As Substack’s Storytelling Lead, Hannah Ray sets out to find and elevate amazing writers, especially the ones who might not naturally toot their own horns. How does she do it?
“Good writing is simple writing. I think that goes for the curation part, as well. I will try and strip myself from the equation as much as possible. You’re like a spider with your tentacles out everywhere, looking and pulling in things from different reader recommendations, dashboards and things you know about the company, and trying to spin it into something really interesting.” — Hannah Ray, Substack
The firehose of great things to read has only become more overwhelming since Substack came on the scene in 2017. The platform is home to so many excellent newsletters on topics like the history behind today’s politics, inspiring images and ideas, music and culture, and even beloved pets. As of May 2023, Axios reported over 17,000 writers earning money there, with the top 10 making more than $25 million annually.
With so many editorial options, it’s helpful to have a guide to help you find the worthy stuff. Inside of Substack, that’s Hannah Ray, Storytelling Lead. Hannah’s job is to find and elevate amazing writers, especially the ones who might not naturally toot their own horns. Hannah brings experience from The Guardian and Instagram to the role.
Other highlights, inspiration and key learnings from the conversation:
👋 Say "hi" to Hannah.
🔎 Browse the companion Storyboard to get the episode, plus Hannah’s own favorite culture picks.
➕ This podcast was created by Flipboard, the world’s first social magazine, where enthusiasts are curating stories they recommend across thousands of interests. Learn more.
This transcript was generated by AI, which may affect its accuracy. As such, we apologize for any errors in the transcript or confusion in the dialogue. Thanks for your patience!
Mia Quagliarello:
No one ever said we didn't have enough content. And the problem’s only gotten more intense since Substack arrived. The email newsletter platform is home to so many interesting voices and great newsletters. There's newsletters on everything from the history behind today's politics, to what it's like to be disabled, to mouthwatering recipes, and celebrity pets. As mere mortals with limited amounts of time to spare, it's really helpful to have a guide pointing you towards the good stuff.
At platforms like Substack, there are humans behind the scenes who work hard to do just that, either by handpicking items, or by working with machine learning teams. What does Substack's in house curator do? How does she discover new writers and exciting newsletters? How did working at a newspaper and an Instagram inform how she approaches her current role?
That's today's episode.
Welcome to the Art of Curation, the show from Flipboard that explores the role of human tastes in a tech driven world. Each episode, we talk to someone who's an expert at finding signal in the noise, people who do this for a living in media, tech, fashion, music, photography and more.
I'm your host, Mia Quagliarello. Like you, I get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of content out there. I crave authentic people to guide me in making smart choices that make my life better. These are people with taste — the real kind.
My guest today is Hanna Ray, the storytelling lead at Substack. Hannah's job is to elevate and highlight the amazing talent on the platform, especially people who don't naturally toot their own horns. You can hear the excitement rise in her voice. As she talks about her process and the sheer joy she gets in discovering something new and surprising. If you have a newsletter and want to get on the radar of the subject team, I highly suggest listening closely to this conversation.
Well, Hannah, tell us what you do at Substack. And why having someone doing curation matters there.
Hannah Ray:
Yes, so my role as storytelling leader Substack is really to turn up the volume on the amazing writers that we have, and their stories. So obviously, I think storytelling is a really powerful transmitter of ideas. And it's also you know, can really be a brilliant way to help other people feel like they could also start a sub stack and have their own place to share their own writing. And, you know, one of the big things about Substack is you shouldn't be an independent writer and start earning money straight away from your subscriptions. So it's a really kind of powerful place to be as a writer, and exhibit writers can be naturally, not always so self promotional, and they don't always want to tell their own stories. So I think a lot of what I'm doing is really helping them share their stories with the broader Substack community. And that's something that kind of has been a thread throughout my career is kind of finding, you know, voices and people who maybe aren't, you know, aren't naturally drawn to talk about themselves loudly, and helping them helping kind of elevate their stories. And I do that on, you know, in a number of ways across the platform, including our own Substack branded publications, but also we have, you know, selections of publications that we feature on our homepage and the discover page in the app, and kind of various other places across our services that we own. So a big part of my job is discovery, kind of doing a lot of research. And, you know, making sure I'm kind of going down the rabbit hole of finding new and emerging writers as well as some of our kind of bigger names that have come across to the platform and then kind of helping drive the conversations that they're having and kind of highlighting who has a new voices or who are doing something maybe unique. We have a big part of the role at the moment is a weekly digest that I I curate and write called sub stack reads. And goes out of the weekend on one of our in house publications, that's also called Substack Reads. And that's kind of really finding some of the most interesting and new and engaging work and writing that I'm seeing on the platform. And taking reader suggestions are kind of curating them into into that digest. But yeah, essentially it kind of comes down to, you know, elevating and highlighting the writers that we have on Substack and helping and helping tell their own stories.
