Why focus on Substack to sell your forthcoming or backlisted book?
Email lists sell books. Period. And a Substack email list is a very different kind of email list. It's about relationships with people over time, instead of simply hitting them with sales emails. Substack by the numbers: :: Email engagement: Substack sees open rates of 30-70% :: Click rates: Book links in Substack posts get 5-15% click rates versus 0.1% on social media :: Purchase conversion: One Substack writer found that 26% of readers who clicked on her book link bought the book versus the typical 0.08% Substack book launch and book sales success stories: :: Melinda Wenner Moyer sold 25,000 copies of her book—with her publisher crediting Substack for driving continued sales. :: Virginia Sole-Smith became a New York Times bestseller, stating, “There is no doubt in my mind that this happened because of Burnt Toast [her Substack].” :: Maggie Smith credited her subscribers for helping her very literary collection of essays hit the New York Times bestseller list.
How we'll plan your Substack launch:
Get Started
• We'll start by highlighting any publicity your team has planned and how our work might complement it • If you're on Substack, I'll give you my secret to calls to action to use on every post to bring your subscribers into the pre-order process on Substack each month from the cover reveal to the pre-order announcement to blurb reveals and reviews as they roll in to pub week events • If you're not on Substack, I'll show you how to create a "looping Substack" that allows you to use Notes and collect email addresses without having to start a Substack • Solidify your launch calendar
Create Your Substack Network Strategy
:: Here's where we create a network of email lists for you • We'll catalogue your existing connections on and off Substack • Compile a list of 3 Substacks that are the right fit for your book and discuss the collaboration or publicity opportunities there and get you going to find more Substacks to work with, so you reach their audiences using their email lists because email lists sell books (a Substack live is worth ten times most podcast appearances)
Tap into Substack Notes and Build Your Email List
• We'll demystify Notes, so you can use it to your advantage • Map your Notes strategy, including how not to sell on Notes (it doesn't work) and instead bring people to your email list to sell to them there (where it does work)
Substack sells books. I show you how to use the platform to do it.
*I only work with a select number of clients. Limited space available. Book today.
$550.00
About me
I’m Sarah Fay (MFA, MA, PhD). I’m best known around here as the world’s leading Substack Growth Strategist and founder of Substack Writers at Work—a featured, bestselling Substack with over 36,000 members. I used Substack to get my backlisted memoir on the USA Today bestseller list in July 2025 and now help authors do the same. I’ve helped thousands of writers and creators—from award-winning journalists to bestselling authors to those just starting out—substantially increase their revenue, double and triple and 10x their subscribers, build an engaged audience, and produce their best work. I also teach creative nonfiction at Northwestern University and am a six-figure solopreneur, Fortier PR consultant, mental health advocate, and author of the journalistic memoir Pathological: The True Story of Six Misdiagnoses (HarperCollins). My work has appeared in The New York Times, Oprah Daily, The Atlantic, and The Paris Review, where I was an advisory editor. I write the bestselling, featured Substack Beyond Pathological. As you’ve seen, I live in Chicago with my two beloved cats—Sweets and Baby Theo. More than anything, I want a t-shirt that says, Ask me about my cats. (All typos in all posts are Baby Theo’s fault.)