Pitching a Substack writer: skip the subscriber count
Ashley Waters of PAN sets out how newsletter inboxes differ from newsrooms. One mass message through Substack's own system can cost a founder access to the whole platform.
A reporter who leaves a newsroom takes the beat and the readers with them. The pitch that worked at the old title does not automatically work at the new newsletter.
Ashley Waters, vice-president of media relations at PAN, set out the mechanics in PR Daily. Her argument is that the fundamentals hold and the plumbing changes.
Start with the size of the audience, because most founders start there and get it wrong. Independent publications rarely issue media kits and subscriber numbers are usually private.
Waters argues that a newsletter read by 2,000 fintech finance chiefs who reply to the writer is worth more to the right client than a general business title with ten times the list and inactive subscribers. Where numbers are absent, she points to Substack leaderboard rankings and category badges, traffic estimates from SparkToro or SimilarWeb, the writer's LinkedIn following, and engagement on recent issues.
PAN's own research puts 39% of people reading at least one Substack publication regularly, rising to 55% among Gen Z and 49% among millennials. Technology is the second-largest category on the platform at 18%, behind news and politics at 21%.
The same research found 42% would pay for a newsletter and 28% would pay more than $5 a month. Waters reads the paying minority as the engaged one, which is why a small list can understate reach.
The costliest mistake is mechanical. Substack's in-platform messaging lets writers flag messages as spam, and enough flags can restrict an account, so one mass note sent that way can end a founder's ability to reach anyone on the platform.
Her alternative is to confirm by email or LinkedIn that a writer takes pitches at all, or better, to reply to an edition. A reply proves the issue was read.
Qwoted, she says, has become a genuine sourcing channel for independent writers, used much as trade reporters use it.
That is where the first two lines earn their place. Reference a recent issue by topic, then offer data or executive access the writer cannot easily get elsewhere.
Most independent writers, on Waters' account, want trend analysis and implications rather than product launches or funding rounds. Substack launched AI detection tools in August that estimate how much of a publication is human-written, and subscribers can see the result, so a templated pitch now lands in front of someone advertising the opposite.
Her worked examples run the same way. A startup technology client was paired with proprietary consumer data and taken to Tony Case at workwire, which produced a chief executive interview and the lead story; a payments client answered a Qwoted request from Brendan Ragan at The Fintercept, a newsletter with roughly 2,000 subscribers; a customer experience client spent months in contact with Mark Levy of DCX before there was anything to pitch.
Judge the result by executive engagement, inbound enquiries, social discussion, shares and citations by mainstream outlets rather than circulation. And note the compounding: newsletter posts are crawlable and indexable, and ungated posts are more accessible to AI systems than paywalled coverage.
For a founder with one announcement and a short list, the practical order is: check the writer takes pitches, reply to an edition rather than cold-message, and lead with the one number or person nobody else can give them.