How to make a living from Substack, with Maggie Alderson

Maggie Alderson: One of the big media companies I work for here, it’s just, I just feel like I’m just making money for shareholders – wherever they are. And I’m barely making a living from it. It’s really annoying. Substack, we make the money, and from our work and our experience and our talent.

Rachel: Hello and welcome to The Content Byte, a podcast for freelancers who use their words to make money. I’m Rachel Smith, a freelance journalist, copywriter, and content producer. I’m also the founder of Rachel’s List, a jobs board and community for Australian writers and other creatives. 

Lynne: I’m Lynne Testoni! I’m a journalist and content writer as well. Rachel and I are your weekly co-hosts, and every week we bring you all kinds of tips, tricks, and some fabulous guests to help you make the most of your freelance business.

Hi, Rach! I am so excited about our guest today. She’s one of my writing heroes, and she’s building a really strong following in business on Substack, which is an area we get lots of questions about. 

Rachel: We definitely do. I think we were even talking about trying to do something when we were doing the Summit. And it’s just moved on so much from then, hasn’t it? It’s definitely a great opportunity for writers to be on Substack, and some people are saying it’s the future, especially as we see this kind of continual decline in work through more traditional media. 

Lynne: Exactly. So, we have Maggie Alderson on today.

Rachel: Woo-hoo!

Lynne: Very exciting! So, Maggie’s a journalist, editor, novelist, and a very keen Substacker. She started a career in the eighties in women’s magazines. I mean, I was in women’s magazines in the eighties. They were the glory days, and if only we knew it at the time. 

Rachel: Yes.

Lynne: But she eventually became editor of British Elle, and she was an acting editor of Cleo.

She also worked on the Evening Standard, the Sydney Morning Herald, and the London Telegraph as a section editor and a reporter. As a freelancer, she’s worked for magazines in the UK, the US, and Australia and she’s had several newspaper and magazine columns, including Style Notes, which ran in The Good Weekend for 15 years.

Oh, my goodness, I love that column. She’s written ten novels, one children’s book, and published four collections of columns. She now lives in Hastings, which sounds lovely, on England’s south coast. 

Rachel: Wow Maggie! Hastings – that is where my in-laws used to live. 

Maggie: Brilliant. 

Rachel: They actually, they were in Bexhill-on-Sea.

Lynne: Oh, lovely.

Maggie: That’s the next town along the coast. 

Rachel: But just such an interesting career you’ve had, so welcome. We’re so pleased to have you. 

Lynne: Welcome!

Maggie: I’m very excited to be here. Thank you for asking me. 

Rachel: I love that you’ve turned Substack into a money earner. It’s very funny. It’s lots of hot takes on there. Can you share a bit of your experience with the Substack platform, and how long you’ve been doing it for? 

Maggie: It’ll be three years ago in September, and I did it as a free platform, like a blog. I’ve done blogging before on WordPress. A degree of success, but as I think many of us discovered, you can’t make money from a blog unless you’ve got something to sell, either a product or a course or something, or your own soul. That was the other way. 

Rachel: Yes. 

Maggie: I didn’t have any of those things for sale, so I did start to think, “What is the point of blogging? I’m giving it away for nothing.” So, Substack, brilliant. The opportunity to do the thing I like to do probably most in the world, which is to write and communicate with people, and hopefully get some money for it.

But I did it for free for a year, just to sort of test the waters. And then when I felt I had enough connection, I went paid. And it’s gone really well, and I’m really loving it. That’s the main thing about Substack for me. Obviously, it’s very nice to make money from writing again because it’s become increasingly difficult to do that, on the so-called mainstream media But I also, I love the process of it.

Lynne: Yes, it’s interesting, isn’t it? Do you think that your writing is different with Substack? Is it a more personal medium, or do you think because you’ve always done columns that it’s a bit more personal in tone anyway? 

Maggie: It’s very much the column level of personal, and the most wonderful thing, what I want to write.

I have to say, to my shame, I’ve written quite a lot for the Daily Mail in this country, because they’re the only place that still pay well. I’ve actually stopped writing for them now. And it’s a nightmare. They ask you to write something, and you write it, and they say, “Oh, this is great. Thank you.” But then they make you rewrite it. Then they make you rewrite it again, and they keep asking you to put these things in it which are nothing to do with your lived experience, and which you don’t actually think. And, until the end, something comes out with your name on it that’s got nothing to do with you. The worst experience of all, everyone I know who’ve written for Daily Mail has had this experience, they just completely rewrite it. 

