How Indie Authors Use Substack’s Referral System to Reach Readers
Should you be in Substack's referral systems that automate 'Word of Mouth?' Which is best for you: subscriber referrals or gift referrals? Orna Ross explores how authors make Substack referrals work.
I had an email the other day from a reader here who said, in passing, ‘I’d been following you for twelve years online but never knew that you were a writer yourself.’
Though I’ve published 20+ books, many of which have hit bestseller charts and won awards, to that reader as to a lot of people I am known as the founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi)… period.
To my delight, Substack is changing that for me. Don’t get me wrong. I love being the founder of ALLi. Though of retirement age, I’m still working there, and I will for many a year—but the organisation has a fantastic team now, and takes less of my time.
My current focus is growing my own publishing business, and in some ways I’m at a standing start, as I changed everything last year to meet the new times we’re in: from Woo Commerce to Shopify, from social media to Substack, from ‘wide’ publishing to ‘direct first.’
I love how Substack is helping me to grow the membership of my Reader Club and Indie Author Lab, as well as bring more readers to my books, and I’ve recently started to experiment with their referral systems.
Some authors don’t know about referrals, whether they’ve toggled theirs on or off, whether they should use subscriber referrals, or gift referrals, or both.
In short, how to make the feature work for them.
I’m also often asked: do Substack referrals work? The answer is largely yes (see below) but it’s the wrong question.
What each of us needs to be thinking about is whether the growth they encourage is the type of growth we actually came here for… and that depends entirely on what we are aiming to do here.
Automating ‘Word of Mouth’
Books have always travelled as affection travels, head to head and / or heart to heart, by word of mouth (or these days, word of email). Pressed across kitchen or café table, or internet platform, with slightly breathlessness infatuation, a friend says: ‘You must read this. You’ll love it.’
Known as ‘word of mouth’ it is the publishing' business’s oldest engine. Older than the codex, and the printing press—older than money, even. Substack has found a way to wire this timeless energy and fit it with a meter. The reader who could have just loved your work in silence is given something to do with their love—they become an advocate, and are thanked for it in currency of the platform.
The subscriber who could have stayed free is comped for a month or two into your paid tiers, loves what they find behind the paywall, and decides to stay.
Do You Even Want Substack Referrals?
There are three kinds of authors on Substack. I think of them as:
The authors who want to use their Substack writing as a reader magnet. They’re building digital products like ebooks and online courses, and/or offering services like coaching or other forms of support, and their Substack is a funnel towards that other revenue source. The income made on Substack is welcome but incidental to the main event.
The authors who want to make money from their Substack writing itself. They have paid newsletters, and are trying to win more free and paying subscribers and for Substack to become a real source of revenue for them.
The authors who just want to write. They’re here for creative expression—to share their writing. They may not have turned on paid subscriptions and if they have, it’s secondary for them. Money and growth are a bonus, not the goal.
All three rely on those who read and engage: the precious reader and their precious attention.
Some of those readers are creators themselves, others are just here to consume, comment or support. My sense of Substack is that it is still top-heavy with creators.
This means that when we switch referrals on, we're inviting other authors aboard. We are both performer and audience, a self-satisfying ecosystem. And that’s fine but it will land differently, depending on which of the three author types listed above you are.
For the author whose Substack is a corridor to the book, the course, the coaching, Substack standard referrals may not be the best fit. It rewards readers for enlarging your Substack when what you most need is for them to walk through a different door. A custom reward can bend things in the right direction but a referral can recruit the person who loves the free thing, who may be the last to pay for the priced thing.
Referrals work best for the author whose Substack newsletter is the product. That’s the kind of author it was designed for.
For the author who came here simply to write, referrals may be an irrelevance, or even a contradiction. From the reader perspective, a comped subscription to a thing that’s already free is no great reward. And from yours, what you want most is the right readers—and those will arrive by the slow gravity of the work, without a points scheme. You’ve switched off the world's metrics. Why would you import a fresh one, with a ladder and scoreboard? What she tends to
Some people actively dislike Substack Referrals, feeling that recommendations cease to be genuine expressions of artistic or intellectual admiration and become more transactional.
And, on the other side, for writers who actually want to run sophisticated book marketing campaigns—or even know exactly how many people bought your book from a newsletter post—Substack’s internal system lacks the deep segmentation and automation features found in external tools like SparkLoop or Kit.
So yes, the referral system can annoy purists while failing to satisfy data-driven indies— too much machinery for one, too blunt an instrument for the other—but, on balance, I feel Substack has handed us two genuinely useful tools with referrals.
Yes, two. One operates as a growth machine, the other more as a courtesy to readers— and a good deal of getting this right may come down to knowing which you've switched on, and why.
When I first set up here, I was wary of referrals, unsure about the emails that Substack would be sending on my behalf, but once I was clear about what I was actually offering here and to whom, the wariness eased. So I've been giving it a go—carefully, and on my own terms—and what follows below what I've learned at this (still early) stage.
The Most Important Thing Is Uplifting Others
Don’t think only about traffic flowing in: the surest way to be lifted on this platform is to spend some time uplifting others.
Substack runs, more than most platforms, on this kind of open-handedness. Generosity is your best strategy. As in life, and as deliberately practised by creativists, giving precedes getting.
As well as the referral systems we’ll look into below, Substack also has Recommendations, one of the strongest growth engines on the platform.
From your dashboard you can recommend other publications you admire, and your endorsement then surfaces to readers on your page, and also at the moment they subscribe to you.
A recommendation is a real gift: you’re handing a fellow writer a slice of the hardest-won thing you have, the attention of people who already trust you.
Choose work you’d press into a friend’s hands anyway, so that the recommending becomes an extension of your taste, rather than a tit-for-tat trade. Recommend as you’d lend a book: because you love it.
Finally, Remember also to include restacks (with a caption) and shout-outs in your weekly schedule.
The art of recommendations and referrals is to do it without counting. Reciprocate where it’s genuine but let the rest go
And now, practicing what I preach, may I say that it would mean a lot to me if you felt Embers & Ink was worthy of referral and I’d love to send you the rewards (comp months and thank-you books) for inviting friends to subscribe here and read along.
Subscribers have access to my Reader Club and for authors, there’s Indie Author Lab including workshops. A monthly live session with me lives alongside a serialised novel, poetry readings and personal essays.. You can find out more here: Ornaross.substack.com/about
It would makes this old writer very happy to think that new people will see, and hopefully enjoy, my work here, and won’t forever think of me (if they ever think of me) only as founder of ALLi.
How to participate
1. Share Embers & Ink: Creative Doings, Then and Now.
When you use the referral link below, or the “Share” button on any post, you’ll get credit for any new subscribers. As your friends use your referral link to subscribe (free or paid), you’ll receive special benefits from me.
Get a 1 month comp for 3 referrals
Get a 3 month comp + ebook for 6 referrals
Get a 6 month comp + signed, deluxe hardback edition for 25 referrals
It’s a bit of an experiment for me, I’m interested to see how it goes and I’ll report back.
Thank you for helping me to get the word out, if you can. And of course, no problem if it’s not right for you at this time.
Read on for further guidance in setting up your own referrals.
