Pressmark finds writers and publications from what your publication is about. You answer a few questions, or let Pressmark read your posts and propose the answers. Nothing is followed, liked or messaged for you.
The seven questions#
You find them in Settings, under About your publication, and as a step when you first set up Pressmark. Every question can be left empty.
- What do you write about? Your subject and your angle.
- Who is it for? The readers you have in mind.
- What do readers get from it? What changes for them after reading.
- How would you describe your voice? For example plain, practical, wry, warm.
- Which languages do you write and read in? For example English, German.
- Which writers do you admire? Their Substack addresses or handles. Each one is added to your people to follow.
- What do you never want to engage with? Topics, words or accounts. Each one goes to your blocklist, so Pressmark never suggests it.
When you save, Pressmark says what happened in words: how many writers it added as people to follow, and how many entries it added to the blocklist. Only the answers you changed are reported.
Analyse my posts#
Analyse my posts reads the titles, subtitles and tags of your library and proposes topics, weighted keywords, an audience, a voice and a language. It fills the form in for you to change. Remove any keyword that is wrong, add your own, and edit any answer. Press Drop the proposal to go back to what you had. Nothing is saved until you press Save.
With a model connected, the proposal comes from one reading of your posts. Without one, Pressmark says so and uses a plain keyword pass instead: it picks the terms that set your posts apart. That is less rich, but it works offline.
Each keyword shows a word for its weight: strong, medium or light. The stronger keywords are searched first.
How Discover uses your keywords#
Open Discover from Growth. The top of the page lists the keywords in use, with a link to change them in Settings. Find publications searches Substack's public publication directory for your strongest keywords. This uses a few public reads within your Safety limits, and it stops early if a limit is reached; the page says so.
Each result shows the publication's name and address, an audience band, its language, the keywords it matched and why it passed your filters. Two things you can do with each one:
- Add to writers to follow puts the writer in your people list as a candidate on Growth. You still follow them yourself in Substack.
- Never with this publication adds it to your blocklist. Pressmark will not suggest it again.
Audience filters#
- Languages to include. Language codes such as en or de. Empty means every language.
- Languages Pressmark cannot tell. Include or exclude publications whose language is not stated and could not be read from their text. Include is the default.
- Countries to exclude. Two-letter codes such as DE or GB. They are saved in capitals and sorted, and a code Pressmark does not know is refused with a message.
- Countries Pressmark cannot tell. Include or exclude publications whose country is unknown.
- Smallest and largest audience. Substack publishes an audience band, not an exact number.
- Active in the last (days). Leaves out publications that have gone quiet. The directory does not always say when a publication last posted. Those rows say "Last activity unknown", and the result tells you how many the filter could not be applied to.
The country rule#
A country is only known when a publication states it, for example through a country domain such as .de. Pressmark never guesses, and it does not use payment details. A publication on a plain substack.com address has an unknown country, and that is its own choice in the filters. If a value does not make sense, for example a minimum above the maximum, the page tells you in words and saves nothing.
New in your niche#
The niche radar lists publications started in the last few months that match your keywords. They have the same two actions as other results. It is a good place to find writers who are still small and would welcome a reader.
New followers to review#
On Growth, New followers to review lists subscribers from the last 30 days that you have not yet kept or flagged and that show signs of being automated: a handle that ends in a long number, a handle with no vowels, no name, or several sign-ups in the same minute. Each one shows the signs in words.
Pressmark only flags. You decide. Keep removes the account from the list. Flag as a bot marks it as flagged, and Undo takes the mark back. Nothing is removed, blocked or reported for you.