Lynne: Oh, yuck. 

Maggie: And your name’s on it. So, after years of that, to be able to write what I want to write, how I want to write it, when I want to write it, as long as I want it to be, keeping in all the best jokes, is heaven. It’s really heaven. 

Rachel: Amazing. I know you mentioned that you had a year where you kind of got to grips with the platform, and then you decided to monetise it or switch on the button for people to pay a monthly fee. I’m just thinking of the freelancers who might be thinking of starting a Substack. What would they need to understand, and how do how to price it, and when is the right time to actually go to that monetisation stage? 

Maggie: Well, I think the price point is really important. And when I started off, mine was, eight pounds. That’s probably about fifteen dollars. And I dropped my price to five pounds – ten dollars, and I’ve got a lot more subscribers.

I think it’s really good not to be greedy, and in my experience, keeping your price on the lower side will help you grow faster. As for when to go paid, I think you’ll kind of know. You’re building… I can’t remember how many free subscribers I had when I decided to go paid, but I had a great connection with them and that’s the lovely other thing I love about Substack is the direct communication with the reader. I tend to ask a question at the end of each post to try and encourage that chat and it’s something that other Substackers that I know, and some of the big ones also say, is that the joy – a lot of the joy is in the chatting.

Other Substacks that I follow where there’s this real sense of community in the comments, almost like on Artist formerly known as Twitter, where you kind of made friends through comments. I love that because on newspaper comments you just tend to get loonies.

Lynne: Yes. 

Rachel: Well, on the Daily Mail you do. 

Maggie: Oh, even in The Telegraph it’s, you get these absolute hideous people who have got nothing better to do than be horrible to poor little writers. I saw somebody posted this recently on Notes that they’d never had a negative experience on Substack.

Rachel: Wow. 

Maggie: Yes.

Lynne: That’s nice, isn’t it?

Rachel: There’s a nice community. 

Maggie: Long may it stay like that. Because I do remember the early days of Twitter. The early days of Twitter was absolute heaven. It was like being at the biggest cocktail party in the world, and you could chat to anyone. I mean, I got a reply once from RuPaul.

Lynne: Yes. 

Rachel: Ooh. 

Maggie: Of my life. And other famous people, and it was the actual person, it wasn’t someone pretending to be… 

Lynne: A publicist or something.    

Maggie: There were other people who weren’t famous that I became friends with. One of them was the… I don’t know whether you’ll remember, the British Eurovision entrant Mary Hopkin who wrote the song, Where Do You Go to My Lovely. We became friends. She’s lovely. Twitter and Substack is at the moment, and I’m praying that the trolls don’t get on it. 

Lynne: Yes.

Maggie:  I think probably if you’re in the more political side of things, I’m sure the trolls are there. But so far, they haven’t invaded my area along there.

Lynne: That’s nice. 

Do you get a lot of data about… I guess you’re talking about comments. Do you get data about who’s reading it, and see how your audience is growing or where they’re from, that sort of stuff? 

Maggie: That side of Substack does my head in. I find it, as I said before, if you’ve blogged, the actual posting side of it’s a cinch. That’s really easy. Although there is this weird difference, the app and the online portal is so different.

I just do it all on my main computer. I’m not going to fiddle around on another… I find that confusing. Just yesterday, because a friend of mine posted that she’d been in… She was in bestsellers for, I think for fashion and style or something. You do, sometimes I have had these notifications that you’re number five and growing in fiction or, you’re at this level in fashion and style, which is great, but it’s very random and very hard to find on the site.

I do find that side of it really confusing. I only look at my number of paid subscribers once a week. I don’t allow myself to keep checking, because you could go mad. And I do find that I get a new subscriber and then somebody unsubscribes. And it is painful when you get this email saying, X has unsubscribed. You think, “Why?”  Sometimes you get sent a little note, which is so nice. One woman sent me such a lovely note about why she was unsubscribing that I had gifted her a free year’s subscription. That was one off by the way. Don’t, please don’t – I don’t want anyone to unsubscribe.

