Do novelists work for their publishers—or do they work for their audience?
is a rare breed in the literary world: she’s an optimist. Two days ago, she announced that her husband was taking a leave of absence from his job and they plan to travel the world, so she can study utopian communes. She’s been publishing both fiction and essays on Substack—and earning income from her subscribers.“What if you could follow your favorite book the way you follow your favorite show?” she asked in her recent TEDx talk.
Elle believes serialized fiction is the future of books. She grew her audience from 1,700 subscribers to 6,000 and ultimately earned $20,000 from her subscribers who followed her first serialized novel. She also printed twenty-five special collector’s edition copies of the novel for her superfans. Elle positions herself in the lineage of authors like Charles Dickens and Alexander Dumas, who pioneered serialization. She also sees potential in the way that young adults read serialized fiction (and fanfic) written by other young adults, on their phones, citing The Kissing Booth as an example.
I admire anyone who’s trying something different! As I learned the hard way, running a feminist writing conference, it’s much easier to critique and destroy something than it is to actually build something better.
That being said, I’m not persuaded by Elle’s argument that serialized fiction is the future of books. I cannot imagine writing one of my novels in real time, in front of an audience, and allowing them to comment on my work. This seems to me like the worst parts of being in a writing workshop, magnified by 1000.
I understand why young adults would read serialized fiction on their phones (especially fanfic): it’s free, it’s easy to access, and it’s about something they already love (for more on this, read
on the fanfic > romance pipeline).What I don’t really understand is how big the audience—of adults with disposable income—could possibly be for serialized novels, published on Substack. Would you pay $10 a month to read a novel on your phone?
My preferred novel reading mode is this:
I’m on my phone and computer from morning until night, reading emails, skimming Twitter, scrolling Instagram, skimming Times headlines…and skimming Substack! As much of a fan as I am of this platform, and of the 40-ish newsletters I subscribe to, I don’t read Substack newsletters with the same dedicated concentration that I apply to a novel like Trust. I can’t get the same giddy, hysterical pleasure from a Substack that I get from All Fours.
When I’m reading a novel, I want to be in an entirely different room from my phone, preferably on a private balcony overlooking the sea.
Are you a reader of serialized fiction on Substack? I would love to know!
As a novelist, Elle has created a path for herself, working for her audience on Substack.
The majority of readers of my newsletter dream of selling their books to a Big Five publisher, and earning income in the form of a book advance (instead of directly from their audience on Substack).
On LitHub, in an essay about how expensive it is to pay for outside marketing and publicity, Maris Kreizman writes:
Theoretically a book advance should pay authors for the time that it took to write their book, as well as the time it will take to promote. With advances diminishing (or at least certainly not keeping up with inflation), authors can end up spending an amount of time on those jobs that comes out to way less than the minimum wage. Paying for outside help on top of such low wages is absolutely not an option.
The use of the word “wage” is curious.
I’m not a wage-earning employee of Penguin Random House. I’m an independent writer. They don’t get to tell me where or when or how I write books; they don’t get to say what I can or cannot post on Instagram or TikTok.
And if I don’t sell my novel to a publisher, I don’t get to file for unemployment.
In the literary community, there is this persistent framing of writers as starving artists victimized by the publishing industry. Instead of thinking, wow, I’m one of the lucky ones who got $50,000 for a work of art I made in the comfort of my own home using my imagination and a laptop, it’s I’m being paid less than minimum wage to post on my own Instagram account asking for preorders.
I think Maris Kreizman’s intentions were good. I think she set out to write a piece for LitHub that would be encouraging to writers who can’t afford to pay for outside publicity and marketing services. She writes, “I think a lot of readers came away from [a piece in the Guardian about hiring outside help] feeling like they could not be successful without spending extra money. Not true! Here are some other things to keep in mind.”
Here are the “other things” to keep in mind if you’re feeling disheartened:
In-house staff is overwhelmed
The midlist is vanishing
It doesn’t really matter if you do a tour or give a reading because they don’t sell books anyway
Book coverage is more fractured than ever
Authors have to do more and more
The barrier to entry is too high
Aren’t you feeling so much better??
I think the barrier to entry is actually lower than it’s ever been—every week I see book deals for authors who built their own audience on TikTok or Substack and made themselves more appealing to a publisher. What magical time from the past are we yearning to return to—the time when you needed an MFA to get a book deal?
It’s easy to see why novelists like Elle Griffin are striking out on their own, and going directly to their audience. I’m just not sure if digital serialized fiction will ever come close to replacing the antique technology of a dog-eared paperback.
Personally, my strategy is two-fold: continue publishing books with the Big Five, which gives me not only a stamp of prestige but also superior production, sales, and distribution, while also building my own audience that I can market my work and services to. As I told
in an interview, I see my platform as a kind of savings account.
I commend Elle for thinking dynamically about new publishing approaches, but my two years of reading fiction, including serialized novels on Substack, has only reinforced my belief that novels are best experienced in paper or audio formats. As far as I can tell, audiobooks were the major innovation of the last few decades and continue to increase in import.
Re: the wage thing, as a scumbag with an MBA and an outsider to the literary world, I find authors approach publishing from the wrong perspective. Authors are solopreneurs, full stop. Your agent and your publisher are business partners and sometimes their interests don't align with yours. Also, at the end of the day, we're creating artistic creations in widget form (e.g., a physical book or audio download, etc.). You have to market widgets if you want them to sell. No getting around that one.
I don't love serialized fiction but I have a 12yo daughter who LOVES serialized fan fiction. The way Gen Zers read is totally foreign to me but how could it not be? They grew up watching three minute videos: they snack, they don't eat meals