How to Write for a Living

📣 The Substack Success Summit runs from 11 to 13 November , with 34 speakers teaching you how to build, grow and monetise your Substack. It’s free to attend, and code DAVID20 gets you $20 off the All Access Pass: Get your FREE ticket here Season 5, episode 5 is here! Liam Austin has been on Substack for about five months, and you’ve probably already seen his face all over it. Before that, he spen...

Season 5, episode 4 is here! Ashley Evans spent years devouring every book on creative resistance she could find, and still couldn’t bring herself to share her writing. Then a title gave her permission. Wannabe Wisdom, the diaries of a fake guru, is now three years and around 100 essays deep. She’s also a former actor, a hypnotherapist, a yoga teacher, and someone who has been murdered on screen i...

Rob Riker has been on my radar for almost a year, popping up in comment sections all over Substack. This live was the first time we’d ever properly spoken. He’s built coaching businesses on Twitter, watched that platform change under his feet, and rebuilt on Substack around the one skill he’s most passionate about, which is building relationships. The chat was buzzing from start to finish. What we...

➡️ NEW FREE TRAINING: Are you failing, or are you just early? New free 38-minute training on the six signals that show you the difference. Comes with a downloadable scorecard so you finish with a concrete number, not just a feeling. Watch it here . Season 5, episode 2 is here! Drew English and I had never spoken before this live. We’d only traded messages, and it all began with a short video from...

➡️ NEW FREE TRAINING: Are you failing, or are you just early? New free 38-minute training on the six signals that show you the difference. Comes with a downloadable scorecard so you finish with a concrete number, not just a feeling. Watch it here . Season 5, episode 1 is here! Virgil Brewster blows up launches for a living. He built a course business to seven figures with two partners, sold it, dr...

➡️ NEW FREE TRAINING: Are you failing, or are you just early? New free 38-minute training on the six signals that show you the difference. Comes with a downloadable scorecard so you finish with a concrete number, not just a feeling. Watch it here . The Season 4 finale is here! No guest this time. Just me and a shorter solo episode to close out season four. I answered some listener questions about...

➡️ NEW FREE TRAINING: Are you failing, or are you just early? New free 38-minute training on the six signals that show you the difference. Comes with a downloadable scorecard so you finish with a concrete number, not just a feeling. Watch it here . Season 4, episode 21 is here! Yuvika Iyer joined Substack four months ago with no niche, no plan, and a background in recruitment she wanted to leave b...

➡️ Are you failing, or are you just early? New free 38-minute training on the six signals that show you the difference. Comes with a downloadable scorecard so you finish with a concrete number, not just a feeling. Join here . Season 4, episode 20 is here! Ryan Maxwell and I have been having deep conversations for the best part of a year now, so it was about time we did one on the record. Ryan writ...

Season 4, episode 19 is here! Dr. Taylor Francois trained as a lawyer, passed the California Bar, and then spent years building companies and teaching people how to actually use social media. She landed on Substack less than four months ago and has already crossed 32,000 subscribers. Behind the numbers is a story about burnout, a wake-up call she never saw coming, and a completely different way of...

Season 4, episode 18 is here! Suzanne Taylor-King Suzanne Taylor-King has started six companies, had two exits, and racked up many years of hard-won lessons along the way. These days, she’s less interested in growth for its own sake and more interested in building a business that hands you your life back. This was a cracking conversation, full of advice that runs against the grain of almost everyt...

Season 4, episode 17 is here! Anjeanette Carter is a seven-figure copywriter and agency owner who now spends her time helping other writers land real, well-paid work. She runs a Substack about making money as a writer and a twice-weekly job board that weeds out the scams most people fall for. This chat was full of practical, no-nonsense advice. What we covered: Why Anjeanette took a $60 job after...

Season 4, episode 16 is here! Louise Buckley Literary Agent has worked just about every side of books, from the shop floor at Waterstones to commercial fiction editor at Macmillan to literary agent. She’s on a mission to demystify an industry that can feel like a locked room, and she was refreshingly honest about how the whole thing actually works. If you’re interested in pursuing the traditional...