Mia Quagliarello:
What kind of stories are you looking for?
Hannah Ray:
One of the big things I think is still a mystery to a lot of writers when they start on Substack is how to grow their subscription lists and how to actually make money on the platform. So like one of the regular interview series that we do is called Grow. And that is, you know, basically interviewing a writer about how they got started on Substack. You know, how they grew their initial list, whether they started with just a free list or whether they immediately turned on the paid option? Or if they didn't, you know, how did they do that kind of going paid moment. You know, how they launched their sub stack and, and also just who their readers are, and what kind of niche areas they write about. And in those interviews, we really kind of get down into the details and lift the lid on, you know, the business of running a Substack, as well as just like the day to day and, you know, a lot of writers, especially when they start out are working on their own and kind of running their Substack as an independent business. And, you know, the more stories that they can see from other writers doing the same, and you know, what kind of tactics they use, what strategies they have, what content strategies they have viewed, it was just amazing fodder for inspiration, really, for those other writers, and feeling, you know, much more connected in a sense of being in a wider community. There are other stories that we look for in terms of you know, how people are using their subjects to connect with their readers or engage with their readers or you know, how they might be converting some of their readers to paid subscriptions. Also, for a long time, we ran a series called What to read, which was really just interested in who is the writer behind the Substack? And why are they so jazzed about that subject matter, and what is the niche that they're writing about, or the subject, you know, the the topic that kind of, they're so interested in, that they could write about forever and ever. And that's really, that was a really fun series, because you're kind of basically, you know, looking, talking to someone about their passion and, and finding out new and interesting things about the world that you didn't know. And then, with Substack Reads, which is the weekly edition I just mentioned, really the stories that we're looking for. I mean, they cover kind of such a broad range of topics and categories and verticals, but they always feel like quite timeless. They're not necessarily always hitting the new Zeitgeist or any kind of theme, but sometimes they might by kind of coincidence, but really, they're these kind of like, deeply interesting, maybe long reads or features that again, are kind of opening your mind to something that you maybe never heard about before, or a concept that you didn't understand, or, you know, a whole feature about buttons, or the Minecraft en poem, or Ipsum S, which is like people who are finding their creative drive like well into their 80s. And that the amazing thing about my job is I get to read so much and find, you know, these amazing writers, but also find these amazing topics that they're writing about. And that often subject matters left, you know, linger in my mind for days and days, and just the kind of posts that I want to kind of text all my friends, you know, you must read this. And for that edition, there may be that the stories I'm looking for there, and maybe the ones that you you might find, like a kind of long read, you know, like, back in the olden times, when you had time to kind of flick through like a big magazine, or like the weekend newspaper, it would be like that kind of meaty feature, that you just kind of get sucked into the story about something really obscure and unusual that you wouldn't normally think that you wanted to know about. So that's what I'm looking for, for Substack reads, but the you know, the writer stories are really, really diverse. And you know, we find writers coming from all different walks of life. And so we're, you know, we're not looking to elevate like any kind of one type of writer or someone from a particular kind of background or career trajectory. It's really just highlighting, like, the broad range of writers that we have on the platform and how they're making Substack work for them and how they're kind of maybe making money from their Substack as well.
Mia Quagliarello:
What kind of tools do you use to discover new writers and fantastic posts?
