Substack as a Marketing Tool for Indie Authors, with Orna Ross

About this episode

Orna Ross discusses the strengths and weaknesses of using Substack as a marketing tool for indie authors.

Is Substack a smart marketing tool for indie authors? In this episode, Orna Ross explores the platform's strengths for marketing fiction, poetry, and nonfiction books—including reader community, discoverability, and subscription options—alongside weaknesses like limited e-commerce, conflicting priorities, and the risks of building on a venture-backed platform whose goals may shift over time. She concludes that Substack offers a powerful combination of features for authors who want to balance creativity with visibility, but is not a substitute for a solid book-selling strategy. Show Notes Orna Ross on Substack (Embers & Ink: Learnings from Literature) Sarah Fay on Substack (Substack Writers at Work) Sponsor Our Creative Self-Publishing stream is brought to you by Orna Ross's Go Creative! program —helping authors harness the power of creative flow in writing and publishing. About the Host Orna Ross launched the Alliance of Independent Authors at the London Book Fair in 2012. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller's "100 top people in publishing". She also publishes poetry, fiction, and nonfiction and is greatly excited by the democratizing, empowering…

People in this episode

Host: Orna Ross

Topics covered

• marketing tools
• indie authors
• Substack
• reader community
• discoverability
• subscription options

Keywords

• Substack
• indie authors
• marketing
• fiction
• poetry
• nonfiction
• e-commerce
• visibility

Sponsors

Go Creative!

Mentioned in this episode

Organizations: Alliance of Independent Authors, Substack

Books & works: Embers & Ink: Learnings from Literature, Substack Writers at Work

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