How I Gained 1,000 True Readers

The real secret? Write what you don’t know—and let curiosity lead the way.

Priya Jamil

Mar 22, 2025

9 min read

The Lie We Keep Believing

Three years ago, I sat crying over my 37th Substack post—the one that had reached exactly 14 people despite my frantic hashtagging. I’d done everything they told me to: optimized my headlines, pandered to trends, even tweeted thread-versions of my essays. Then it hit me: I wasn’t building readers. I was feeding a platform.

That’s when I quit. Not writing—just the illusion that virality equals value. Here’s what happened next.

The Unsexy Truth About Real Connection

My 1,000th true reader—the kind who quotes my lines back to me, who buys my chapbooks, who emails at 2AM about how my words sat with them—was a retired librarian named Margot.

She found me because I’d sent a handwritten postcard to her local bookshop, where she volunteers. No algorithm. Just paper and ink and the radical act of showing up.

This became my manifesto:

Write like you’re whispering to one person (even if it’s future-you).
Let them find you slowly—through footnotes, guest posts in tiny journals, or that weird link your friend texted.
Reward attention, not clicks. My newsletter’s “secret” poems (only for replyers) now have a waitlist.

The Tools That Actually Mattered

Scribbble’s minimalism: Readers stay for words, not pop-ups.

Analog outreach: 100 postcards mailed to indie bookshops > 100 tweets.
The “Anti-Growth” Pledge: I stopped chasing metrics and started:
- Writing 50-word thank-you notes to commenters
- Creating a “hidden” page for loyal readers (password: chocolatechip)
- Recording audio versions for the woman who emailed me about her dyslexia

The Math You Won’t See on Twitter

It took 14 months to go from 200 to 1,000 readers. But here’s what grew faster:

Average reading time went from 42 seconds to 6 minutes.
Newsletter replies increased 300% when I asked vulnerable questions.
The quiet magic of knowing Margot will read this today while sipping Earl Grey.

Try This Today (No Followers Required)

My 1,000th true reader—the kind who quotes my lines back to me, who buys my chapbooks, who emails at 2AM about how my words sat with them—was a retired librarian named Margot.

She found me because I’d sent a handwritten postcard to her local bookshop, where she volunteers. No algorithm. Just paper and ink and the radical act of showing up.