  Are you a podcaster, audio creator, or author of a sound-focused publication? Next month, Substack will open applications for our next intensive: the Summer of Sound.  In this month-long immersive workshop, we will invite a select group of writers and audio creators to deepen their focus, build a strategy, test techniques, and grow their publications into sustainable projects.  Applications will open on June 9, 2022, and close on June 21, 2022. To be eligible for this opportunity, applicants need to have an existing publication on Substack with at least 5  posts. If you want to kickstart, revive, or grow a podcast, audio show, or sound project on Substack, now is the time!  To learn more about podcasting and audio tools, check out our resources and our support articles. We are looking for writers and creators with a substantial audience, growth potential, and a strong desire to grow an independent media business on Substack. Once selected, participants will dedicate a considerable portion of time in late July and August to developing their publication strategies, experimenting with our features, and learning from experts. We’ll share more information as we prepare to launch the application in June. Read more: How to move your podcast over to Substack and Podcasting questions answered 

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Coming Soon: A special opportunity for sound-centric publications

Conversations with writers, bloggers, and creative thinkers about how they got here. Produced by Substack, a place for independent writing. 

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We asked , who writes on Substack, for advice on making her new Substack sustainable, slowly and steadily cultivating a sacred space for exploring writing and ideas, and building her community. Jamie is an author, designer, digital course creator, and creative consultant living in Los Angeles. Her debut novel, Main Character Energy, was published in September 2023 by the HarperCollins imprint Park Row Books. Her previous nonfiction memoir, Radically Content, is currently being developed into a feature film, and her digital course, Live with Intention, has helped over 1,300 people live more intentional lives. Her work has appeared in the HuffPost, Teen Vogue, and POPSUGAR and been shared by millions online. Read on for Jamie’s advice, or listen to her read it aloud in this episode. This is the latest post in a recurring series of longform writer advice. To see more advice from Substack writers, take a look at previous posts here.  

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Dear writer: Advice on creating a sacred writing space

In early August, Doomberg, the leading publication in the finance category on Substack, announced that they were opting out of X (fka Twitter) and putting all their focus on Substack. The Doomberg team had built much of their brand and reach on Twitter through a strategy that leaned on getting their goggle-eyed green chicken avatar in front of as many people as possible through timely tweets, threads, and storytelling around their Substack posts. They coupled this active Twitter presence with appearing on as many podcasts as they possibly could to deepen their relationship with finance-minded readers (listen to our interview with Doomberg for The Active Voice for more on that strategy). Shifting their focus entirely to Substack, with an emphasis on Notes, was a bold move by the green chicken, but they say the decision was ultimately straightforward. They came to feel that X was operating against their interests, while Substack was directly aligned with them. “We settled on Notes because the team at Substack has been our partner from the beginning,” Doomberg wrote.  I got on a Zoom call with the green chicken to dive deeper into their thinking behind the move and explore what it says about long-term thinking. I hope some of these takeaways are useful for all independent writers. You can listen to the interview above, read the full transcript attached to this post, or enjoy a condensed version of the discussion below.  

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Why Doomberg left Twitter (okay, X) to go all in on Substack

