I'm Publishing My Book On Substack In 2025—Here's 6 Lessons I've Learned

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Hello friends!

This is going to be such a fun behind-the-scenes post for you.

12 days ago, I published the introduction of my Memoir on

Finding Tom

, my personal publication.

Since then, I’ve received 24 new paid subscribers and seemingly endless messages of support from the Substack community.

My goal for 2025 is to publish one chapter per week for paid subscribers until I’m done. I’ve already published Chapters 1 and 2, and have Chapters 3 and 4 finished and scheduled.

I wanted to write a free post detailing what I’ve learned serializing my book on Substack so far. But first, let me walk you through my tactical strategy.

My Book Strategy In 60 Seconds

First off, to launch my book I ran a 40% discount on a paid membership for 24 hours. It’s normally $5 per month and $50 per year, but I made it $3 and $30 respectively for the first day.

I think limited time discounts are the best way to get paid subscribers.

I published the introduction for free, and gave people a preview of what to expect from my book, which is the story of the last 10 years of my life.

I also

• Publish daily Notes

• Publish one free article per week

• Spend 30 minutes daily commenting on articles I loved

That’s it. Oh, and I’m publishing this book under my second profile,

Thomas Kuegler

, which is actually my real name. Tom is just my shortened name. I’m doing this to keep my personal writing separate from my other writing.

That’s basically all you need to know for the tactical stuff. Here’s what I’ve learned so far from publishing my book on Substack. :)

1. People Will Support Your Dream 🥹

Whether it’s 1 person, 10 people, or 100 people, people will support you. If you have 20 free subscribers, I wouldn’t expect to become a bestseller anytime soon, but one of those 20 people will support you.

It’s almost like the Substack community can sense when a writer has gone creatively supernova, and they rally around the excitement they feel from that person.

Here’s a couple paid subscriber notes I got from my readers friends.

Anna Vatuone

, the person who inspired me to do this after she serialized her book on

Lonely Girl

, became a paid subscriber of mine and even shouted me out in a Note.

Kathy Gerstorff

offered to feature my book in her next newsletter, too.

Teri Leigh 💜

became a founding member to show her support.

I could share other examples, but you get the idea.

Here’s a crazy thought: I have over 200 paid subscribers on this publication, but I feel more gratitude for the 24 paid subscribers I got at Finding Tom so far. Before you crucify me, know that I’m grateful for every paid subscriber I get. I love you all.

But at the same time, there’s a very clear value proposition for paid subscribers of this newsletter. I give you trainings, critiques, and writing advice. At Finding Tom, though, paid subscribers aren’t getting actionable advice on anything. They’re just supporting me because they truly love my writing.

That makes me want to cry. 🥹

It made me feel like a “real” writer in a way I haven’t felt for a long time.

2. Write Because You Love It, Not To Make Money

I love writing my memoir. It’s been great fun so far. I have no problem planting my butt in a seat and spending 8 hours writing a new chapter.

One of the biggest doubts I’ve had is whether I’ll actually stay consistent with this. Will I get bored? Will I quit?

I don’t think so, because I love every second of re-living my story and writing about it. It’s given me so many personal benefits, like reminding me how much of a risk taker I was in my 20’s, and how I need to be more a risk taker in my 30’s, too.

Before all of this I was expecting a little more than 24 new paid subscribers, but now I don’t care. It’s not important. What’s important is that writing my memoir has been a deeply enriching exercise in personal development, and it’s been fun.

If you enjoy writing more than the financial benefits it can give you, you’ll always stick with it. That’s the secret.

3. Lower Your Expectations To The Dirt-Crusted Floor

My goal for 2025 is to reach 100 paid subscribers, which won’t happen in January, February, or even March. It’s probably going to happen, if ever, in the Summer or Fall of this year.

I’m not going to get rich from writing my book. I know that. I’ll be happy to make $4,000 from it this year.

I commonly tell my audience to “lower your expectations to the dirt-crusted floor.” Well, I’m taking my own advice here. It’s going to serve me well as I try to stay consistent with this in 2025.

4. Commenting Is King On Substack

The longer I’m on Substack, the more I realize that you can’t count on viral Notes to grow your subscriber base. I’m just being honest. The algorithm changes way too much. What worked yesterday won’t work today, and it’s hard to hit a moving target.

So what do we do now?

My answer is to make connections.

