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You picked a name, uploaded a photo, wrote a few lines in the About box, and hit publish. It looks fine. It's also probably costing you subscribers every single day, in ways you can't see and nobody's told you about.
A generic subscribe button. A bio that says nothing specific. A welcome email you've never opened since the day you signed up, because Substack wrote it for you. A logo that's the wrong size and looks blurry in the app. None of this is your fault. Nobody hands you a setup manual when you join. You just start writing and hope the rest sorts itself out.
It doesn't sort itself out. It just quietly underperforms, forever, unless someone tells you exactly what to fix.
A complete, guided walkthrough of every setup decision that determines whether a visitor actually subscribes, written for authors, fiction and non-fiction both. Not a list of Substack's help-doc links. A document you work through once, with worked before/after examples, the exact pixel sizes for every visual asset, and the reasoning behind each choice, so you're making informed calls instead of guessing.
This includes the one setting almost nobody touches that may be quietly limiting how often Substack shows your work to new readers, and why flipping it on, even before you've fully planned what's behind it, is worth doing from day one.
A complete setup walkthrough covering: the platform decision most authors get backwards before they've published a single post, the handful of small text fields that show up constantly and are almost always left as an afterthought, the one page Substack explicitly tells you not to treat like a links page, the email nearly everyone opens and nearly nobody bothers to write, the exact specifications for every visual asset your publication needs (with the one that almost always renders smaller than expected, flagged honestly), the settings that actually move the needle versus the ones that don't, and a five-post launch sequence to get real content live fast.
Fiction and non-fiction guidance is woven through every section side by side, because the mechanics are the same but the framing genuinely isn't, a fiction author and a business author should not be writing the same bio. Every section ends with worked, before-and-after examples, not abstract advice.
It closes with a single tickable checklist condensing the entire guide, so once you're set up, you can confirm it properly rather than wondering what you missed.
Indie and self-published authors, fiction or non-fiction, setting up a new Substack or auditing one that's already live. If you've had a Substack for six months and never touched your welcome email or your subscribe button text, this is squarely for you too; most of the gaps this guide fixes show up on publications that have been live for a while, not just brand-new ones.
If you've already got a polished, converting Substack with a custom welcome sequence, a considered subscribe CTA, and properly sized brand assets, you've already done the work this guide walks you through. Skip it.
A clean, print-friendly PDF, built the same way you'd want a consultant to actually walk you through it: in order, with reasoning, with examples, finishing in a tickable checklist you can come back to.
If you'd rather skip the setup entirely, The Substack Kickstart is a Done-For-You service: Fleur and her team build your publication, branding, bio, About page, welcome emails and first posts professionally, so you go straight to writing. See what's included →
Created by Fleur Hull, Marketing Strategist & 5x Published Author, Certified Practising Marketer, Master of Marketing (UNSW). Founder of Stacks Publishing and co-host of The Substack Bookstore, a community that's helped indie authors hit number one bestseller rankings across multiple countries with no ad spend.
You picked a name, uploaded a photo, wrote a few lines in the About box, and hit publish. It looks fine. It's also probably costing you subscribers every single day, in ways you can't see and nobody's told you about.
A generic subscribe button. A bio that says nothing specific. A welcome email you've never opened since the day you signed up, because Substack wrote it for you. A logo that's the wrong size and looks blurry in the app. None of this is your fault. Nobody hands you a setup manual when you join. You just start writing and hope the rest sorts itself out.
It doesn't sort itself out. It just quietly underperforms, forever, unless someone tells you exactly what to fix.
A complete, guided walkthrough of every setup decision that determines whether a visitor actually subscribes, written for authors, fiction and non-fiction both. Not a list of Substack's help-doc links. A document you work through once, with worked before/after examples, the exact pixel sizes for every visual asset, and the reasoning behind each choice, so you're making informed calls instead of guessing.
This includes the one setting almost nobody touches that may be quietly limiting how often Substack shows your work to new readers, and why flipping it on, even before you've fully planned what's behind it, is worth doing from day one.
A complete setup walkthrough covering: the platform decision most authors get backwards before they've published a single post, the handful of small text fields that show up constantly and are almost always left as an afterthought, the one page Substack explicitly tells you not to treat like a links page, the email nearly everyone opens and nearly nobody bothers to write, the exact specifications for every visual asset your publication needs (with the one that almost always renders smaller than expected, flagged honestly), the settings that actually move the needle versus the ones that don't, and a five-post launch sequence to get real content live fast.
Fiction and non-fiction guidance is woven through every section side by side, because the mechanics are the same but the framing genuinely isn't, a fiction author and a business author should not be writing the same bio. Every section ends with worked, before-and-after examples, not abstract advice.
It closes with a single tickable checklist condensing the entire guide, so once you're set up, you can confirm it properly rather than wondering what you missed.
Indie and self-published authors, fiction or non-fiction, setting up a new Substack or auditing one that's already live. If you've had a Substack for six months and never touched your welcome email or your subscribe button text, this is squarely for you too; most of the gaps this guide fixes show up on publications that have been live for a while, not just brand-new ones.
If you've already got a polished, converting Substack with a custom welcome sequence, a considered subscribe CTA, and properly sized brand assets, you've already done the work this guide walks you through. Skip it.
A clean, print-friendly PDF, built the same way you'd want a consultant to actually walk you through it: in order, with reasoning, with examples, finishing in a tickable checklist you can come back to.
If you'd rather skip the setup entirely, The Substack Kickstart is a Done-For-You service: Fleur and her team build your publication, branding, bio, About page, welcome emails and first posts professionally, so you go straight to writing. See what's included →
Created by Fleur Hull, Marketing Strategist & 5x Published Author, Certified Practising Marketer, Master of Marketing (UNSW). Founder of Stacks Publishing and co-host of The Substack Bookstore, a community that's helped indie authors hit number one bestseller rankings across multiple countries with no ad spend.