We’ve just shipped some new features that make podcasting on Substack even better. You can now use a special AI tool to create a clean transcript of your podcast episode or narration without having to do anything more than click a button. The whole transcription process usually takes about a minute. Once you’ve created the transcript, you can go in and edit it to make it just how you like it, and you can publish it in its own tab on the episode post page.  Then, you can select a passage that you can then use to generate a special audiogram that you can share to social media.  An audiogram is like a little static video with text and the audio playing over top. It’s a really neat asset to share to show off your podcast episode. (See the example below.) We’ve done this all using cutting-edge AI tools, and it reflects our philosophy of not thinking that this AI stuff is ever going to take the place of work done by writers and creators—but instead we think it can give writers and creators super-powers.  In fact, this thing you’re reading right now is a transcript that we generated from the audio tool. I’m basically speaking off-the-cuff into a microphone and we’re using this as our announcement post. (Hopefully this technology can handle my New Zealand accent.) To use these tools, you: * Go into your dashboard * Create an episode post * Then, when you’re in editing mode, you upload your audio, and you’ll pretty quickly be presented with an option to generate the transcript. * You click the “Generate Transcript” button and you wait a second, or maybe a minute, and then in very short order you have a beautiful transcript to work with. * You can go in and review that transcript in the backend before you publish it, and you can edit it. * When you publish it, there’s a default-on toggle that will make sure that the transcript will show up in the post alongside your episode. (You can also turn that off if you need to.) * Once the transcript is published, you can select a passage and then click “Make audiogram” to generate the social sharing asset. All of these tools are in their very early stages and they’re only going to get better and better. Stick with us for a while, because while they may not be perfect at first glance, they are going to rapidly evolve. We want you to have fun with them though, so we want to get this out to you sooner rather than later. We already are getting great feedback from writers who are having a great time with this new tool. For instance, , who publishes The Charlotte Ledger, said the following about using the podcast tools: “The transcripts of the podcast are really, really good! Surprisingly good.” He’s used other mainstream tools to do podcast transcriptions and found them not as fast and not as accurate. And , who publishes Sinocism, a China newsletter, the first ever publisher on Substack, he got early access to these features and he’s tried them with two podcasts, his Sinocism Podcast and his weekly Sharp China Podcast. He said he has tried several outside services for transcripts, both machine and human generated, and the Substack service, this one, was much better already than those other services he’s used. So, go to your dashboard now, create an episode post. You’ll see the options to generate a transcript and you can start having fun. We’re really interested in your feedback. As I said, these are the early days, so please leave a comment or send us an email or—you know—send us a podcast episode and link to it on Substack Notes. Thanks everyone. Enjoy these new tools. Add a podcast to your existing Substack or start a new one. Visit the Help Center to learn more about podcasting.  

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Introducing new audio transcription tools for Substack

We asked , who writes on Substack, for advice on finding great ideas. Brian is a social scientist and professor of global politics at University College London. He is the author of four books, including Corruptible: Who Gets Power and How It Changes Us, which includes interviews with torture victims, CEOs, cult leaders, and more. Brian’s Substack explores the mystery and marvel of the world we live in, and how evolutionary biology, history, neuroscience, anthropology, and philosophy relate to challenges we face today and our possible futures. He writes for The Atlantic, created the award-winning Power Corrupts podcast, and is a self-professed “history nerd,” offering guided tours in his local southern England. Read on for his advice, or listen to Brian read it aloud above. This is the 13th in a recurring series of longform writer advice, following Kristen Hawley’s advice on facing the behemoths, Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell’s advice on prioritizing your to-do list, Lauren Wolfe’s advice on tackling difficult stories, Holly Whitaker’s advice on writing like it matters, Lucy Webster’s advice on writing from lived experience, Scott Hines’s advice on cultivating connection in the internet age, Robert Reich’s advice on sharing your personality, Helena Fitzgerald’s advice on isolation, Alicia Kennedy’s advice on learning to listen, Kate Lindsay’s advice on creating trust with your readers, Anna Codrea-Rado’s advice on learning to celebrate how far you’ve come, and Mason Currey’s advice on creative growth. Could you use some advice or inspiration from a fellow writer about creativity, motivation, and the writing life? Submit your question for consideration for a future advice column by leaving it in the comments below. 

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Dear writer: Advice on conjuring good ideas

We asked for advice on thriving as an independent writer, even when your competitors loom large and attempt to swallow you whole. Kristen’s first newsletter—covering how technology was changing the restaurant industry—launched in 2013, was sold to a media company in 2016, and was killed in 2019. Five months later, she launched on Substack, where she writes about the future of hospitality.  Kristen writes for Bon Appétit, Food & Wine, Eater, and Insider, is a regular speaker at industry events, and has been featured as a restaurant expert in the New York Times, NBC News, and CBS News Radio. Read on for her advice, or listen to her read it aloud above. This is the 12th in a recurring series of longform writer advice, following Hilary Fitzgerald Campbell’s advice on prioritizing your to-do list, Lauren Wolfe’s advice on tackling difficult stories, Holly Whitaker’s advice on writing like it matters, Lucy Webster’s advice on writing from lived experience, Scott Hines’s advice on cultivating connection in the internet age, Robert Reich’s advice on sharing your personality, Helena Fitzgerald’s advice on isolation, Alicia Kennedy’s advice on learning to listen, Kate Lindsay’s advice on creating trust with your readers, Anna Codrea-Rado’s advice on learning to celebrate how far you’ve come, and Mason Currey’s advice on creative growth. Could you use some advice or inspiration from a fellow writer about creativity, motivation, and the writing life? Submit your question for consideration for a future advice column by leaving it in the comments below. 

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit on.substack.com

Coming Soon: A special opportunity for sound-centric publications

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