my book is dead: the 5 year plan.

Monthly Newsletter: June 21st

It has been 11 months since I decided to become a full time writer, and 8 months since my first Substack article. This is my 85th article on Substack.

I normally paywall these monthly personal updates, but there is something I want to say in public, and repeat elsewhere, again and again:

Please restack. If you have a public Substack with your own articles, it is immensely helpful. I have been noticed by big accounts (10k+ followers) simply because someone, with very few followers (378 on Twitter) decided to restack me.

Very few people use the “restack” option on Substack. As such, it has an outsized power in the Substack “algorithm.” This means that you can have an extremely small Substack account, restack my posts, and they will be boosted tremendously in people’s feeds.

To that effect: if any of you would like me to promote other small creators on Substack (I only have 158 followers), please comment on another one of my articles so I can check them out and restack them. This sort of incestuous “gaming the algo” can seem distasteful and shameful, but I will try to do it in the classiest way possible.

Having the ability to be seen by random people in the feed is something that used to be common for me on Youtube, but after getting several strikes (which you can read about behind this paywall), that doesn’t happen anymore. Twitter isn’t much better. Elon’s X is infested with really petty tribalism, superficial memes, interracial fight videos, and pornography. I still use it, but being on Substack is like a second chance at life. Thank you to all of you who support me. Now, onto the newsletter: