talked a little about the "how to reach readers" questions, as he tries to figure that out for his whole platform, too.
The thing is, as a writer, I'm not looking at metrics all the time. So if I gained any readers from FicStack, I have no idea who they are. Though, to be honest, it probably would've helped if, by the time FicStack released, I wasn't on the tail end of my serial, and I've not written a lot of fiction since. I've been in editing mode instead of creating mode.
And the truth is, readers read my nonfiction pieces more than they have my fiction. I have a small dedicated group who, for reasons unknown to me, actually read chapters of my serial or any fiction that I post. It's kind of to the point that I've debated on what I should be utilizing Substack for, as most people would rather read my attempts at book reviews and my editing progress.
I'm not even sure if I'm going to serialize another novel or how much fiction I can dedicate to writing at the moment. It's not been much this year.
I would occasionally search it for new fiction of FicStack because I wanted to see whatever everyone else was doing, but the fiction community on here isn't as big as one might think, and you kind of just run into the same writers over there as you would here.
And honestly, I think the issue with FicStack is a Substack problem. The way Substack is set up doesn't give fiction many advantages. Substack still lacks advanced searching, discoverability, and proper archiving. It relies on algorithms. So I don't think there is an easy answer for this other than Substack to actually do something, and given the fiction community is the smallest compared to other writers, we don't actually have priority. If they design a feature, it'll be for the whole and in an attempt to try to attract as many creators as possible since Substack suffers from what a lot of social media suffers from right now, an identity crisis.
I wonder if the focus shouldn't be on individual posts like Substack does or trying to band-aid what Substack doesn't do. Perhaps the focus could be on active writers on here and a way for writers to actually be able to, I don't know, edit their profiles so a reader might have a better understanding of what they write and stories they have available as well as things that are going to be published outside of Substack because not every writer, including myself, will just continue having their work available on Substack exclusively. And the reason is that Substack lacks searchability and discoverability. Unless you are constantly advertising, no one is going to discover a finished serial. And that is an issue across many platforms.
I’m a writer. And I’m going to be super honest, and probably hated for saying it, but I know for a fact I’m not the only one. I’m here to write. Not read. I do read on Substack, but the amount of reading I do for enjoyment alone, is nil.
I got a full time job, a wife that stays home, and four kids under 6 years old. I’m in writing mode. Not time for another mode.
When I do read fiction on here, I’m looking for writers to network with. Learn from. Grow with. Or just enjoy talking about the craft I obsess over.
I think the only way it could work would be if the barrier of entry was raised. Not 100 crime thrillers. Or 500 high fantasy stories. 5. Just the ones that are vetted. The finished ones. Or at least the ones from authors that have proven themselves capable of finishing a serial. And just so I’m clear, I would not be among them.
Great, thought-provoking questions. Wish I had some equally insightful answers. The ones that commented before me certainly offered up a few.
I'd like to echo the user account idea. Right now, I have a file of the things I'm reading (or want to read); it would be nice to have that with clickable links right on Substack. And, if I've finished my list, there would be links to pages with suggestions by genre, author, etc. Basically making the FicStack-like tool/site a place that I go to regularly for reading, finding reading material, etc. That habitual use sounds like one of the things that wasn't really happening in the previous incarnation for whatever reasons and, maybe, user accounts would solve (at least a portion of) that.
Thanks for all you’ve done, Gary. I think FicStack was a good endeavour and worth trying, even if things didn’t pan out at the moment.
As a reader, I didn’t use it much simply because I already have so much fiction to read here and so many stories saved in my TBR list from things that people have recommended and shared on Notes, so I was never in a place where I had to look for more. Also because I prefer to read on paper when possible, so if I’m reaching for a new novel I’m more likely to go to physical bookshelves (at home, library or bookshop) — there’s only so much screen reading I can do.
Thank you Gary, Sylvienne and all who worked on this project. I never got a chance to use it, although I am very interested in online reading platforms and how they help writers and readers. https://localunigirl.substack.com/p/the-substack-issue?r=62erw7&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web Here is a doc I wrote (maybe out of all the ideas in there, one might be food for thought). This post inspired me to think about the issue more and gather my thoughts enough to write a separate commentary. It's from a gen z perspective who has seen various parts of the internet / internet fandom culture and can point out a few trends I've observed and noticed in real life (at least from the city I live in). It has to do with cultural significance being the main driver of promotion and engagement.
