The Substack Note That Turned an Indie Bookshop Daydream Into a £70k Movement
inviting the internet into the first draft of your real life fairytale, a viral note and a NEW audience who show up and pay! 🧚🏽 🏰 ✨
Some light relief from all the AI chat today folks.
Back in May, I spotted a note from writer and coach Sam Burgess - we’ve chatted a few times and I always enjoy her posts.
A week or two later I spotted another note thanking everyone for all their support and gathering around her idea… my ears pricked up. I love a bit of an online movement…
Turns out the audience of Substack had gathered round to support Sam’s beautiful BIG dream!
A dream of opening her first bookshop in the UK…
Come with me in this BTS interview as we find out from Sam exactly what happened and what it means for her?
Hey Sam welcome to The Creative Growth Lab at Sparkle on Substack - here we celebrate creatives who also write doing big, beautiful and joyful things using Substack.
Can you tell me a bit about you and your Substack journey?
I’m a business mentor, writer, toddler mum, and aspiring bookseller based in Hove, UK. I’ve been self-employed for ten years, working with founders and creatives, and in 2023 I started a Substack: Strategy with Soul by Sam Burgess where I write observational essays about self-employment and offer quarterly workshops to paid subscribers.
In two years I grew the publication from 0 - 1.4k. Small but the right audience, which was more important to me as the publication is a lead generator rather than a focused income stream.
Most subscribers find me from Google, Instagram or my website. Very few came from Substack Notes. I tried having very business focused Notes but they got next to no engagement compared with anything I wrote on the fly, like in the post office queue or if I shared a pic of my dog or what I was reading, those did really well but didn’t grow my publication.
In late April 2026 everything shifted. I’d been slowly losing faith in the direction of my business – I’ve talked a bit on Substack about how Ai is “coming for my job” and I found myself staring down a big question: WHAT next?
I love writing always have done, and it goes right back to sitting in my grandparents garden under a blanket fort tapping away short stories on a typewriter. The casual notes that were doing well on Substack got me thinking about why and how I could expand these into articles within a new publication.
Since Strategy with Soul doesn’t rely on the Substack ecosystem to grow, I restructured my Substack presence. I switched Strategy with Soul to a different author (still me just a new profile) so it no longer showed up in Notes when a new post went out, revised my entire bio to better reflect me as a person and the new chapter I was embarking on and launched a new publication called In Good Company.
I had just two posts up when I decided to make public my secret research into opening a bookshop as my next career chapter and document the process in real time – before I knew how it ended.
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So as I understand (from what I saw online), you had the idea to research opening your own bookshop and told Substack about it on Notes – where did the idea come from?
It’s been a long time coming, I’ve taken a very scenic route to get to this place. I worked in a bookshop at sixteen and loved it. Over the years – through corporate retail, a social media agency, and a decade of mentoring – I always had this background hum of one day I’ll have a shop.
When I returned from maternity leave in early 2025 I found the business landscape had changed significantly, both myself and many of my clients who work in creative areas, were finding their pipelines drying up due to the rise of Ai.1
When their cash flow slows – that impacts me. Over the last twelve months I have had to confront the question of what I actually want next.
The bookshop idea resurfaced a couple of months ago.
In addition to the romantic idea of a bookshop…
and my love of indie retail, I am also passionate about reading for pleasure.
In my first post about the bookshop I wrote in detail about how few adults and young adults read for pleasure and how children’s literacy is declining. I want to try and tackle this head on.
Additionally, we face a loneliness epidemic, with more Gen Zers reporting loneliness than Boomers. I feel a book / coffee shop could tackle both of these at once and make a real difference to my local community and talking about it on Substack may spark a wider impact.
Why Substack Notes?
Two reasons, 99% of the readers of my Strategy with Soul publication read on email, rather than the app so I wasn’t going to confuse them - which was really important as I don’t want anyone to get the impression I’ve stopped mentoring, I haven’t and won’t be able to do for some time.
And secondly, I’ve found Substack to be very supportive, friendly and engaging.
Notes need to go pandemic-level-viral before you get a nasty comment. It felt safe to be vulnerable there and announce my idea.