It was just the way she did it was just so thoughtful and kind. Because getting these anonymous un-subscriptions, you just think, “Oh, what have I done?”  However, I regularly check how many Substack’s I subscribe to. Because five pound a month there, eight pound a month there, it does add up.  And I try only to subscribe to about six at a time. And sometimes I need to switch them up. 

So, I do now always send a little note saying why I’m unsubscribing.  

Rachel: Oh, that’s nice. I know I like that when someone unsubscribes from Rachel’s List and they tell me why. It’s just nice. 

Maggie: It can be helpful. Mostly, it’s people just saying, “I’m subscribing to too many.” Or “I’m just switching things up.” 

Rachel:  Well, I know you had a great profile before you started the Substack. Do you feel like your fans from the book world, followed you to Substack? Or are you seeing a whole new sort of legion of fans that you maybe don’t know?

Maggie: It’s a mixture. Well, sometimes people tell me and I have to say, I think the column I had in Good Weekend has brought me a lot of followers. I get these really lovely messages from people saying, “I loved your column. I was so sad when it ended.” Now I feel like I’ve got it and that’s what I tried to do when I started Style Notes, and I think it’s even in my mission statement thing where I say I’m trying to do that column again. But also, other social media platforms. 

Rachel: Yes.

Maggie: Probably most of my British… For the column, that column did run in The Times for a while, so I have a bit of a profile from that in the UK as well, and some people say they remember that which is lovely.  But I think posts on Instagram, people who follow me on Instagram are picking it up as well.

But it’s a funny thing with Instagram. Since I’ve become paid, I found that when I post … because they send you all these assets to use on social media. And whenever I put… I always think, “Oh, I really should do that,” they’re not… When it’s for a paid post, those are not popular posts. I don’t get many likes. Generally, I get a lot of likes on Instagram. But when I do a Substack promotion for a paid post, I don’t get many likes. 

I pretty much only post them on Substack now when it’s a free post. I did a free post yesterday about growing my booty through going to the gym.

Rachel: I read that.

Lynne: Yes. So, did I. So, you’ve done a few free posts here and there, which is how I first found you on Substack. So, is that part of your marketing idea? 

Maggie: Oh, that is essential. But it’s a really fine balance. Whenever I do a free post, I get a little flurry of new subscribers. So, it’s really important to do it. On the other hand, you don’t want to piss off your loyal paid subscriber, because they’re going to think, “Well, she’s giving it away for nothing. Why am I paying eight dollars a month?” So, it’s a really fine balance. 

Lynne: Yes.

Maggie: One of the big Substackers here does a free post once a week which seems to work for her, but it’s much less meaty than her paid posts are. So, you do get value for money from being a paid subscriber to her. But I don’t want to do two tiers. So, when I do a free post, it’s the full monty just to give people an idea of what they get if they give me a little, tiny bit of money every month. 

Lynne: Because what we do here, we talked a little bit about it before, but Substack is well known for having a lovely community, and that people within that Substack community support each other and writers are really promote each other.

Now, you were talking before we started about that in the UK, they do Substack events with some of their leading people. Tell us a little bit about that. 

Maggie: They’re really great. And one of the things that I do is whenever I meet fellow Substacks at those things, we swap free subscriptions. And I also do that with people that I’ve followed, or they followed me and we chat a bit on this platform. Swap free subscriptions. And a publisher said to me many years ago that she said, “Successful authors are generous with their books.” And I believe in being generous with my Substack.

So, anyone else who I think’s interesting, and there’s a great British Substacker called Polly Vernon. She’s a brilliant journalist and columnist. I’ve loved her writing for years. I’ve never met her, although we have a lot of mutuals in the industry. And through chatting on comments, Polly and I now swapped free subscriptions, which is just so nice. And we always comment on each other’s posts, and we will, repost each other’s things. That’s a big part of what I love about it. And some of the people that I meet, to go back to those Substack events, are completely different. 

The last one I went to, the one at Christmas, I met this really nice woman because I just go up and talk to anyone. “What do you do at Substack?” It’s fascinating how different they all are. This woman is a children’s book illustrator, and she has a kind of art group on it. And once a week, at a set time, they get together, she sets a project, and people do their drawings, and then the next post she shows her favourites and talks about, what works about them. She’s got a really big following. And so, we’ve swapped subscriptions. 