Subscribe to people you love. Read their work. Support them. Follow people and comment on their Notes. Have a good time.

The more I study the Substack algorithm, the more I realize that it’s very relational. You get recommendations based on who your friends and followers are engaging with. On some level, you need to “prime” the algorithm so it starts showing you to your target audience.

To do this, you need to engage with people in your target audience!

The brutal truth is, it’s easy to grow quickly when you’re writing about writing. But my audience doesn’t do that, and I certainly don’t do that at

Finding Tom

, so how do I grow? Well, slowly. Doing the consistent, unsexy work.

One thing I’ve done the last three weeks on my

Thomas Kuegler

profile is to just subscribe to newsletters that interest me. I expect nothing in return, I just love their work.

In the past I’ve felt so much pressure to deliver results to students quickly. I want to get them hundreds of subscribers in weeks, or help them write a viral Note in 30 minutes. The reality is, this isn’t going to work for most people on Substack. I’m sorry. There’s too many variables at play that we can’t control.

The good news is, growing on Substack feels like knocking over a line of dominos. The first few dominos are small, but eventually as the dominos fall, you’ll start knocking over huge monoliths by the end.

Maybe I’ll get nowhere in the first few months. Maybe it will take me months to “win over” an author I’ve been supporting, and for them to really notice me. Or maybe they’ll never notice me no matter what I do.

That’s part of the game.

But I’m betting on the fact that if I:

• Support authors I genuinely love.

• Consistently comment on their work.

• Spend 30 minutes a day engaging.

That in a few months I will have:

• Made new friends.

• Had a lot of fun discovering new writers.

• Multiplied the amount of likes, comments, and subscribers I’m getting.

I think it’s inevitable.

Then, after maybe 6-12 months of doing this, I’ll have possibly 100+ likes on every new post, and 100+ paid subscribers.

Maybe this reads like a growth hack, but I assure you I also love reading great work from insightful authors, and that’s priority number 1 for me. It’s always fun to find great writing. If I only subscribe to 1 newsletter in a week, so be it. I want to find work I love engaging with. If I don’t, I’ll get bored of this and stop doing it anyway.

It’s one of those situations where doing the right thing leads to the right outcome.

5. Stepping Into The Unknown Is Scary, But It Helps You Grow

I’m not a memoir writer. I’ve never written a book. I have no idea how to structure a book or anything like that. I’m literally just trusting my intuition and “sense” as a writer who’s been blogging for 10 years.

It also feels very uncomfortable to write about some of the things I’m writing about. Like, you know, cheating on my girlfriend or having ridiculous parties while interning at Disney World. It feels like such a gamble to let people in on that. My audience expects something more mature from me, I think. Why the hell am I talking about this? It’s terrifying.

I just got to trust my readers, I suppose. I got to say what I got to say. If they don’t like it, that’s fine. I’m not going to show my bare ass for the sake of showing my bare ass, but I’m also not going to steer clear of relevant darker parts of my story for fear of what people will think.

It’s a bold, new direction for me.

Despite that, something about this feels very organic. It feels like for the first time, I’m doing something as a creator because it feels right, not because it will make me money. On some level, letting go of the expectation of money is helping me make my best work ever.

6. Keep Your Substack Routine Fun At All Costs

I want to reiterate something here: My north star in 2025 is to keep everything organic on Substack. No shortcuts. No cheating. I will take the long route to the top of the mountain. The one that nobody wants to take.

Now, the catch is that the long route is fun! I’m having so much fun writing my book, and connecting with amazing writers, and just doing things with no expectations.

If networking is fun, and writing is fun, then this whole process is going to feel very natural for me. I want that for my audience, too. I’m using this project at

Finding Tom

to create a model I can pass on to you, my subscribers. I don’t want you to be burning the midnight oil hacking Substack to get hundreds of subscribers in mere days. I want you to have fun with this. I want you to enjoy it. Enjoying it is its own reward.

And enjoying it, ironically, is the key to staying consistent and growing in a meaningful—albeit slow—way.

There is no hack. There is only steady, consistent action. That’s it.

Thanks for reading.

Real quick.

If you want, become a paid subscriber to

Finding Tom

right here. My book is the story of the last 10 years of my life. Interning at Disney, doing a 23-state road trip, moving to the Philippines, becoming a full time blogger, and growing a Facebook Page to half a million followers before deleting it. This is my crazy story. I hope you follow along.