Should I Serialize One of My Novels on Substack?
If so, which one? If not, why? Take my poll?
If you want to take the poll and skip what brought me to this post, scroll on down to the book descriptions or the poll itself at the very end.
Remember, even if you read just a little bit of this, please hit that heart button below. Comments and restacks are so nice for writers too!
I know things are truly unbearable and awful every day. If nothing else, this post is a small distraction, a moment of rest from the horror of it all, and/or something to read that doesn’t involve a current or former president.
I read The New Yorker article “Is the Next Great American Novel Being Published on Substack” by
the day it came out. I read almost everything in the magazine the day or week it comes out. Sometimes I think my only addiction is reading.I read all the time, everything that comes my way—novels I buy, novels I borrow, non-fiction both bought and borrowed, a lot of stuff on Substack though mostly personal essays and notes (way too many notes), everything almost every day in The New York Times, some stuff in The Guardian, the poem that comes to me via email from “Poem a Day,” everything my friends publish, student writing, client writing. Most days my eyes hurt from reading.
If I’m not reading a novel, I don’t really know what to do with myself. I’m working on this, but I also want to read novels for the rest of my life.
Like most of us, I spend way too much time watching reels on Instagram and scrolling Substack. Facebook too, though it’s become so empty and full of advertising slop and posts from people and organizations I don’t even follow, it’s easier to ignore.
If I’m deeply into a novel, I spend less time on line. Print, hard copy books are still my favorite. They are easier on my eyes, and I love holding a book in my hands while lying on my couch. I hope I die this way. I’ve been joking with friends lately that eventually my couch will fold in itself with me in it, and turn itself into my grave. Grass and flowers will somehow grow over it.
If you missed the Peter C. Baker essay and/or don’t want to really get into it, he basically reviews a recent novella that fiction writer, essayist, and all around great person
self-published on Substack and compares it to a print novel she published with The Feminist Press, The Default World (Feminist Press is also the publisher of my last two novels, Panpocalypse and The Not Wives). He likes Kanakia’s Substack novel more because of its speedy pacing and admits:“The experience felt a little like getting unexpectedly absorbed in a trashy episode of reality TV, but also like suddenly realizing that a conversation that started in the shallows of small talk has at some point drifted into the deep waters of meaning.”
That’s a lovely thing to happen to a reader. Pulled in by sheer entertainment and then pushed deeper by the novelist’s skill, without even feeling it happen. Baker also writes about the phenomenon of Substack, other writers who are publishing fiction on this platform, and what’s up with publishing these days.
Newsflash, publishing is a bit of a mess, but isn’t it always kinda? The takeaway for me was, Yeah a lot of us love Substack because you can do what you want and build your own audience on your own terms, and hey I’ve got three novels that never found homes and maybe it’s time to publish one of them serially on Substack.
I bet a lot of us novelists have either thought of this before, already done it, or are now thinking of doing it since The New Yorker says its cool. I’m not above doing things that magazines suggest to me. When I was thirteen I wrote a letter to Seventeen magazine asking them to teach me how to flirt. Later, I wrote my dissertation about teenage girl writing in Seventeen. Here’s a chapter from it. So yeah, I have a thing with magazines.
I haven’t read any novels on Substack (mostly for the sake of my eyes and how much I love paper books), and I’ve never published any of my fiction here. Mostly, I think of My Subby as my blog, and I’ve try to make it as fun for myself as possible. That attitude likely comes from the difficulty I’ve had in getting five print books published. I need a place that is lighter, easier, where I have more control.
The hardest to publish of all of my books was my novel The Not Wives, which was supposed to be my “big debut novel” according to my then agent. The other books—another novel, a young adult novel, an essay collection, and a poetry book, have all happened in the last twelve years, and with minimal suffering, though not a ton of fanfare. Before then, I was pretty despondent about having any books published at all.
I’m lucky to have those five books. I want to publish more books because I’m a writer and I like to have readers, and I have three novels (I’ll get to that below), which have never found homes. Maybe one of them could live here?
I was thinking I’d publish each installment/chapter with a short companion piece on craft, what’s true and not true, or something else related to the chapter.