Hannah Ray:
Yeah, that's that's the question. I'm such a tools note as well. They can kind of a producer at hearts, kind of I do love going into the weeds of like, of tooltips as well and I'm always eager to speak to other producers and writers and editors about what they use. So yeah, for me, and this is similar to other jobs that I've had similar that are kind of in house storytelling or editorial roles for people like Instagram or the guardian. It's always a bit sad that a lot of the tools that I have like what other people would be able to use in like the public version of Substack, like, I don't have like any kind of amazing internal search, for example, and that was the same with Instagram. So that's to say, like, a lot of it will be that kind of going down the rabbit hole. Instagram, you know, there was this kind of existing mantra that like accounts would follow like accounts. So if you knew if you were kind of looking for a certain type of account, you would stumble across a whole community of dog accounts, and then be able to like find the dog account that you were looking for by just looking at who they follow. And at Substack, it doesn't quite work like that. But we do have this amazing feature, which is called recommendations, which a lot of writers are using now and to great effect, because recommendations are driving, you know, 40%, of rate of growth of different races this as well. So that allows them to essentially the feature on their own homepage, a bunch of writers that they would recommend. So when I stumbled across a great writer always looking at who they're recommending, and then who they're recommending, and then who they're recommending. And that's like the kind of the rabbit hole that you can go down on Substack, which is just brilliant. And I love finding new writers that way. But we also have a great kind of call and response relationship with the readers of both of our in house publications where we ask them all the time, and in many different ways, like who they love and who they're obsessing about at the moment. And that can be through kind of direct calls for recommendations, you know, on our social channels, or on Substack Notes that just launched a few weeks ago, where he asked me this, you know, who, who's what's your favorite piece of work that you read this week? And who are you reading this week? What writer Do you love on Saturday? And then when we do feature someone, we always ask them as well, like, Who are you jazzed about at the moment. And then obviously, we have kind of internal staff recommendations. I do look at some of our internal dashboards, although they they're not always what drives kind of where the stories come from. And I guess as a bit of a good journalist, I've always kind of looking out for leads. So I might hear about something, you know, kind of in the weeds of a comment section. And just or, you know, it might be like a kind of a throwaway comment on the podcast that I helped produce, which is the active voice with Hamish McKenzie. So one of the cofounders, he hosts this podcast where he interviews writers about the writing life and being an online writer. And sometimes they will mention other Substack writers that I've never heard of. And again, that can be a great lead. So those are kind of like the sources, I guess. And then in other tools. I don't have like a great organizational tool that I use, but I do copious amount of note taking. And that is in all forms. So sort of bog standard pen and paper notes, and then stickies and Apple notes. And then we use kind of air table to track who we have featured already in like an editorial calendar. And then we also have, who we featured on the homepage and discover lots of Google Docs with groups of different writers that I might have been researching for different ideas, the notes, the notes and notes, which I do, I do try and keep my notes very organized.
Mia Quagliarello:
Do you have any guardrails against what you will absolutely not feature?
Hannah Ray:
Not really, the main thing for me is that I wouldn't want to and this kind of goes for all writing I think in a way I wouldn't want to kind of over promise something to our readers that then kind of falls flat. So what I'm looking for is obviously you know, publications of substance, but but kind of deliver on the promise. And I think the reason I compare it to writing is like I kind of see when you think about like the headline and the image and why you kind of decide to go out and read a piece and start investing your time and reading a piece. If if the actual piece that you start reading doesn't really deliver on that promise like it can it can feel really bad And I think that I feel the same way. And that's probably why it makes sense to kind of have someone with like quite an editorial background. Thinking about features in this way is that you, you want to make sure that you kind of have the premise that, yeah, this is this is going to do what it says on the tin. And then for someone to kind of click in and be like, Oh, yes, this is doing it, and probably even better. And I want you know, and I want to subscribe. And so then that feels good for both the reader and the writer. But now, in terms of other guardrails, like we have our community guidelines, so obviously, would not feature someone who's kind of going against those. And also, you know, it kind of can feel it doesn't necessarily feel great if you subscribe if you subscribe to someone, and then you don't actually receive any posts. So and this was really similar to when I was at Instagram as well. Like, we never wanted to kind of funnel people towards someone who wasn't actually publishing that often. And I think we have the same feeling hears that you know, someone's publishing regularly, then you subscribe, it feels like you're kind of jumping into a stream that that is actually happening, like you're, you know, you're going somewhere active. And I wouldn't necessarily want to send people to somewhere that is, seems very sporadic, or just kind of isn't actually publishing very often. Yeah, so those are, those are a couple of things. But we really want to show like a really broad range. The types of stuff sack like vary so much in terms of like the types of posts that people have, from photo essays to advice columns, to Q and A's with their readers to video post, you know, as well as kind of the categories and verticals, which is, and they have, like, a hugely broad range. But yeah, also, I think, I think I love it when something feels quite new and surprising as well. And I think that's, that's probably my guide. Well, when I think about reads as the weekend digest is like something that's kind of new, surprising and like incredibly delightful and lingers in the mind for a long time afterwards. Yeah, and bonus, if people read that, and they think I'm gonna go and subscribe to this person's publication as well.