I bumped into a writer that I’ve met many years ago who contributed to one of the charity anthologies that I’ve done over the years. And she does a really successful one about writing fiction. She’s a very successful historical novelist, and it’s very, very specialist about writing fiction and again, we swapped. And another, I met a couple, that do one together, and their subject was they are professional fundraisers. They work in the charity sector raising funds, and their Substack is very, very niche. 

What’s one of the things I find fascinating about going to those events is just because it, Substack is a universe, like Instagram, YouTube, TikTok. They’re massive, massive universes with millions of different interest groups. Just to sidetrack, one night, when I was briefly addicted to TikTok, I found this thing where women carve soap. 

Lynne: Yes. 

Maggie: I was watching it for a couple of hours. It’s mesmerising like those weird sounds thing and people eating. I mean, there’s just all these insane universes within the universe. And Substack is also like that. Then I would say that I’m in a more general journalistic area.

Rachel: So how much time are you spending on your Substack, and what other kind of writing do you do? And how much does your Substack supplement your income and keep you in front of other people? Sorry, that was four questions in one question. 

Maggie: So how much, how long does my new… I could happily do nothing else and I’m beginning to think that maybe that’s what I should do, is just do Substack. 

Rachel: Right. 

Maggie: Because I enjoy it so much. I feel stimulated by it because it’s new and interesting, and it has all kinds of possibilities. Some people take their written Substack’s out into more of the podcast zone, and people do lives. I’ve never done a live, and I’ve got all those areas to explore, and I’m beginning to think that that’s what I should be doing with my time.  I’m doing less and less for mainstream media, and frankly, it’s getting in the way of my Substacking. 

Lynne: Ooh. Interesting. 

Maggie: I chat a lot to old friends who’ve been in magazines and newspapers as long as me, and we all feel the same, that we’ve been sort of left out to dry by the big media groups. I mean, some are not so bad. I would do anything for Good Weekend that they ask me, and there’s a few places in the UK that still seem to respect writers. Good Weekend definitely respects writers, which I was really grateful for. But some of them now, they’re run by accountants and they do not respect writers. We’re just cannon fodder as far as I can tell and it’s beginning to piss me off.  

Lynne: It’s interesting, there is a story, and I don’t know if it’s apocryphal or not, but there was one of the writers I think from The Wall Street Journal that was made redundant, as many have been, and he set up his own Substack and now earns three times as much money writing better columns. 

Maggie: Yes.

Lynne: That he, without that sort of overlord, that Jeff Bezos overlord and it’s much better, and he does better. 

Maggie: Well, I’m not making three times, but what I’m making from Substack is a really useful supplement to my income, and I think I could, if I do commit myself just to Substack, I think I could grow it more, and I think that’s what I’m going to do because one of the big media companies I work for here, I just feel like I’m just making money for shareholders – wherever they are. I’m barely making a living from it and it’s really annoying. 

Substack, we make the money and from our work and our experience and our talent. One of the events I went to here, the founder of Substack was there, and I ran up and practically kissed his feet and just said, “Thank you. Thank you as a journalist of forty years for understanding that we need to be paid for what we do, just like you pay a plumber.” 

Lynne: Interesting. 

Maggie: I’m not being precious, that, “Ooh, I’m an author, and I need to be respected.” Anyone who does a job of work that people benefit from in whatever way, whether it’s having your sink unblocked or reading something that informs you, entertains you, and interests you should be paid for their work. It’s as simple as that and that’s what Substack are giving us back. 

Lynne: That’s so interesting. Now I wanted to talk a little bit about fashion, because I love fashion. Maybe that’s why I’ve always loved your columns about clothes and clever buys. You’re really passionate about it. How has that played into your work, and has that changed because fashion has changed too. The fast fashion. Does that influence you? 

Maggie: It makes me not buy any new clothes anymore hardly. It’s just me. One of about four new things I bought this year. I don’t really buy new clothes anymore. We have this thing in the UK called Vinted. There are other platforms in Australia for exchanging second-hand clothes, and me and a lot of my friends buy pretty much all our clothes on there. 

