How to support a writer on Substack

Thirteen ways of liking a blackbird

Photo: Gregory Garretson

Substack is designed to help writers publish their work and to help readers support those writers whose work they enjoy. The most obvious way to support a writer is to commit to a paid subscription (something which every writer will appreciate), but there are many other ways you can support a writer that are free:

• Liking a post

• Commenting on a post

• Restacking a post, preferably with a comment about why you liked it

• Recommending the author’s Substack through the Recommendations feature

• Joining that Substack’s chat and contributing to the conversation there

• Writing directly to the author to say that you appreciated what they wrote

• Sharing the post in other social media or email

• Recommending the writer’s Substack orally to people you know

• If you also write on Substack, mentioning the post in one of your own

• If you also write on Substack, suggesting a collaboration of some kind

• If you ever meet the author face-to-face, mentioning something they wrote that moved you

• Coming back to read the next post, and the one after that, and the one after that

I think I speak for pretty much all writers on Substack when I say that all of these gestures are tremendously appreciated. Would that Wallace Stevens were still around and on Substack!