Mia Quagliarello:
How are the new notes helping your process?
Hannah Ray:
Rather amazing, actually, because it's added a whole new kind of sourcing for me. And as I said, we kind of we already did a bit of call and response with our readers asking kind of asking in the comments, like kind of who are you reading at the moment? What writers are you obsessed with? What was the best thing you read in the last week? But with notes, we started putting out that call. And the response is kind of very immediate. And the responses have kind of strangely been, I don't know how to describe this, but like, slightly higher quality. And I've definitely discovered more new writers and new writing than I did in in the kind of the previous ways we were kind of putting a call out I think we did. You know, we obviously tried it in the in the comments, we tried it in chat. We definitely tried it on Twitter. And then I'd often go and look at kind of who's what people are tagging us on the brand accounts on Twitter and Instagram as well would often find great writers that way beyond notes as just being this, this brilliant, opening up of like another new way to speak to our readers about what they're finding really interesting that week. And I also see trends through multiple readers recommending the same thing, for example. And that can be like a really good indicator that like okay, this is this needs to be looked at this needs to be considered because so many people have recommended it.
Mia Quagliarello:
You mentioned earlier how helpful it is to have an editorial background for what you do. Why do you think these skills are helpful for curation?
Hannah Ray:
Um I guess one of the things you kind of learn in the very early days, like at journalism school is just like how to find the stories. And I do think like a large thing of, you know, I mentioned that a lot of what I do is about discovery. You know, just being able to kind of, also kind of hold a lot of information you had on what you have done and haven't done already, and be looking at like the wider industry landscape of like what's new and interesting. Among other media outlets as a whole, you know, what do people do Talking about what what types of writing is getting featured what writers are being featured by different publications. I do think as a journalist, you're sort of a naturally curious person, you start to hone those skills of kind of hunting for what's what's in the news story, like I was a news journalist, to start with, and a reporter. And then obviously, like the skills of kind of listening, noticing, interviewing and editing, being out, being able to edit yourself and kind of edit for what hopefully feels quite entertaining, read in the end. And, and being able to kind of hold the whole mass of everything that you've read so far in your mind. And not really like think of it like this kind of balloon suspended in the air. And you're not like letting any of them drop. You know, kind of like being able to hold it all up in your mind and remember everything that you've read and everything that's been featured and everything that's been featured elsewhere. And from that, decide, what do you let escape from the net? And kind of putting in front of your readers? I think some of those those skills are more akin to being an editor than a marketeer, I guess. And maybe it's also kind of the training that you get through working, you know, with guardian for years, and kind of, as a very young journalist sat in a lot of big editorial meetings, and looked up to a lot of editors and just tried to understand, like, why they would choose something over something else. And sometimes they were brutal, you know, and sometimes the way they edited my work was brutal, but it always made it better. Just this honing and honing. Instagram, we used to just describe it, like kind of, you know, cutting away cutting away a piece of stone until you have like the gem like the diamond and and I think, you know, with this kind of discovery and curation and selection, and featuring it is it is about kind of how do you cut away like a lot of all the stuff that you could feature and you could tell stories about and find the one thing that is like this new, rare, rare gem that needs to be honed and needs to be edited, and, or split in order to be brought to its kind of brightest definition, if that makes sense. So I'm sort of taking that metaphor along along the way, but it's, that's, that's why I see kind of like journalism and editorial playing into that because, I mean, it's, it's truly brutal. Like, as a young journalist, you're just having your own stories, like slashed all the time. Read, you know, and in my, when I started, it was actually on papers, and it was like red markers over everything. And you know, I had to sit next to my editor and watch them edit my work sometimes so that I could understand their process so that I could write better. And I think that now I don't have so much of like the being heavily edited. Although I am often edited by the co founder Hamish, which is like, probably like the highest editor we could have in the company. And I really appreciate that being edited. Like, I just always think it makes the work better. And and that's what I want to like, I don't want to deliver something of low quality to such a big audience, you know, on behalf of Substack, I want it to be the best quality it can be. And that's down to like, who we choose, as well as how we tell their story. So yeah, it's about kind of maybe setting the quality bar quite high as well. And just kind of being really ruthless with with yourself and editing yourself over and over and over and kind of killing your darlings. And I didn't like all these other kinds of metaphors that you get through writing, but it's like just being able to be quite honest with yourself and able to just like, I don't know if I can swear on this podcast, but like, edit the shit out of your work.
