Joy Sullivan — How She Built A Living As A Writer On Instagram and Substack

**Joy Sullivan** (0:00)
So if I'm always after more numbers, I actually think that's like a gamble that doesn't pay off. There is no amount of followers that would ever pay off the amount of sacrifice you'd have to make as an artist.

**Jay Clouse** (0:26)
Hello, my friend, welcome back to another episode of Creator Science. Today, I'm speaking with Joy Sullivan. Joy is a Portland-based poet who quit her corporate job mid-pandemic to become a full-time artist and built a thriving creative business through Instagram, her Substack called Necessary Salt, and a paid writing community called Sustenance, which has around 250 members. Joy is also a former member of The Lab. And I crossed paths with Joy a few times when she lived here in Columbus, Ohio before she moved west. In 2024, she published a book of poetry, her first published work called Instructions for Traveling West, that is published with Dial Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. And I wanted to talk to Joy for a couple of reasons. First of all, I absolutely love her style of writing. I love her voice. She writes fearlessly, aggressively, and yet there's this warmth and relatability to it that I really resonate with. It's very unique. It's vulnerable. And it also makes the reader feel really seen. All the links to her work is in the show notes, by the way. So if you want to check it out, I recommend doing so. Second, she does Instagram so well. And she grew her Instagram predominantly through writing and sharing carousels. That's really interesting to me because Instagram, when you think about it, you think reals, you think short form vertical video. And third, she's writing on Substack, but monetizing with a circle community outside of Substack, which I think is a really smart model. You take all this together and Joy is blazing a path of writing as a living, as a lucrative living, and leveraging discovery platforms, Instagram and Substack, without necessarily using those platforms the way they incentivize you to use them. So in this episode, we talk about her approach to Instagram, her approach to Substack, what she likes and dislikes about both platforms, how you can succeed as a writer on these platforms, what she'd do differently for her second book, and a little bit of a pep talk for me as a writer too.
If you enjoy this episode, tag Jay Clouse or Joy Sullivan Poet on Instagram and let us know. We want to hear that you're listening. We'll get to that full episode with Joy right after this.

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**Jay Clouse** (3:35)
As a starting point, I'm curious how you would describe the landscape for writers today. What do you find writers wanting to do, and what are the opportunities available to them?

**Joy Sullivan** (3:47)
Yeah. You know, my background is as a poet. That's primarily who I serve in my writing community, and that's also how I've got my big break in the publishing world was as a poet. And I think that it's challenging, as always. It's really challenging to both have the kind of endurance to bring a creative project into the world. And now writers are tasked with this additional question of how do I build a platform? How do I attract readers? As you probably know, publishers, especially Big Five, are looking for writers to kind of be this whole package. Not only do you have to have an amazing manuscript that lands you an agent if you want a Big Five deal, but then you also have to have a personality that feels really saleable. You have to be able to show evidence that you can do book sales. And I think it's a really tough terrain. It's a lot to ask of a writer, especially those folks with a creative brain. So I am full of empathy for writers who are embarking on this because it's intense out there.