Toward a Useful Organization of Parts
Hey y’all. T Van here. So last time I asked for your opinion and some of you gave one. Thank you! Nothing sucks like tapping a mike and wondering if it’s on. Anyhoo, I’ve been reflecting on your comments and decided that rather than being quiet about it, I would turn it into ‘tent! That way you can see my thought process and perhaps help me improve upon it as I go.
Allow me to restate the issues as I understand them:
- How do we build a useful table of contents on Substack?
- How do we let readers know that there even is a table of contents; and, how do we encourage them to use it?
- Would some other type of organizing system—such as a topical index—be more appropriate for this millieu?
- Related but separate: How do we handle serialization? Meaning, the TOC or index under consideration is meant to be for the whole of the newsletter publication, not a specific work. So …
- How do we distinguish the newsletter TOC/index from its counterparts for specific works? And, obviously, we then have to solve for questions 1,2 & 3 for each of those, as well. Yay!
- How do we achieve this without relying on hyperlinks? Using hyperlinks is the obvious choice and is fine in theory; but in practice, it is massively time intensive, and very few folks actually click them.
Does that about cover it? If I have missed any, let us know in the comments.
Okay, now let me show you my current setup.
This is my Table of Contents, now titled “The Caverns,” formerly known as … Table of Contents. I renamed it as part of my ‘go deeper’ rebrand kina early on. Anyway, for good or woe, that’s what we have rn.
I can’t fit it all in a single screen shot, so I have pulled the relevant sections.
As you can see, it is a chronological list of newsletters put out through using this website. It has a main publication that is the same as the title: Adventures in Secrecy with T Van Santana. I dunno if anyone has noticed, but the end of each newsletter has a publication code, rendered like AIS 0061.
Then there are different sub-publications, most of which I started before sections were a thing on Substack, so I have let almost all of those go in favor of using sections.
Which gives rise to the question: Do you know what ‘sections’ are as used on Substack? Could you find them readily? Let us know.
Finally, you will see that my current novel, Teresa’s Backbone, doesn’t have the same sort of listings. Rather it has a single listing to the TOC/Index—titled “The Backbone”—which is only for that book.
We will set aside how to organize that index cos it’s a whole other thing.
So, a few more questions:
- Did you know any of this existed?
- Do you understand what it is and how to use it?
- What would keep you from using it? Or, if you prefer, what would you rather I did instead?
My current thinking is to switch to a topical index. I will likely keep the TOC/Caverns going for my own reference, but will unpin it from the top of the publication page. What will take its place will be a compact, visually efficient grouping of topics, types, and characters. You know, assuming that’s possible with this interface.
Of course I'm not sure how much this matters to folks. While I’m very grateful to those of you who have responded—and please don’t stop—only a handful of folks even read it, and fewer said anything. So lemme know!
Xoxo,
T