Mia Quagliarello:
Yeah, yeah. Ann Friedman, whom I had on this podcast, said the same thing, how being an editor was almost like her superpower in terms of producing her weekly newsletter and you can totally see it as a consumer of that newsletter. how tight it is.
Hannah Ray:
Yeah, and, you know, I'm working for and with some of the best writers in the world as well. So it would make sense that it's not it's not you know, it's not an easy task to be the, you know, behind some of the sub companies out Sub statics and it shouldn't be, you know, it should be like a kind of world class position. And I think that that makes you then want to kind of make sure that everything you're doing is like of the top quality. But you know, I had that hammered into me like as a guardian as well, it's like we are the, you know, the best newspaper in the world, everything we have we do has to be the best, you know, like the best form of what it can be. So, yeah, I don't but the thing is, it's a really good question, because you just don't know what it would be like, if I'd come from a different industry. Like it, you know, you might well be able to do this job coming from a background in like, you know, museum curation or something else, but I don't know. I think because it's Substack. It like makes sense that you like a writer and editor.
Mia Quagliarello:
If you're allowed to say this, which sub stacks Do you wish more people knew about?
Hannah Ray:
It's really hard to answer these questions, because you feel like you're not going to mention a whole host of people that should be mentioned. And actually, normally, I wouldn't let myself even like mention names, because, you know, obviously, being known as someone who's kind of working on some of the in house publications, and has a hand in curating who gets featured there, like, I can't really like recommend, like my personal favorites, because what I what I kind of personally love and what we feature a Substack are actually like very different. But to answer to your specific question, I do think there's a lot of writers who are brilliant writers that people don't know, we're on Substack. And actually, their Substack is like, these kind of brilliant, witty behind the scenes. So like, big writers like Mary Gaitskill and Margaret Atwood, like they have amazing Substacks where they share, like Margaret Atwood sharing illustrations of her chats with the editors and stuff that she does. And I didn't know, like, I know, a big Margaret Atwood fan, I didn't know she did illustration. You know, and you wouldn't know that, I think unless you did subscribe. You know, people like George Saunders, it's obviously like a famous one in terms of like more, one of the more well known quite some Substack, giving away incredible insights into writing, you know, kind of essentially kind of teaching a class on his sub stack. And then there's kind of like, you know, the Substack writers who I think you may see elsewhere and other big publications, but they're kind of going deeper and unpacking data and information in a way that's kind of shaping how we think culturally like, and Helen Peterson, Emily Auster, John hight, like they, you know, they kind of like tap into, like a bigger conversation happening across the web. And then there's like, the more journalists, the writers that I didn't know about before, join Substack you know, Max Reed about very vise like, they're kind of offering these kind of big, meaty cultural reads that are kind of very important, important and poignant at the same time. So those are the ones that are kind of maybe what I might call like the bigger writers or like more well known writers. But then there's like, these amazing little corners of like the Substack universe that you just would never normally know about, I think unless you were interested in that subject, subject. I'm trying to think of ones that come to mind but like, you know, obviously, I'm based in the UK, which has its advantages because they just totally have my eye and air out for anything international or they're like a big chunk of Substack writers and readers are based in the US. Like Lisa Webster, former BBC journalist, writes a Substack called the view from down here about being a woman with a disability. Just like opened my mind into thinking in new ways. Carson Ellis has these incredible illustrate essays in her Substack, which is called Slowpoke. I just I love it, because it's just always like, you know, the end of every week, I always feel like so inspired and quite like energized creatively, because I've seen and read, you know, all these amazing Substacks on subjects that I didn't know about already. And it doesn't feel like a place where you come to just feed your own kind of cultural bubble.
Mia Quagliarello:
I'd love to go back to something that you said about what you personally love is not necessarily what you would recommend, like how do you how do you reconcile these two voices, if you will, like your voice and then Substack voice?