Rachel: Oh, yes.

Maggie: I used to be op shop fanatic, but op shops been very affected by the online second-hand trend. So not get such good stuff anymore. But I am passionate about clothing. It’s in my DNA. My grandmother, my mother’s side, was a bespoke dressmaker in London in the 1920s, ’30s, and ’40s. 

Rachel: Wow!

Maggie: She made clothes for society ladies. Mrs. Keppel was one of her clients. So, I grew up with it. There was always fabric being felt and button boxes, and there was a whole tool boy on our landing at home that was full of dress patterns and fabric and buttons and braids and lace.

All the women in my family are obsessed with this. My daughter is the same. And the thing about clothes is they’re not just what we wear. Every outfit is a story. It tells you about the time the person is living in. It tells you, their story. I’m fascinated by the history of fashion, which even as a child I was obsessed with it, and why particular clothes were in fashion at particular times. What it says about the sociology, the history, the mores of the time and when I used to write about designer fashion, both in the UK and for the Australian newspapers, that’s was what the context was what fascinated me. How something that you’d see on a runway, like the famous Devil Wears Prada blue jumper speech trickles down and ends up…

Lynne: In the High Street.

Maggie: What is it about that thing? Why do we want to wear that now? I find it fascinating. I’m obsessed. 

Rachel: You said that you were surrounded by it as a child. Do you happen to know that little kid on Instagram who’s a fashion designer? 

Maggie: Yes. 

Rachel: I forget his name. It just escapes me. But it’s so funny watching him. He’s like a little fashion genius. 

Maggie: He’s adorable. There’s also a little boy that cooks at home, when he’s doing also – I love little kids. There’s a lovely little boy, he’s about five, and he cooks. He’s adorable too. But the little fashion designer, I think he is genuinely talented. And it’s so lovely to see him able to express it, because I remember, the hat designer Philip Treacy? I did an amazing interview with him, and when he was a little boy growing up in the country in Ireland, he wasn’t allowed near the sewing machine because that wasn’t for boys.

There was one day a week when all his family would go off to the market town or something, and he would scurry in to get his mother’s sewing machine out, have a little sew, and he’d have to put it all away again and hide it. It was heartbreaking. So, to see that young chap able to embrace it. He’s done a runway show. Love it. 

Rachel: It’s amazing.

Lynne: I love you talking about fashion because one of the things I feel is that good fashion journalism isn’t around as much anymore. A lot of the fashion magazines, because of the climate and they’re struggling, it’s more about the advertisers than actual fashion. It’s more about being rich rather than dressing well. 

Maggie: Also, on UK Vogue I find very strange online. The actual magazine is okay. It’s not as good as it used to be, but it’s okay. But online, it’s all these young women talking about how they wear track pants to the office and showing all these… I know, I suppose it’s just it’s not my time. They’re  Gen Z and that’s what they wear. Yes. But I want Vogue to be better than me.  

Lynne: Yes. 

Maggie: I need to see impossibly beautiful people wearing ridiculously expensive clothes. And I want to believe, although I know it’s a fantasy because they became my friends, that all the women that work in the offices also look like that. I need that fantasy. 

Lynne: Yes. Definitely. 

Maggie: The top part of fashion is whipped up like a meringue or a bubble that can just burst with a finger. It is at a certain level a big beat up. But that’s the joy is in the fantasy. 

Rachel: It wasn’t a fantasy in Australia at Bauer Media. I used to stress every morning getting dressed when I was working in-house. 

Maggie: Good. 

Rachel: And kitten heels would all clomp past you with their little… And I would just think, “Oh, gosh, I look terrible.” 

Maggie: No, I bet you looked great because you made an effort and it was the same where I worked.

When I was editor of Elle, it was amazing because the fashion stylist on British Elle in the early nineties was amazing. And I would sit in my office and looking directly at where they would walk in, of course they always came in after me, and every day it was like seeing a fashion show. I was like, okay, what’s Debbie going to be wearing today?

Lynne: Yes. 

Maggie: It was really amazing because they were the trendsetters. I mean, fashion designers got ideas from those women. In fact, Debbie Mason, who I just mentioned, she was the first person to put Gucci loafers on a woman. 

