Show HN: Confabulists – “Substack for Fiction”
https://writer.confabulists.com
This is the page focusing on convincing writers to sign up. It is a two-sided marketplace (writers and readers), but since I am just starting, there are no published writers yet -- who write in English at least. So if you write fiction of any genre, professionally or not, I invite you to try it.
Confabulists is the culmination of several personal experiences. First, I am trying to start a new career as a fiction writer. Which is hard. It is one type of content or art creation still heavily controlled by gatekeepers -- book editors. Amazon created a good option for self-publishing, but since it is not "media", it does not offer much opportunity for growing an audience. Or retain it, as there is no guarantee that a reader of one of your books will even know about the release of your latest one. In contrast, creative people that work with visual arts have TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitch. Audio creators have the video platforms as well, but also Spotify, Deezer, Bandcamp. And finally, creators of the written word benefited from the resurgence of newsletters.
Substack took it to a new level, attracting great thinkers and journalists with a good model for these professionals to earn their money a bit more directly. I am a big fan of Substack. I created my newsletter there early on and tried three times to get a job there as a software developer (always politely rejected because they don't hire globally remote). But, despite a few recent efforts, I don't think Substack is a good place for fiction writers.
The main thing is that writing fiction takes time. It's hard to post new fiction weekly. And fiction is about past, completed works. Something that the current media landscape, newsletter tools included, strongly incentive against. You should always be creating new content. A new subscriber only gets your future work. Past texts are for those with a neck for digital archeology. That's why I created Confabulists. The main difference in the tool is that new readers, when they subscribe to an author, choose a book and start getting that book in installments from the first chapter. Completed books matter. "Old" fiction attracts new readers.
Another experience that led me to Confabulists was a free site that I built and launched in a Show HN [0] a couple of years ago: https://serialliterature.com
It was built for reading of public-domain classics in installments delivered by email. Just like Confabulists is for new authors. It got some traction here on HN and proved to me that people really engage in reading fiction in their email inboxes. At this peak, right after the Show HN, it had 800 active subscribers receiving installments from a book. Today, after two years, with zero marketing effort (I never even posted again on social media or anywhere), there are almost 200 active subscribers. No available book lasts that long in weekly installments, so these are either people who subscribed to a new book or new subscribers that found Serial Literature through word of mouth. For a zero-marketing effort, I consider this good retention and evidence that reading fiction through email has its audience.
I am solo on this. From idea to coding, to copy and design -- this last one with AI help with the illustrations. As a Brazilian and wanting to publish my work on it, I created it initially in Portuguese [1]. It was great for the beta reading of my first novel. And useful to find and fix some bugs and iterate the product until I had a solid solution. I think it is good enough to try to reach more people with its version in English.
I hope some fiction writers on HN find it useful too. Thanks!
[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24307752 [1] https://www.confabulistas.com.br