19 Comments
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John E. Dobbs's avatar

Wow! Thanks a million! Bookmarked ... looking forward to sifting through all of this information! Appreciate it!

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DAN GRANT's avatar

YES! What an awesome contribution to the Substack world! This is super useful, thanks!

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Cork Hutson's avatar

TOC's are great as a 'Stack starts to proliferate. I like what you have done with making one TOC with groupings of topics/subjects, David. What I have done is to group by tag, which shows across the top and also down the body of the site. Then I have added TOCs to series or similar posts within each tagged group. I will keep the site that way, but what I like about the way you have done it is that it's like a master TOC with sub-TOCs in the body of the master. Great idea. Thank you, sir.

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Jenn Woltjen's avatar

Thank you David! Your organization and attention to being helpful is much appreciative.

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Sharon Hines's avatar

I love what you did here. I'm planning to publish a book on Substack initially, before I finalize it to POD. This is exactly the sort of thing I was thinking about doing on my website, as a page, with chapters as blog posts, before I decided to put the book on Substack instead. But I wasn't sure how to accomplish the ToC page. This has been very helpful! Thanks!

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Heléna Kurçab's avatar

This is an amazing compilation of material. Thank you David. I have never regretted purchasing my annual subscription to your publication. Your genuine care for your subscribers’ success is evident in your ongoing ‘over-delivery’.

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Ashley Schmitt's avatar

@David McIlroy, Thank you for sharing your knowledge and expertise on how to Write for a living.

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Cheryl.wtf's avatar

I love the table of contents idea. I've implemented something like that in my substacks. I'm building subscription knowledge bases, so mine is a little more involved, but I'm also making use of the category tags and tag pages so I was able to set up the tables of contents once and they basically auto-update as I create more content.

On the Wicked Title Forum my "Knowledge Base" tag holds my category posts. Each category post has a table of contents for sub-categories each of which is hyperlinked to a tag page.

https://archive.wickedtitleforum.com/t/knowledge-base-bdc

Similarly, at the Business Witch Academy, I created a tag "Table of Contents" which is pinned to my home page and also has a tag page. The posts with that tag are my 5 Categories. Each category post has a list of sub-categories that are hyperlinked to the tag page for that sub-category which will auto-populate as I create more content and assign the proper tags to each post.

https://businesswitchacademy.substack.com/t/pinned

The other up side to my system is if you have a post that would make sense in more than one category, you can just give it more than one tag, where as a static table of contents requires you pick one (or duplicate your effort by putting it under more than category).

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Edward Sandet's avatar

Very useful resources for writers and readers!

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Meredith Eisenberg's avatar

I love this… so organized and useful!

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So Cleva's avatar

Great list.

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Unlearn And Reset's avatar

Thank you very valuable, but anything to help those stuck on what to write about. I keep jumping between topics and don't know what topic to focus on exactly.

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Luka Karaula's avatar

Wow this is amazing. I am in a similar niche.

Just posted an article about The Two Basic Needs of Solopreneurs

https://substack.com/home/post/p-150561826?r=2wz7mb&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web

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A B Forbes's avatar

I have saved the post, looking forward to reading it later.

Hi there! I’m new to Substack, and love writing stories about the universe and life. I know it’s a bit of a niche topic; most people go through their lives giving little thought to why they exist. But if you’re curious and wonder about the big questions, then please visit my profile and have a look. Regards from Scotland.

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Dawn Lauren Anderson's avatar

I guess I'm a sucker for a good sale, and I'm glad I took you up on your 25% off for life as an annual subscriber!

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مروه صبحي's avatar

Halo

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