8 Questions for... Russell Nohelty
8 Questions for... Russell Nohelty
The Author Stack
(www.russellnohelty.com) is a USA Today bestselling fantasy author who has written dozens of novels and graphic novels including The Godsverse Chronicles, The Obsidian Spindle Saga, and Ichabod Jones: Monster Hunter. He is the publisher of Wannabe Press, co-host of the Kickstart Your Book Sales & Six Figure Author Experiment podcasts, and cofounder of the Writer MBA conference & The Future of Publishing Mastermind. He also co-created the Author Ecosystem archetype system to help authors embrace their natural tendencies to find success. You can find most of his writing at theauthorstack.com. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and dogs.
’s latest book, 12 Concepts for Authors to Make $8333/Month (6-Figures/Year) can be supported on his kickstarter campaign.
1.     Why Substack?
A bunch of people I respect told me they were getting a ton of organic subscribers and after hearing it from people for years I thought I would check it out myself. They aren’t wrong. You shouldn’t be able to grow organically in the way Substack lets you grow your email list. I also advertise so I know how expensive it is to grow in the way Substack is helping creators grow.
What finally tipped me over the edge was wanting to deliver more value to our Writer MBA members. I used to have an author centric newsletter, but I shuttered that when I started Writer MBA with my business partner Monica Leonelle. We decided to keep our mailing list on Convertkit for when we sell our products but to add Substack to our flow to deliver value and help build our audience with more content marketing. That’s a place where Substack shines.
2.     How long did it take you to find your groove?
I studied the platform for a few months before I jumped in, and then I brought over 27,000 people who were in my existing audience and comped them to my paid membership area with hundreds of fiction and non-fiction resources they could check out. So, I feel like I got started pretty quickly and it was easy to find my groove, but I had already done this kind of work at a high level for a decade before I came to Substack. Then, when Notes came in it felt like something I had already used for years so that was also a fluid transition.
3.     How has it changed you?
I definitely think about writing longer pieces now than I ever did before I came to Substack, and it’s exposed me to more traditional publishing. I’ve also come into contact with a lot more writers that have never written even one book. That was wild to me since most people in our audience are authors who think about books as their main delivery mechanism.
4.     What mistakes have you made?
I used to have fiction and non-fiction on the same Substack, which I don’t think is necessarily a mistake, but I would lose the most subscribers when I released my fiction content. So, I moved it to its own Substack where it can be happy on its own. Also, releasing more than once a week really kept my growth stagnant instead of increasing for a long time, which meant I had to augment that organic growth with advertising if I wanted it to grow. I think probably weekly is right for me, and now I have 6 Substacks, for my fiction, non-fiction, and then when I partner with other people we create a Substack on a project basis. It’s a really great way to create seamless collaborations.
5.     To pay or not to pay?
I both pay for many Substacks and have paid turned on. My philosophy is that when somebody wants to give you money, you should let them.
6.     What artistic and technical choices have you made?
I decided that my publication would be low touchpoint, so I wouldn’t do a lot of events or live streams or anything for it, and the main value would be in the archive. So, I went through my vault and put together close to 900 pieces of content from interviews to courses to old articles to a script library that people could sift through at their leisure. I basically wanted to give them everything they needed to get started on growing their author business. Then, we have higher end products and courses to help them get the rest of the way there. I’m chronically ill with several different things going on that keep me from doing much, so I can’t be as involved as I would like to be with each person, but this way they can hopefully get the help they need. When you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you tend to have said most everything before.
7.     What’s been the effect on your writing?
Well, I wrote three additional non-fiction books last year that I didn’t expect on the Substack, so that was something really interesting and wonderful. I’m definitely writing more non-fiction than I ever planned to in my life, but I’m also writing less fiction than I would like, so I’m trying to balance that out. The problem is that I can release non-fiction articles at almost no cost, whereas I want to hire an editor and make things nice before I put fiction out into the world. Plus, people tend to engage more with my non-fiction work than my fiction work, and it’s easier to find collaborators for it. So, I’m drifting that way, and I don’t really mind, but I have taken note of it.
8.     In it for the long haul?
I think so. It is a great way to build my subscription business. I love the people I have met both on the team and through the community. So, I’ll stay here as long as that is the case, but if it ever stops being the case then I have the emails and data to pull off platform and start again somewhere else. I’ve done it before, so it’s possible, though it would not be ideal. I’m hopeful it will keep improving in future years, and I’m excited for that possibility. I feel confident enough about Substack to write a book about it with
at least.Once you build leverage somewhere, it makes sense to keep doubling down on it, so yeah, I think so. Substack is probably the best opportunity I have found since Kickstarter, and serves a completely different purpose, which is great. So, they can combine together really nicely. Â
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