Subscriptions: Substack

Page initially created: 2025-07-27.

Steps to set up account:

  1. Enter email address, agree to terms.
  2. Entered bio: "Music critic, mostly but not just jazz, a retired engineer with a longstanding interest in philosophy (including politics), and millions of words blogged since 2001." Skipped optional handles, subscriptions, recommendations.
  3. It assigned me a publication URL: tomhull790.substack.com ("Don't worry, you can change this later").
  4. Import mail list from Patreon, Ghost, Mailchimp, TinyLetter, and more: skip. Skipped entering email addresses.
  5. Offers a list of categories, including Music: skip for now.
  6. It then created "Tom's Substack"; opened up dashboard. Getting started checklist shows: Set up the basics; Create a Substack; not checked: Create your first post; Share your Substack; Get your first 10 subscribers; Turn on paid subscriptions.
  7. When I click on "Continue Setup," it starts with "Connect Stripe" (so setting up billing); there's also an option to "turn on pedges to gauge reader interest." It then goes through the other unchecked steps. "Share your Substack" isn't clear. I do nothing and click Done, and item is checked. I bail out on "Create your first post," and look around the dashboard:
    • Post: Has a "coming soon" stub.
    • Subscribers: Is empty.
    • Stats: has no network data.
    • Podcast: has a widget to "Create podcast." I skip.
    • Chat: has a widget to "Start your subscriber chat." I skip.
    • Recommendations: For Outgoing Recommendations this gives me a list of 10 Substacks I subscribe to (a couple I don't recognize). Settings to "include in recommendation digests" and "show recommendations on homepage" appear to be off. Looking at these I notice that one has its own domain name (nonzero.org); the others all have subdomains of substack.com: half of those have names derived from owner (but none with anything like the "790" I was given), and half from the account name (like "riotriot" or "cultivore").
    • Settings: Long list of lists of things here. This will take some time. Starts with Basics, so:

      • Publication name: was "Tom's Substack"; change to "Notes on Everyday Life." Changed short description to "Fifty-some years ago I discovered that the personal is political, and wrote about that under this name. Now I'm trying to make it personal again, or at least anti-political."
      • Publication logo (square, at least 256x256 pixels): default (green disk with crescents) [***]
      • Language: English
      • For primary category, I wound up picking: Philosophy. I would have preferred to add my own: Everyday Life. For secondary categories: I clicked on Music, then again on Culture. Evidently you only get to pick one, so I guess it's Culture.
      • I changed the subdomain name to notesoneverydaylife.

Images: I need to come up with several images that fit into standard themes. Recommended image dimensions:

  • logo: at least 256x256, transparent background
  • email banners: 1100x220px, transparent background, could be taller
  • cover image: at least 600x600px
  • social/post preview image: at least 1456x1048px, but 420x300px is minimum; 14:10 aspect ratio

Mike Hull created a set of images for possible use:

  • Acover1.png:
  • Aemail1.png:
  • Alogo1.png:
  • Bcover1.png:
  • Bemail1.png:
  • Blogo1.png:

Subsequent settings edits:

Documentation