Maybe the solution isn’t to shut down completely but to scale back and pivot until a better time presents itself financially. I often ask myself the question, “can I keep this really amazing thing going if I had to take X away?” For instance with TiF I just didn’t have the bandwidth to do the Medallions anymore. It was a personal blow to have to discontinue them over time but that wasn’t the priority to the mission. Is your mission to have a fancy database that isn’t financially stable or can you provide the same sense of discovery and community in a different way that doesn’t cost you anything more than your time?
Just some food for thought…
Thanks Erica
If you ever wanna chat about it, I’m usually around.
Thanks muchly. I may pick your brains with where the project goes from here.
If you liked the idea but never used it, why? I subscribe to too many sites and lost track of it.
Was it unclear? Not that I'm aware of.
Did you forget it existed? Yes, but that's not your fault.
Was it solving a problem you cared about in theory but not in practice? Not sure.
Was it too tied to Substack? I don't think so.
Did it need better search, better recommendations, better reminders, better design, better communication? Not that I know of.
No offence will be taken. FicStack is already closed. The useful thing now is honesty.
As a writer publishing serialised fiction here ( one night every Tuesday), the thing I needed most wasn’t visibility, it was continuity. A listing gives you a moment of being seen. What serialised fiction actually needs is a way for a reader to find chapter one and then be reminded when chapter two lands, because the format lives or dies on the return, not the discovery.
On the curation question, I’m with the comment above about quality over genre tropes. Genre tags help me find a shelf, but they don’t make me stay. What makes me stay is a human saying “this one is worth your Tuesday.” Mood and taste travel further than category. The best bookshops aren’t searchable databases, they’re a person who read the thing and believed in it.
So if anything grows from this: human picks over pure search, and new-chapter alerts for serials. Those two would change my reading life, not just flatter my stats.
Sorry to see FicStack go. It was clearly built with care, and that’s rarer than code.
I don't mean to trigger everyone with the most-dreaded two letters in English today, but can AI be harnessed as a matching engine? Say I dig the writing of Didrik, Blake Wager, Gan and PancakeSushi, but I want prose only, and nothing over 30 minutes to read -- can a search engine reliably help me discover other writers like them? (I would hope, in this example, my own name pops up among the results.)
As I mentioned before, I was unable to utilize FicStack, but if I weren’t waist deep in a biig project I certainly would’ve.
Thinking about it, why reading these articles about its end, and the comments and numbers attached to these posts, I find myself asking something else.
FicStack was intended to be a destination, right? Well, destination sites or services face all the normal hardships, plus more difficult problems.
Destination services NEED traffic. They MUST have regular users, or the road to that destination goes without proper maintenance. Like a road that’s a little out of the way, hazards develop just from the normal and regular wear, tear, weather, abuse, and more.
Destination web services are much harder to run straight out of the gate.
FicStack was clearly worth the travel, hell or high water. Yet, destination services need as many pointers as possible to alert people of their existence. Sure, your readers here knew, but that’s a tiny portion of writers online.
Was there any kind of promotion off SubStack? Could it have been more? Is it possible a mobile interface would’ve gotten it more attention?
I’ve dealt with the traffic issue many times myself. It’s not easy. Getting the word out is a lot of work. And it can always be worked on more.
The internet has changed so much of how we find knowledge. How we find out which email inbox is better than the other. And there’s still do many options we don’t consider.
This is just something to think about.
FicStack is done. Is all the site’s content backed up, including the moving parts and the static pages? It could possibly be picked up by a small group, or maybe you will decide one day to try again with a larger group of admins.
Food for thought. I hope it may shine some positivity in this, because it is truly sad.
I believe you are running into the same problem most of us run into.
You've built a useful tool and I was proud to be included in it.
However, for some reason, the internet generation will use a tool until it goes away, but they rarely want to pay for that tool's upgrade and upkeep.
It's the same thing that leads people to pay 11 dollars to Amazon, but won't spend 5 dollars to buy the same eBook, or in the case of substack, they'll read your story for free, but won't pay for it or buy the book at the bookstore.