Hannah Ray:
Yeah. Yeah, it's a really good question. And I guess it's something that any writer in house for a company has to grapple is. But I'm, I'm kind of happy that I've been able to grapple with it over the many years, I have been working as a journalist and writer. So I had had to figure this out, The Guardian had to figure this out Instagram. And then when I've also done bits and bobs for other people. Yeah, it's kind of being able to have like a sort of criteria of what good looks like for the company and kind of hold in your head. All the discussions that you've had with product and marketing teams, and partnerships and recruited leads, and knowing everything that you know about the company and kind of what what that criteria good looks like, in your head for the company, and being able to completely separate that from, you know, what you may or may not like, in terms of subject matter, I think for me, when it comes down to kind of subject matter, and just being aware, you know, where my mind might normally go to kind of look for what's interesting, and being like, oh, no, actually, that's just playing into something that I already care about. And the other thing is, you know, kind of what great writing looks like. You know, forcing yourself to be like very objective about that. And actually, what great writing looks like is probably quite different for different people. Do you think, yeah, writers and editors probably kind of like, have have a good eye for like picking up again, it kind of goes back to that idea of like, what's new, what feels fresh, what feels interesting, what feels kind of eye opening, brilliant, read something of substance. But yeah, it's being aware of like, what my, what my natural categories, I guess, that I would default to like, as a woman, as a parent, as a sister, you know, as someone living in the UK, like, knowing where my biases are, as well, where my areas of privilege are, and trying to kind of remove that. And I think also like, you know, the thread throughout my career has been something that I call kind of community first storytelling, which is this idea that you put the community member kind of front and center as a story. And really kind of remove yourself as the reporter or the writer, like, trying to almost like kind of even remove your voice. Like remove the sense, if you're writing for a brand kind of almost removes the sense that it feels like it's coming from a brand. And almost have it feel like the community members kind of telling the story themselves. So ideally, it's like in the first person, if it's an interview, like you've kind of heavily edited your questions, so that they're like, not even noticeable. And I really love that, like, I love the idea of kind of, almost like the Substack newsletter is like a window into someone else's newsletter. Like we just create the framing, I guess. And so, I think part of what you do is, is kind of like, trying as much as possible to remove the self removes the ego, kind of try and have this like very lateral hive mind. I mean, it's making it sound almost spiritual. But it's but it's an exercise that I really enjoy and have and have tried to do over kind of many years as well. And I think, part of the reason I feel passionate about it, because I think it makes us stories more powerful. And I've never been a writer or a reporter that kind of puts myself in the story. In fact, I kind of think it makes me feel it feels a bit grotesque to me, like when, when I read reporters that do it, who aren't kind of writing opinion pieces or doing commentary and and it was just the way it was taught I think as well as reported just to kind of use plain English, you know, be direct, you know, good writing is simple writing. So try and strip away strip back my own writing as much as possible. But I think in the curation part as well. I will try and kind of like strip back myself from the equation as much as possible as well and like kind of be Yeah, like, as it sounds like, it's like almost like you're this center of this of this network. You've kind of got, you know, like a massive spider and like your tentacles out everywhere, just like looking for things and kind of pulling in things from different reader recommendations and sources and dashboards and things you know about the company and kind of like trying to spin it into something like really interesting and new.
Mia Quagliarello:
Do you think an AI could do your job?
Hannah Ray:
Oh, that's an interesting question. We'd have we do have a form of like the Substack reads newsletter that we're testing out that is kind of also generated by who writers that you might already subscribe to, like who they are recommending, and kind of like pulling together a bunch of posts into like an Email Digest and seeing if that works. I mean, it doesn't bother me if it could, I guess that's what it comes down to, like it does. It does doesn't scare me, like as a journalist or kind of made me worry like, oh, an AI could I mean, if anything to kind of hope that it might help me like source, you know, some of the material or kind of find different writers and corners of Substack that I wouldn't have found otherwise. The human aspect that might be difficult to replicate is understanding, like the nuances of why we might choose something over another. You know, for example, like some of the posts that might be getting a lot of engagement or trending, like, not necessarily what I would call like, great writing, or of interest to a really broad audience. So I think there are like, you know, maybe this is with everything, I think there are like some human nuances that like aI just like wouldn't be able to, to get to understand, you know, understanding, like, who we featured before, like, why we might not want you know why we might not feature them again, right now, or maybe later. And those are kind of all things that I'm like holding in my brain that, you know, may have come from, like conversations that I've had with other staff members, or something that I remember happening like years and years ago at The Guardian, or. Yeah, I feel like I wonder if like an AI curated newsletter would just would be interesting, a little bit, but like kind of bland over time. And just kind of really play into the zeitgeist conversations that are happening at the moment and not necessarily bring forth something that's like new and surprising and feels like serendipitous to stumble upon. And the headlines will probably be pretty crap.
