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I love this photo of him. The black turtleneck. The determined expression. The eight rotary phones along the wall behind him. The pen in his hand. The two books open in front of him, one with an image of a knight from the Middle Ages.
If you donāt know who this is, itās the iconic communications theorist Marshall McLuhan.
McLuhan is perhaps best known for declaring, āThe medium is the message.ā He meant it on an existential and global level, arguing that human nature and society are changed by each technological innovation.
But it also occurs individually. How our writing reaches our readersāvia a physical newspaper, a TV, or a social media platform on a smartphoneācreates a symbiotic relationship with what we write and influences the readerās experience of it.
The medium is the message
If the medium through which our writing reaches our readers creates a symbiotic relationship with what we write and influences the readerās experience of it, we should be paying pretty close attention to it.
We should approach writing a novel for traditional publishing differently than an article for The New Yorkerās online blog. As an extreme example of a writer who kept his medium in mind, when I interviewed the great Spanish novelist Javier MarĆas for The Paris Review, he revealed that he wrote on a typewriter with the bookāsānot the manuscriptāsāpages in mind, intentionally placing specific words to start and end each page.
Itās true on Substack too. We interact differently with a piece of writing if we read it online or in an app. Emails have an effect on us all their own. The mediumāwhether weāre read via email, on the website, or on the appāshould influence what and how we write.
The mediumās message on Substack
If you check your stats, youāll likely notice that very few people read us on the web. (Argh! All that time spent on Canva wasted!)
Yes, thatās how we post, but not how our readers experience our work. We meet them in their inboxesāor on the app but mostly in their inboxes. That said, one of the writers Iām working with is almost 50-50 email and app, so check your stats.
How to check your stats
We now have excellent stats by which to better understand how our readers encounter our work. Thanks,
and everyone working hard on the backend of !Click on the three dots next to any post and click View stats > Reach.
Look at Traffic. Your traffic sources tell you how to communicate with your subscribers. Most of us will be a mix of email and the app. Some of us are almost pure email.
It will vary post to post, but knowing this will give you a sense of how youāre speaking to your subscribers.
Below is more information for paid subscribers on exactly what to consider depending on where youāre read: via email, the app, or both.
āØ Become a paid subscriber to access it. Invest in yourself and your Substack! Commit to one year with my guidance and get the discounted annual subscription.Ā You, your writing, and your career are worth it.