Lynne: Oh, wow. 

Maggie: Models are tall, they have quite big feet, so she was able to buy smallest size of men’s Gucci loafers which Debbie wore, and then she started putting them in fashion shoots, and then Gucci started making them in smaller sizes. 

Lynne: Wow. Oh, so much fun. Those were the days. 

Rachel: They were. 

Lynne: I’d love to talk about your novels too, because ten! I had no idea you’d done so many. I’ve read a couple in the past and, I think Rach said how much she loved them.

What’s that been like? Did they come about organically, and how have they been in terms of sales and income? 

Maggie: I’ve always wanted to be a novelist since I was about six years old. That was always my lifelong ambition. And like many of us, I was terrified to try, because if I tried then, I might fail.

But I did also, at a certain age I started reading magazines and newspapers and became obsessed by them. So, then I wanted to be a journalist more, but I did always want to write a novel. It was always there. But I just didn’t have the confidence to try. And then the urge was getting stronger and stronger, and I went to Sydney Uni, and I did an evening course in creative writing.

Because although I was, had by that stage been a journalist for twenty years, I hadn’t written fiction, and I knew it was different, and I had seen novels, read novels by journalists, successful journalists, and they weren’t any good. I thought that this is a different – completely different medium. I need to learn it. And people were saying to me, “you’ve been, you’re a professional writer. Why are you doing a course?” And because it’s different. And it was brilliant. I learnt, so much from that course. I wish I could remember the teacher’s name. She was great, and she gave us a really good book list of books to read, which were incredibly helpful.

Just the things like, what tense are you going to use, and the most important thing, what point of view are you going to use? Is it going to be I or she? And how many points of view? Is it one point of view, or is it multiple point? All of that stuff you have to decide, before you start. And then that gave me the, the impetus to get going, and I was fortunate because that was when the, my Good Weekend column was in its full swing, so publishers knew my name and were willing to see me, and I got a deal. So, that was a great advantage. 

I love writing novels. It’s the most wonderful flume ride that because I don’t plan my books. You’re either a planner or a pantser. 

Lynne: You’re a pantser? 

Maggie: I’m a pantser every way in life.  

Lynne: Designer pantser. 

Maggie: I’m a pantser and proud. I have a theme that I want. Each one had a theme. I’ve had drug addiction. I’ve had abusive relationships, and the last one I did, she’s a widow. My heroine discovers she’s a widow and also a betrayed wife within an hour of each other.  

Rachel: Oh, that’s great. 

Maggie: So, she’s like, “Well, what am, am I a betrayed wife or am I a widow? What is my role here?”

That idea just came to me out of the blue wonder. So, I have the idea I want to explore, and then I find a job for my lead character’s always a woman, and I give her a profession to work within, which tends to be in the creative area because that’s what I know. That one, she was a food stylist for cookbook shoots, because I know a few of those and then I just set off. 

I know there’s always going to be a happy ending. I always have happy endings. But it’s how do they get there, and what do all the different machinations they go through. And I love doing it, but boy, is it a lot of work.

Rachel: Yes.

Maggie: Like mainstream media, in the twenty years that I’ve been writing books, twenty years plus now, the publishing industry has changed. As I said earlier, you no longer make nearly as much. You barely make a living wage as a novelist now. We get royalties are much lower than they used to be. So, it’s a lot of work for less money. 

I do; I love doing it. I really, really love doing it, and I would say to anyone who wants to write a novel. Do it if for nothing else, for the experience of doing it. Even if it never gets published, it’s an amazing experience, and you get to know your brain in a new way. And I got to respect the human brain because, as I said, I don’t plan how the plot’s going to work out, but my brain, without… It doesn’t happen up here. It doesn’t happen in the, “Oh, should she be wearing a red dress or a yellow dress?” area here. It happens down here. Writing away and thinking, “Oh, God. How’s she going to find out about that?” And then you go, “Oh, of course. She sees… Oh, that Instagram that they shouldn’t have put up, she sees it before they, before they delete it.” And you just… it works your brain. Quite often I’ll be a bit stuck about something, and I’ll go out for a walk. I’ll be halfway down the street, and the solution has pinged into my brain. 

