A Strategy to Build an Author Platform, On Mountains, Substack Slop, RSS Readers

Genius Loci readers:

In this month’s post, some practical steps to build an “author platform” that leverage both traditional and new media, my new project called On Mountains, a rant on the enshittification of culture via Substack and AI, in praise of RSS readers, and more!

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Ahhhh. Summer is officially here, which means Central Florida is plagued with high humidity, mosquitos, and afternoon thunderstorms. The thunderstorms are quite nice. They’re loud, dense, torrential, and quick to disperse. As for the mosquitos and humidity: there will be no relief until October, at the earliest.

But, thankfully, I’m indoors a lot. I’m teaching four(!) summer classes. This, unfortunately, means little time for “Jeremy time.” But, as you will read, I’m making the most out of what little time I have left.

How to Build an “Author Platform” in 2025

In May’s Genius Loci, I wrote about my struggles building an “author platform.” Thanks to everyone who reached out after the last newsletter offering words of encouragement and sharing your own struggles with writing. Writing is a solitary endeavor so it is good to know that I’m not alone in my struggles.

Since then I’ve been thinking more about building an author platform, and I’ve settled on a “workflow” that attempts to leverage both traditional and new media methods. This workflow is designed for someone like me who has goals for writing and publishing non-fiction books. I gleaned it from reading a slew of non-fiction book proposals and query letters.

The workflow is simple, but the entire process of building an audience and writing a book will take years. With enough time and dedication, though, the workflow might yield results.

1. Focus. Ignore what everyone else is doing and focus on your own work.
2. Find your beat. Choose a topic, theme, or “beat” that you love to write and think about. It will be your subject-area expertise. It should be narrow and specific, yet broad enough to encompass many non-fiction book ideas. For example, “Early America” is a specific geo-historical time period. But, obviously, this intellectual space is huge in terms of potential book ideas.
3. Create a website. Start a website/blog, Substack, or podcast on your topic. You will write (“create content”) in your subject area. But not before you…
4. Seek bylines first. Consider writing articles that might work well in traditional publications (in what few remain). Pitch these ideas to online/print publications as a freelance writer. Aim to get paid for your work and to build a résumé of bylines related to your topic.
5. Repost and expand. If you succeed in publishing an article in a mainstream publication, congratulate yourself. As you enjoy a glass of wine, write a follow-up post/article on your website discussing the piece and link to it. Repurpose the idea however you can. Were sections edited out of the final piece? Has new research emerged since the time of writing/publication? Also, explore “meta” angles: what is it like writing about your topic? Milk it for every drop. If your agreement allows for it, re-publish the piece on your own site.
6. Website backup plan. If you didn’t succeed in getting your pitch commissioned by a mainstream publication, don’t despair. Write the piece anyway and publish it on your website.
7. Ideate and repeat. Think of new essay/article ideas and repeat steps 4-6.
8. Continue creating. For ideas too small or otherwise unsuitable for online/print publications, don’t waste your time pitching them. Instead, go straight to publishing them on your website.
9. Post and ghost. Share your articles, stories, and news on social media. Engage with those who directly engage with you. Otherwise, stay off social media. This workflow is not about building a social media following per se, but a readership, audience, and platform.
10. Never get discouraged. A vast majority of all freelance pitches get rejected. Freelancing is a numbers game. Keep pitching. Rejection will happen often; never get discouraged. Write the damn thing anyway, post it on your website, and then start thinking of new ideas to pitch and write. This system is about delivering work.
11. Bonus: Don’t use AI. Leverage your experience and humanity. In a world where seemingly everyone nowadays is using AI to create slop, your humanity and distinct “voice” will set you apart.

This workflow may sound similar to what online marketers call “content marketing.” Yet, the novel approach here is that you will make a concerted attempt to get your work published in traditional media outlets.

Getting published in traditional media outlets is becoming more important, especially in the Age of AI. I wonder if “AI slop” might just be what saves the traditional publishing world, or at least what’s left of it.

Traditional publishing bylines and credentials were once seen as unnecessary in the new media landscape. The argument went: why suck at the teats of editors, publishers, and gatekeepers when you can self-publish, build an audience, and make a living without them? But now that AI slop is proliferating online so quickly, I suspect bylines in traditional media outlets will take on a new significance (of professionalism? of quality? of authenticity?) in the coming years.

I’ve decided to implement this workflow in my own work.

As you may know, I’ve been working on a book idea for quite some time. Yet I need to get more tactical about achieving my goals. This means, for me, having a clear strategy that optimizes for building a body of work in my area of interest.

Announcing ‘On Mountains’

I’ve started a new microsite/podcast called On Mountains. It explores the intellectual and cultural history of mountains, which is related to my non-fiction book idea. Obviously, this topic is quite narrow, but not so narrow that it will severely restrict the number of non-fiction books I can write in this space (I already have a few in mind!).

I’ve been doing research, reading, studying in the area for a number of years, so I have a lot to say. The new microsite/podcast will be the forcing function to start engaging with the topic in a public way.

This is a long-term project designed to build a repository of articles, research, and notes on the topic as I “work with the garage door open.”

I’ve ported over some of the old mountain-related posts I wrote, and I have been publishing new material like:

• An article investigating the relationship between mountains and the site of Jesus’s crucifixion.
• A textual interview with archeologist Richard Zettler on Nippur and Ziggurats.
• A podcast interview with Dawn Hollis.

Substack Slop and AI?

In thinking about “author platforms,” Substack naturally came to mind.

I’ve been creeping around Substack lately via its social media app. It is a curious space. Its algorithm is serving me a lot of writing about writing and a lot of cheerleading for the platform itself via growth “hacks” and success stories. Worst of all, its algorithm is serving me a lot of flat writing pummeled to death by AI.