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Amazing - walk us through the timeline up to now - what happened?
On 26th May I wrote my first essay announcing my intention to open a bookshop. I posted a fairly simple announcement on Notes
…saying that I’ve published the first essay, come on the ride.
The Substack algorithm is a strange one, things don’t go viral straight away, for the first 24 hours at least it ticked along and had maybe 50 likes, and then suddenly at around day 3 it started to go viral.
As I write this the Note is now 8-days old with: 66,954 impressions, 2,419 likes, 173 comments, 32 shares and a crazy 810 free subscribers and 3 paid.2 The Note drove people to an essay that had been sent to exactly 19 subscribers. Nineteen.
The Note now…
That essay went on to get 2,298 views and 130 subscribers (4 paid subscribers, 126 free subscribers) in 8 days. It’s still gathering views and subscribers, but I have noticed the original Note slowed right down at 7 days, almost to the minute it was posted.
Since sharing I have had booksellers reach out, strangers say they’re emotionally invested in the outcome, and readers from all over the world are cheering me on.
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In total the combination of that one Note + part 1 and part 2 of the bookshop journey; I have gathered over 2000 free subscribers and 50 paid subscriptions. I haven’t shared the article or my publication off Substack either. This is all growth within the Substack ecosystem.
I can hand on heart say, I did not see any of that coming when I posted that first Note.
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Love all of this - how magical - what a beautiful universal nudge - how far are you in your research into opening the shop now?
Further than I expected to be, and more sobered by reality than I anticipated. I’ve bought and read the Booksellers Association’s guide to starting a bookshop cover to cover. The numbers are significant – you’re looking at £70k–£80k just to get to opening day, excluding a coffee shop, non-book stock, or anything to live on while you set up. I’ve been researching start-up funding: crowdfunding, grants, a start-up loan, and opening as a community interest company or company limited by guarantee; as I want this to be a not-for-profit business that benefits my local community.
I also have my eye on a specific unit. The current occupier owns rather than rents, and has been there for over 40 years – I’m exploring whether there’s a conversation to be had about becoming their tenant. But I need to get my funding picture clearer before I plant that seed as it really is the perfect unit.
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Are you gathering support from international subscribers? What does that look like?
Yes – and honestly it’s been one of the most unexpected parts of this whole thing. Subscribers are spread across 59 countries and 42 US states.
Nearly half my audience is American, with the US, Australia and Canada all featuring in my top five countries alongside the UK.
There’s something about the bookshop dream that seems to cross borders – a lot of people have the same dream, and they are invested in seeing someone actually do it. So many people all over the world have reached out to me sharing their plans, hopes and dreams of opening their own bookshop. As well as tell me I am brave and have balls for doing it. Which is honestly so supportive when there are certain hurdles that feel very high to jump.
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Sam thank you so so much for sharing your journey.
We’re all cheering you on - where can we connect with you and support you further…
Business Substack: strategywithsoul.substack.com
Instagram (bookshop): @goodcompanybooks
Instagram (personal/mentoring): @samburgessuk
Business website: samburgess.uk
If you enjoyed this post, press the heart ♥️ it’s free to share the love and appreciation and I am deeply grateful as it helps more people find and support my work, these posts and gives me space to invite more indie writers to tell their stories too.
I think AI is great when used as a tool, but I really don’t have any interest in using it to replicate my work as a mentor and that seems to be the obvious thing to do with my knowledge, but it doesn’t feel right. (Sam)
Paid subs from a Note is possible and also WILD - SO SO good - I love to bring you the examples of what’s possible here. Sam’s note is an example of bringing your audience with you on a journey. This concept is also why I also had such a successful launch here at Sparkle on Substack after people had followed my work and my personal journey on Creatively Conscious. Readers LOVE to follow to see what happens next so if you’re comfortable sharing your goals or more of your life openly maybe you could think about a pop up series like this too? (Claire)
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Thanks so much to Sam for stopping by and sharing your stats and your big bookshop dream with us!!
Thank you so much for featuring me Claire! I can say as well, that the original viral note continued to gather engagement and subscribers for SIX weeks - only then did it disappear in to the ether. I’ve never known a “social media” post to have such a long life span. 😮