That is an amazing thing to experience. So, I would say the worst reason to start writing a book is because you want to have an international bestseller. I can’t think of a worse… And that was the thing a lot of journalists who were writing books, particularly in the eighties and nineties, wanted to be Shirley Conran and have an international bestseller. Do it because you absolutely have to and you love books, and you want to give that pleasure that you’ve had from other people’s books to other people, and for the sheer joy. I mean, the sheer joy of inventing characters, I can’t tell you. It’s the best fun, especially if you’re a journalist, and you have to stick to the facts, and you have to stick to quotes. It’s like you can make it up. 

Rachel: You don’t have too anymore. 

Maggie: No. When I first started writing my first novel, I was thinking, “Oh, I’d quite like them to be this.” And I thought, “Well, I can’t do that.” And I thought, “Oh, yes, I can.” I can make them into giant lizards if I want to, and that is so fun.

Rachel: This is making me want you to get started on your book. Get it out there, your next book. We can’t wait. 

Maggie: Sorry, Rachel. I think I will write another one. I am, in total honesty, slightly working on something. But the publishing landscape has changed a lot. And just as I’ve had to get used to the way that the magazine world has changed, now I’m having to get used to the way books have changed and, the whole self-publishing thing, which that’s the other area that I think I should, I need to concentrate on, is really properly looking into self-publishing. Because a good friend of mine who’s a great author, one of the things that can happen when you are a published author, and it happened to me and this friend of mine with the same editor, you get taken on as a publisher by one editor and they leave, they get a better job, and a new editor comes in.

This happened to me, and I won’t say her name, with the same new editor, who did us both over because we weren’t her author and she didn’t care about us. Wanted us rid of and she did us both over and I sort of crawled into a corner and licked my wounds whereas the other person went, “Right,” and she self-published and she did so well with the self-publishing, she got taken up by a new publisher. So, I think it’s very interesting to look into that. 

Rachel: Okay, so you’re going to write your new book, and you’re going to become an even bigger dynamo on Substack. But given there would be lots of writers listening to this and thinking about Substack, what would be your advice to them? What should they consider first? 

Maggie: I was thinking this over, what advice I would give people, and in some ways it’s, “Don’t overthink it.” 

I think for me, the Substack’s that work come really from the heart of the writer. And I’ve been analysing the ones that I follow and if you are a niche person and you want to read those fundraising people, that’s a whole different area on Substack.

But as your people are, we’re all the same gang. We’re journalists, we’re media people. Those are the ones that I follow. And they are proper professional writers. They’re informative, and they’re entertaining. They’re telling me new stuff. I’m getting ideas, entertainment, information and if I’m getting an opinion, it’s an informed opinion. It’s that professional level and everyone who I follow is one of those. That is what I try to be and a proper professional journalist on this platform. As to the subject matter, again, I think it’s really important that it’s something that, that’s absolutely true to you. Then it will come easily, and it will be your best work. Whereas one thing I would advise not to do, and so many people I know have made this mistake, is signing up to one of the people on Substack who are going to show you how to become a successful Substacker. 

It’s absolute nonsense. They’re all American, and it’s all really, it’s for people who aren’t writers and who really are wanting to promote their muffin brand or their car dealership or whatever. It’s not for professional writers. So, do not waste your time and money with those snake oil salesmen. Instead, really shop around on Substack and read as many different things as you can, even if it’s only reading up to the paywall.

But most people, even the real biggies, will post free sometimes. And I would just read as broadly as you can and find out, what you enjoy and what works for you is, and is working for a lot of other people. I think that will spark you to do your best version of you. And if, I think if it’s really sincere – I think that comes over in the work.

Can I tell you who my favourites are? 

Lynne: Yes. 

Maggie: My number one favourite is a guy called Tom Sykes, who writes about the British royal family, which is not my most subject I’m that interested in. But Tom is such a great journalist. He worked on the Evening Standard just after I did. He’s a proper journo, and he’s a great writer, and he’s really funny, and he has impeccable sources because he’s a posho himself. It’s so entertaining what he writes and so insightful, and I just find it so satisfying to read work by a proper journalist who’s, he’s got contacts, and he gets out there. 

Lynne: Right. 

Maggie: And if there are big stories, which at the moment there are, he’ll do three posts a day.

Lynne: Oh, wow.  