Mia Quagliarello:
Before we move on to our speed round, which is the end? Is there anything that you'd like to talk about that you haven't covered with regards to curation, or your role at Substack?
Hannah Ray:
One of the things recently is a hit see more and more Substack writers are like getting book deals like off the back of their sub stack. And what's amazing is when some of them they've kind of tried to go or they tried to kind of get agents or or get down the traditional publishing route before but were rejected. And then, now that they kind of like spent a long time like working on their writing and like growing their readership, they've then been kind of approached by traditional publishers to be published they're like people like Caroline chambers who's publishing what to cook when you don't feel like eating or Valerie cook unruly figures she got up to a loss of back for sub second are the writers I've spoken to you said like Melinda when Maya did an interview with recently she was saying that she tributes her Substack to like the steady sales of her book, whereas normally there's like this kind of book launch moment and then the sales kind of fall off a cliff. And then, like the most amazing one is this way to call Jessica Tofino who has totally carved out an amazing amazing meat on Substack talking about like the dark side of the beauty industry and yeah, it like listening to her speak on the active voice podcast actually talks a lot about how kind of writing her Substack allowed her to get creatively unblocked, you know, after she was really struggling and you know, was desperate to kind of get a book deal and, and write the book and then kind of like writing her Substack has kind of nourished that that creative drive so yeah, I kind of feel like that. When I look at like the stories as well, like those are, those are the some of the kind of the favorite things that come to mind. Like in the last year and then as well, I kind of feel like it's a mess. Not to mention, but there's other races where I feel like they've illuminated you know, a corner of my understanding. I didn't think I needed it but actually did like Kevin Maguire is the new fatherhood like toast the give something back to like parents that you know, they probably didn't know they needed amazing writers who kind of come up out of some of our grow. Programs like Eric Griffin sorry button. Michael Estrin Scott Hines animation obsessive Like, they're all great writers, and they're just doing what they love and do really, really well. And I think like the stories that really always push my buttons are when we find out that like, writers say that like running their Substack is like paying their rent and, you know, allowing them to like get some childcare or allowing them to kind of like, move into a slightly bigger apartment, like those are kind of just amazing stories. And I think, partly, that's because of my background, as a writer, as a journalist, on Substack came along, it kind of blew that whole idea out the water, it's like, Finally, you should, you know, quite for quite a lot of people write what you want, and get paid for it. And a lot of these ways I'm making a limb from which is amazing. And I think the kind of the new model that they're creating, for being an independent writer and being paid is incredible. And I think that's, that's, that's like part of the drive that like gets me going gets me excited. And so when I see stories that kind of feed into that idea like it is, it feels right to kind of find, find some way to show other writers that that that that can happen.
Mia Quagliarello:
And one more question that came to mind while you were talking is like, what advice would you give to writers aside from the good luck of getting featured, and how they can grow?
