I Write Four Substacks Because I Drink Too Much Coffee
Here's why I have four instead of one, and what I've learned in the process.
Michelle Richmond is the New York Times and Sunday Times bestselling author of eight novels and story collections. She helps authors get inspired, connect with readers, and reach an engaged audience in the course Substack for Authors. Subscribers to Substack Author Studio get complete access to Substack for Authors, plus every post on The Caffeinated Writer., the complete archives, and live Q&As.
In this post, I’ll share why I have several Substacks, why you might want to maintain separate Substacks for different audiences (but not four, for the love of all things good and holy!), and what I’ve learned in the process.
First off, as I’ve probably mentioned before, I drink too much coffee. See how stressed I am in the above photo? It’s because I was an expat in Paris during month six of the pandemic, sure, but it’s also because French coffee is way too small. In other news, 2025 in America is even more stressful than 2020 in France. Who knew? I’m not sharing a recent coffee photo because the stress in my face would break your phone. I don’t want to break your phone; that would make me a bad literary citizen.
If you don’t want a breakdown of my four Substacks and just want to know “why the hell would anyone do that?”, you can just scroll down to “Do Multiple Substacks Make Sense?” (The very short answer is: sometimes).
A Substack for Writers
The Caffeinated Writer, which you’re reading now, is my most active Substack. Here, I write about the craft of fiction, publishing, and the writing life. I also share personal stories of the ins and outs of a 25-year writing career, and bits of inspiration—one of my favorite is about why it’s never too late to start writing.
Most of my new subscribers to this newsletter find me through recommendations and the Substack algorithm. About 3,000 were imported from my long running newsletter, which I started more than a decade ago and migrated from Mailchimp in 2022.
Of all of my Substacks, The Caffeinated Writer is the one that gets the most traffic from Google—about a thousand clicks per month. That seems to be because it appeals to people who are searching for how to do a specific thing, like publish literary fiction or structure a story or revise a novel without losing their minds.
My Author Substack for Dedicated Readers and Fans
Ha. I said “fans.” Like I’m the lead singer of a folk band or something. I may not have fans, per se, but there are a few people over the years who follow my books, which makes me feel warm and cozy.
My author newsletter, Novella with Michelle Richmond, features exclusive fiction, including works-in-progress, new serial fiction, and personal essays with a literary bent on everything from marriage to growing up Southern. It caters to readers (or potential readers) of my traditionally published novels. Many of these readers find my Substack because they’ve read my books or are reading one in their book club. They find my author newsletter by searching for me and following a link from my website. This is my most personal and unfiltered Substack.
A Substack for Traveling Writers, Armchair Travelers, and Francophiles
My first Substack was The Wandering Writer, which I created to share notebook entries from my family’s expat years in Paris, including our European travels during those years. It has since become a place to share stories about going pretty much anywhere, from Joshua Tree to Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
The Wandering Writer originated as an offshoot of my blog, The Reluctant Parisian. About a third of my subscribers were imported from my Reluctant Parisian list, and the others have discovered the newsletter through Substack.
A Fiction Substack for My Literary Magazine, Fiction Attic
My fourth Substack is
, an online literary journal that I started in 2005 to publish flash fiction and flash memoir by new and established writers. Fiction Attic has about 2,200 subscribers. I don’t actually write the Fiction Attic Substack, but I am its sole editor, publisher, and reader-of-submissions. Fortunately, the joy of a one-person literary journal is that you conduct all its business in bed. I am writing in bed as we speak.Fiction Attic has seen the most exciting growth of all of my Substacks: more than half of the subscribers have signed up since I switched to Substack. This is where I really see the power of Substack to bring on an audience for new fiction, including many stories by previously unpublished writers. Substack makes it so much easier to help readers discover writers they haven’t heard about before. And it allows me to experiment with different publishing models, including serial fiction.
Using Substack for Fiction Attic also makes publishing new fiction simpler than it was on my old Wordpress site. And the paid subscription model allows me to continue to pay all of the writers I publish. Fiction Attic is a one-person kitchen table enterprise with no outside funding whatsoever, so the paid subscriptions on Substack really make a difference.
For paid subscribers below: How (and if) to Manage Multiple Substacks
In the remainder of this post, we’ll look at
why to consider multiple Substacks
posting schedules if you have more than one Substack
how your current mailing lists should influence your approach to Substack
how to maintain more than one Substack without losing your mind