Maggie: He’s amazing. He also does a podcast that’s, he does on YouTube as a video, and he gets really interesting people on there. He got Arsehole formerly known as Prince Andrew. He got his – while that was happening, so that was gripping stuff. So, I love Tom Sykes, and his sister is Plum Sykes, who you used to love.

Lynne: Oh. I love Plum.

Maggie: Oh, I adore her writing. She’s completely different. She’s in the Cotswolds, leading this sort of dreamy life with horses, and tweeds, and boots, and she’s wonderful to look at, but also a great writer. So, I love… And I call them the Jackson Five of Substack. And another favourite is the great Tina Brown.

Lynne: I follow her. 

Maggie: Oh, love her. And then for American politics, I have Michael Wolff who is the great Trump expert, and he is, I find, again, gripping stuff, insider contacts, great writer. And then Polly Vernon, who I mentioned before. What I love about Polly is I don’t agree with her about a lot of stuff. She’s really into facial tweakments. She’s obsessed with being thin. A word I really don’t like, and she writes really controversial stuff, but she writes it so well. It’s so interesting, and she’s brilliant and engaging in comments. Those are probably my favourites. 

Lynne: There are some wonderful people, and there’s new people all the time aren’t there?  

Maggie: Yes.

Lynne: So, Maggie, we end the podcast with our fast three questions. Are you ready? 

Maggie: Oh, my Lord. 

Lynne: You can do it. 

Rachel: Okay, first question, favourite tools of the trade you can’t live without? 

Maggie: I can’t live without a trackpad. 

Rachel: Ah. 

Maggie: I hate mice. I like a trackpad, so with my big computer and my lovely big proper keyboard because the keyboard on my MacBook really gives me the pip. 

Rachel: So, it’s hardware. We’ve never had a trackpad ever answered as that question, so well done.  

Maggie: Good.

Lynne: And what about question number two is a habit that genuinely saves you time. 

Maggie: Give me an example. I don’t know if I’ve got any.

Lynne: Sometimes people, they might batch content, they might write three columns at once, they might take a notebook out and put down notes or save things for later. 

Rachel: Might be a productivity thing that you do. 

Maggie: I don’t do anything that thought out. I’m permanently pantsing it. 

Rachel: That’s an answer in itself. We’ll take it. 

Okay, final question, one thing you wish you’d done sooner in your career. 

Maggie: Starting Substack. 

Rachel: If it had existed, because it’s fairly new. 

Maggie: It had existed longer than, years ago. I could have got started even sooner.

Rachel: Yes.

Maggie: Probably, getting into self-publishing, which I still haven’t done actually. This might be a better answer to that. But I was fairly early with Substack. 

Rachel: That would be very interesting to read about on your Substack. If you go down that route and you want to do a blow-by-blow of self-publishing. Be good. 

Lynne: It is interesting, isn’t it? 

Rachel: The whole world … look at us suggesting content for your Substack. 

Lynne:  Yes.

Rachel: We can’t help it. 

Lynne: Oh, Maggie, thank you so much. Thank you for giving us time. It’s been so interesting.  I can imagine it’s got… Well, I think more people will hopefully follow your Substack but also tune into the medium anyway.

So, tell everyone where they can find you. We’ll put links in the show notes. Obviously, we’ll put the Substack. Where else? For your books and things. 

Maggie: Thank you. Because that is another thing actually that I’ve encountered recently with the mainstream media, which is increasingly becoming the bogeyman for me. They won’t let you put your Substack at the end of a piece. 

Lynne: Because they’re worried about it being a, a threat.  

Maggie: So that was really interesting, because if you write a book or something, they’ll always let you put a mention, but Substack – there were problems with that. That was quite interesting. It’s been lovely talking to you. 

Rachel: Thank you so much, Maggie. This has been amazing. 

Lynne: Thank you for coming up. Thanks. 

Rachel: Bye. Thanks, Maggie. Bye. Bye. 

Credits:

Maggie’s Substack is here: https://maggiealderson.substack.com/ 

Find Lynne www.lynnetestoni.com

Find Rachel www.rachelsmith.com.au

Rachel’s List www.rachelslist.com.au

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Episode edited by Marker Creative Co www.markercreative.co