I should also say, I’m not new to serializing novels. The first half of Panpocalypse came out in installments on The Feminist Press website with lovely illustrations by Neeti Banerji, during the beginning of the COVID lock down.
Possible pros: It would be great to get one of these books out into the world and to possible readers. I would also love to feel some closure with at least one of these. It could be fun, and I could learn things. I like experiments. You might enjoy the book, and I might get new readers.
Possible cons: It won’t find an audience and/or my readers won’t enjoy it. People could hate it. I could fail and alienate you. It might make me feel bad.
I have thought some about these pros and cons and they seem to me to apply to most published books (self or not).
Okay. Here are the three possible novels:
Paramour (my latest novel). Clara is broke and desperate for work after finishing her M.F.A. in poetry. When she gets kicked out of her Queens apartment for sleeping with her best gay friend and roommate’s crush, she takes a job as the nanny for her creepy former professor and his rumored-to-be-crazy-wife. Soon after, she falls into bed with the wife. Set in NYC and the Hamptons in 1996, the book is sexy, funny, and poignant look at long past literary New York, life after college, it what it means to be a queer, disabled fuck-up. This is probably the most fully realized novel of the three choices, and has been through several revisions and had multiple readers. It’s in first person. Publishing journey so far: Feminist Press had the right of first offer and passed (that was ouchy for me). I have since queried 49 agents, had 6 requests for the full manuscript, and 6 passes from those agents. I’ve submitted the book to 10 indie presses, and it’s still out with 2 of those.
Live at Roseland. I wrote this before The Not Wives. It is my first adult novel. Set in the early 90s, it’s about a college drop out, Annie, who hooks up with the guitarist in a semi-famous indie band from her hometown, after her best friend commits suicide, and then runs away with the band. It’s set in the small upstate New York town, on the road with the band, and in New York City when things begin to completely fall apart for Annie. It’s in shifting first person perspectives, which I don’t think I’d ever do again.
says it’s his favorite of all of my books. Publishing journey: I had an agent for this novel too, though a different one that with The Not Wives. Funny story, I’ve had four agents, and only one has sold a book for me. I don’t blame them! I also don’t blame myself anymore! This book went out to 55! editors at big five publishers and 7 editors at small presses. I just looked at the Pass Notes (these are the notes that editors send to agents when they “pass” on publishing your book) and damn we were really close and/or the pass notes were very complimentary.Cemetery Gates. This is my third young adult novel. I published my first one, The Stalker Chronicles with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux. The second one I abandoned because I was attempting third person and I just couldn’t figure it out at that point in my fiction writing life. Cemetery Gates is set in a town full of psychics called Rose Hill (based on Lily Dale, New York, close to where I grew up). The protagonist, Ally, is the daughter of two famous psychics, but she doesn’t have the gift herself. Or so she thinks. When a spirit begins to haunt her and take over her body, she has to come to terms with a power no one in Rose Hill has ever experienced before. Yes, the title is a Smiths song. First person. If I ever write another novel, I hope it’s in third person. Publishing journey: The night before this novel was about to go out on submission, my agent called me to tell me she was leaving the business. Her assistant took me on, and we both ended up getting way more invested in me moving to adult books and so I wrote Live at Roseland. I don’t think this was the best idea, like we should have tried to sell the thing that already existed. Eventually we sent it out to 5 big five editors. From the spreed sheet I have, 3 passed and 2 never responded or perhaps I had left that agent by then.
All of these situations have made me very sad in the past and want to quit publishing. I think this is normal for many writers. There are also writers who sell and/or find homes for all of their books and none of their books. Nobody said this was going to be easy!
TAKE THE POLL!
Okay, I gotta cook dinner! Enjoy the typos!
xoxo
Carley
Do it! Do it! Do it!
Okay obviously I want to read all these books. I have thought about Substack-publishing a novel of mine that didn’t sell but here’s what stopped me — I would want people to be able to opt in at any point and get the thing one email at a time from the beginning (like one of those on-demand online courses) and as far as I can tell, Substack doesn’t have that feature. I don’t like that most people would “buy” it and not have the serialized experience but would rather have to go back and read old posts to get it in the right order. If that doesn’t matter to you then I say go for it!!!