Hannah Ray:
Yeah, well, it's, this is one that like, Thanks for you, my colleagues have kind of like nailed for me already. But actually, that if you, the first thing I say to a lot of writers is go and go and read the Grow interviews that we've done on the publication, which has caught on Substack. Because you could kind of learn everything you need to from reading those interviews, like there's no special sauce, like, it's kind of, it's all there. Like, you know, a lot of the writers there talk about kind of, you know, that how their list has grown very steadily. And it doesn't just happen overnight. They talk about kind of, you know, having a quiet, like a big launch moment, if they if you know, if you already have a following, and kind of like making sure that you you know, stick to a kind of regular schedule, and, you know, have some accountability with yourself to like, get to your writing every week. Some people go paid immediately, and some people do it later. But a lot of people, you know, give their best work away for free, and really focus on building their free list. And eventually that will convert some of them to paid. What else do they talked about in his interviews, kind of working with and involving your community as much as possible, and like building that direct relationship with your readers getting to know who they are kind of hustling as well. Like, you know, there's a lot of people that talk about, like kind of doing collaborations with other writers, emailing out to other writers asking to get features, asking people to pay, you know, for the writing, continuing reminding them what they get if they start paying. Far, oh, my colleague is also in the UK was former magazine editor in chief here and talks about, you know, keeping headlines short and sweet. Not over planning, you know, not worrying about like, oh, I need to have like, seven issues setup before I launch. And that's another thing that I say to people when they say like, oh, you know, I'm not sure Should I start a sub stack and whether you've got the right subject matter, and I just say like, you should just start now. And because you'll just learn along the way, and you will, you might stumble and do things that you kind of wish you hadn't later, but it doesn't really matter. Because you're once you're building that writing habit, and a lot of people love coming to the website, because they're getting back into a writing habit that they kind of forgot that they missed. And you know, just getting started and finding, you know, finding your niche is as simple as just like, what's the special area that you could write or talk about forever. And, you know, go with that rather than something that you kind of might want to do a few posts on and then kind of get bored. But those are things that come to mind. And they're all in like the previous interviews that we've done with writers in the gray series.
Mia Quagliarello:
That's a good summary of what's there. Okay, you've given us so many great recommendations like so many newsletters, I want to go check out but what else would you recommend that people read? Watch, listen, that you love so much because they've made your life better and brighter.
Hannah Ray:
There is a children's book writer in the UK called Michael Rosen. I don't know if you've heard of him. He wrote a really brilliant children's book called we're going on a bear hunt. And he's written loads of other stuff and poetry and he He wrote a book called, don't get it right. Many different kinds of love last year after he had COVID, and actually went into an induced coma with COVID and kind of came out the other side. And it was just like one of most beautiful things that I read in a long time I love his writing is so simple and so and kind of childlike, but so powerful. And he kind of pulled together like different notes from from what the nurses had had to write in his diary, whilst he was in the coma and texts from his wife and yeah, just really powerful and just stuck with me for so long. And it was the best thing I read last year and I kind of bought copies for it for like all my family and like to have to read this. I don't I don't know why apart from Yeah, maybe comparing it to your magical thinking like just kind of makes you feel understand like the fragility of life. And then that actually, instead of making you kind of feel downbeat or blue that kind of pumps you up and kind of gives you this sense of like, verve and energy for like the little life that we have, I guess I like sci fi and speculative writers that have like a what if question, you know, George Orwell anything by Margaret Atwood, but then more recently, Naomi Haldeman's the power or Gabrielle Zevon wrote a great book called tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. And, you know, writers like Dave Eggers, like they just kind of a prodding my imagination in ways that I'm just like, so thankful that they taking them to these different places. As a writer, like I've got some books on my shelf that I that have helped me understand the storytelling and the power of telling stories, like Anne Lamott has one called Bird by Bird. So the Kayla Green has doing the craft and then we'll Thor also has a book called The Science of storytelling that I'd really recommend. And actually, I probably would say, I would listen to anyone being interviewed, not just writers like the interview as a form is like my favorite type of storytelling, I guess. So. Hattie, Chris sells in writing or like Francesca Steele right off, or as the other kind of interview based podcast like the Paris Review. I just love them. I think Desert Island Discs even which I don't know if you've heard of, but it's like a really famous radio four type of interview. One thing I do as well as this kind of other people do this need to know but if I like a writer, I will probably search for their name on Apple podcasts. And then just listen to like every interview they've done ever on all different podcasts. I'm quite keen to get into their brain and find out like what makes them creatively tick. And you sort of get that from listening to them in like multiple podcast interviews.
Mia Quagliarello:
Now, it's very on brand — sounds like you're doing the right job!
You can follow Hannah on Substack at Hana ray.Substack.com. That's H A N N hray.Substack.com. She has a newsletter. That's a toolkit for community for storytelling. We've also put the links to everything Hannah's recommended in the Flipboard storyboard that you'll find in the shows notes.
Big thanks to our audio editor Anh Lay.
If you want to find out more about Flipboard when Theseus are curating stories, they recommend across 1000s of interests, download the app or head over to our website@flipboard.com Anyone can be a curator on Flipboard. Simply create an account and start flipping to share your ideas with the world.