Season 4, episode 15 is here! Shea Serrano taught middle school in Houston for nine years before freelancing turned into New York Times bestsellers, TV shows, and a Substack pulling in serious numbers. Along the way he built his own fake publishing company and figured out exactly where the money in books actually goes. This one covered a lot of ground (and a fair bit of Scrubs!). What we covered:...

Season 4, episode 14 is here! Karin Gillespie got her first book published by Simon & Schuster in 2004, and has spent the two decades since working across traditional publishing, small presses, and self-publishing. She’s studied publishing deals obsessively, teaches writing, and now breaks it all down on her Substack. This was packed with genuinely useful advice, especially for anyone who wants to...

Season 4, episode 13 is here! Vic Holtreman started Screen Rant in the early 2000s as a hobby because he liked complaining about Hollywood. Twelve years later he sold it with 15 million monthly visitors. Now he writes for men trying to rebuild their lives after divorce or midlife upheaval, and he has a fitness book with 55 drafts behind it. This was a great conversation! What we covered: - How Vic...

Season 4, episode 12 is here! michelle ray spent 15 years teaching abroad in Ecuador, Bahrain, and Dubai before coming back to the States, having a kid, and eventually sitting down to write a memoir. This was a warm, funny, really honest conversation about writing and what stories actually do for us. What we covered - How Michelle stumbled onto Substack just to tick a box for a writing conference...

Season 4, episode 11 is here! Bobby Umar has done a thousand keynotes across four continents, spoken at TEDx five times, and built half a million followers on Twitter. But it took multiple job redirections before he finally stopped waiting and figured out what he was actually all about. This was a really fun chat! What we covered: - Why Bobby thinks the difference between a personal story and a pr...

Season 4, episode 10 is here! Fleur Hull has spent years working with authors on the hardest part of writing a book (which is everything that happens after you finish it!). She built the Substack Bookstore because she kept watching good books disappear without readers, and she decided to do something about it. This was a really good one. What we covered: - How Fleur went from losing her job during...

Season 4, episode 9 is here! Karen Salmansohn has sold two million books, been blessed by Madonna, and built a career entirely on the principle of doing something a little extra every single time. This one was a lot of fun! What we covered: - Why Karen left a senior VP creative director role in her twenties and what she told her parents when they said she was crazy to do it. - The story of how she...

Season 4, episode 8 is here! Laurie Marbas, MD, MBA started her Substack on January 6th, 2025. She had three kids in medical school, served in the Air Force, built and sold a telemedicine company, and spent 25 years as a physician before any of that. This conversation went everywhere, and it was brilliant. What we covered: - How Laurie got through medical school with three small children by drawin...

Season 4, episode 7 is here! Kern Carter knew he wanted to be an author at eight years old. What followed was about as non-linear as it gets: self-published novellas, indie publishers, Penguin, Scholastic, ghostwriting, a short film, school tours, and more books out before the year is done. This one covered a lot of ground. What we discussed: - How Kern deliberately treated becoming an author like...

Season 4, episode 6 is here! Nathan Baugh has wanted to write fantasy his whole life. He just needed a bank account crisis in Spain to finally make him do something about it. These days he has over 100k Substack subscribers, a successful ghostwriting agency, and a novel coming out in a couple of months. We talked about all of it. What we covered: - The moment in Spain when the bank account started...

Season 4, episode 5 is here! Seth Werkheiser has been on the internet for 25 years. He’s watched the whole thing evolve, from blogging about local bands in Pennsylvania to running email campaigns for record labels to eventually walking away from every major social platform completely. He’s not bitter about it - he’s just found a better way. What we covered: - How Seth went from third generation mu...

Season 4, episode 4 is here! Not Exactly Ana didn’t know what Substack was when she joined. She wasn’t a seasoned writer or a marketing expert. She was a 26-year-old Bulgarian woman who had just walked away from her cleaning job in Austria to chase something she’d always wanted. Eight months later, the results speak for themselves. What we covered - How Anna built close to 3,000 subscribers withou...

Season 4, episode 3 is here! Olivia Wickstrom didn’t set out to build a Substack. She set out to make affiliate income from a cottagecore blog. What happened instead was a slow, sometimes frustrating, eventually life-changing discovery of what the platform could actually do for a writer willing to experiment. We covered a lot of ground in this one. What we discussed: - How Olivia’s Substack starte...