The problem seems to be especially prevalent in the photography community. Photographers, whom I know personally and won’t name, have disclosed to me in private that they use AI to “clean up” their writing. They think it is great. They think it makes their writing better. But what they don’t realize is that AI makes their writing worse in that it sterilizes their unique voices. When I chat with them on the phone, or hear them speak on podcasts or YouTube videos, I am astonished by how differently they sound IRL when compared to their Substack articles. They sound nothing like they write.

To fall in love with a piece of writing is to fall in love with its style, tone, and approach. It is the author’s particular way of thinking and seeing, communicated in words, that draws us in. This is the author’s distinct “voice.” AI is a literary plague, killing en masse authors’ voices and their personalities.

I’m not alone in thinking this.

After playing around with LLMs and AI, Robin Sloan reported that they “made the story duller rather than sharper; they clobbered precisely the bits of language (often weird-angled) that were the most fun; they pushed the story’s shape and tone pow­er­fully towards conventionality.”

Sloan’s comment made me consider an analogy. AI produces the literary equivalent of plywood: flat, dry, pedestrian, and composed of bits and pieces from other sources. To be sure, plywood is good enough for most people to build basic things. But, for those of us who seek the good, the last thing we want to enter our brains is the basic: flat, uninspiring, average writing.

Flatness has been a metaphor of the digital age. The world-wide-web is about lateral networks, not vertical ones. The Internet seeks breadth, not depth. Algorithms have intensified the flattening. Just look at how creators chase virality and attention by reproducing and mimicking viral content. AI does the same by offering users predictive text via common, average responses. Algorithms, like AI, thus produce “the hell of the same” and we must resist them both.

Plus, why would anyone give their time and attention to read a piece “written” by someone who didn’t give their time and attention to actually write it with care in the first place? In other words, if someone doesn’t care about the work they’re creating, why should anyone care to read it?

This isn’t inherently a Substack issue. This is an online writing issue. And while there are certainly many real humans who are concerned with the craft of writing on Substack, and some incredible ideas/writers/writing/Substacks, I fear they’re far outnumbered by the humans who aren’t. There is no way for me to know this is true, but if certainly feels like it could be true.

It seems like Substack is the Blogger/Tumblr/Medium du jour. It is the Instagram for those who read and write. It is where the readers and writers are hanging out nowadays. And, for these reasons, it has an appeal.

One writer I follow decided to go all-in on Substack, seemingly charmed by Substack’s built-in audience-building capabilities. In his post on the subject, the writer — clearly uneasy about his decision — stated that Substack is where the “audience growth” is. Another writer/podcaster friend also decided to go all-in on Substack, leveraging the platform’s turn-key, creator-focused features to publish podcasts and essays while notifying his audience and enabling monetization in one fell swoop.

Substack has had a gravitational pull on readers and writers like no other blogging platform. Each month, thousands of writers and creators sign up to Substack because it makes creating, distributing, and monetizing one’s work easy. Famous writers and journalists have flocked to Substack for the platform’s creator-focused features, whose reach and influence is hard to escape.

But I wonder what will happen to the platform if it becomes overrun by AI slop. And I wonder to what extent the algorithm will dictate the type of work published on the platform.

Those who consume and create on Substack will have a different experience than those who simply create on Substack. Those who consume might be vulnerable to the flattering effect of the algorithm, a kind of stylistic group think. Those who simply create might be immune to it.

RSS Readers

One way to avoid the algorithm is to use an RSS reader. Thank god for RSS readers! All hail RSS! RSS - one of the greatest technologies underlying the modern web.

RSS readers help me read/consume online content while avoiding all the bad stuff. I can read articles on websites without ads and notifications. I can read social media feeds without the social media apps and algorithms. I can get all of my reading/consumption in one place that isn’t my inbox, thus saving time bouncing from website to feed to website.

There are many fine RSS reader apps available. But the RSS reader I’m currently using is News Explorer (Mac, iOS). It is a powerful little reader. It can pull in the RSS feeds of most things you like to read/consume online like:

• Substacks
• YouTube channels
• Bluesky / Mastodon users
• Reddit subreddits
• Podcasts
• And ye good ole websites and blogs

And News Explorer, unlike many of the other RSS readers I’ve tested, fetches the entire articles even if the RSS syndicates only summaries. And it is not behind a frickin subscription.

If you’ve never used an RSS reader, download a free one and add the websites you frequent. Give it a go.

Bits and Bobs

I preordered Robert Macfarlane’s newest book Is a River Alive? It came with a wonderful, embossed Fieldnotes brand notebook (they can be bought separately here). I am a fan of Fieldnotes. So too is Robert Macfarlane, having used them for many years in his writing process.

I’ll start reading Macfarlane’s book when I finish The Burnout Society, a short book of philosophy by Byung-Chul Han. In the meantime, Sophy Roberts’s interview with Robert Macfarlane on her podcast Gone to Timbuktu leaves me with much to look forward to.

I also enjoyed listening to Johann Hari talk about writing on the How I Write podcast. The entire episode was great, but the idea that stayed with me was the idea that story and scene need to reveal insights, truth, and meaning. It is the nonfiction equivalent of showing, not telling. Hari says in the episode:

Every insight needs to be earned by a story, right? If I just tell you, the war on drugs was created for racist reasons, okay, you might intellectually be persuaded that. If I tell you the story of Billie Holiday and how she was stalked and killed by Harry Anslinger, the man who launched the war on drugs, which is how I opened Chasing the Scream, that story will land with you in a much more powerful way than if I just tell you this abstract insight, right? Every insight has to be earned by a story.

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Okay! At around 2,300 words, that’s it for this month!

Thanks for your support and farewell,

JB