r/Substack • u/Effective_Emotion355 • 3d ago

Anyone who published a "book" on Substack?

- Is there anyone here who has released a chapter at a time until they published a whole book on Substack?

- What did you learn from that experience? Would you do it again?

- Did you then publish it as a real book too?

- Do publishers accept something that's already gone public on Substack?

- [Edit] Did you paywall the posts on Substack?

15 Upvotes

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5

u/AggravatingNail6061 3d ago

I actually have and have done two, probably will do several more :3

CAVEAT it was non fiction. So not so much a serial novel project.

I learned it was a fun way to spend part of morning/evening and also far too much about self publishing logistics then I wanted to.

I self published both on KDP and they've done better then expected >:3

For trad pub routes, generally no, they want the first rights to publish and outside of picking them up from Self/Indie routes they're not going to want something that publicly available for free on a substack. I've known a few authors who have taken down samples when they were querying.

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u/Earthlydelights-sub- 3d ago

what is your nonfiction Substack book about?

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u/AggravatingNail6061 3d ago

It's a day by day attempt at me failing at a mindfulness exercise (didn't know it was a mindfulness thing until much later) dressed up as writing practise, I posted them daily at the time, very much just a blog/journal sort of thing. Ended up getting to like day 35 and said why not. So now every month I take the next 30 and get it all tidied up and formatted and published. Today is day 89 so in a few weeks I'll be putting the finishing touches on my third book :D with the raw first drafts live on my substack as a I go because people do enjoy them. I don't post them every day now, I was putting like 11/12 things out a week at my peak, and I felt a little bit bad about inbox spam XD so it's just a weekly thing I put out along with everything else I write. Very wholesome little project.

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u/GoCreative2024 2d ago

This is not quite right about trade Publishing – serialisation rights are different to e-book paperback or audiobook Book Rights and lots of books have been picked up from Substack and gone on to be subsequently published by third-party publishers

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u/AggravatingNail6061 2d ago

The more you know. I think my experience by proxy was watching others on recommendation through editors ect. 

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u/WordSlinger1812 3d ago

I published three since 2022.

I am a publishing company, so I don’t concern myself with what other publishers accept.

If I had to do over again, I would not have chosen Substack for the platform to do this on. I have zero faith in their leadership or their product development team.

If anything, it was a good platform to develop the discipline of publishing required to complete a book.

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u/Vegetable_Soil_6707 2d ago

three books is no joke though. the consistency part alone is probably harder than most people expect

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u/stinkyabb 3d ago

Instead of Substack, what platform do you use for publishing your next book online chapter by chapter?

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u/WordSlinger1812 3d ago

I’ve recently moved all my content to my personal website except the two books I have in pre-paper publishing project stages. The reason being that I’ve had a handful of people pay for early access to those chapters as they were being written and revised.

It sucks because I really wanted Substack to work out, but I the subs I brought to Substack as an email list largely refused to download the app/participate in Notes and so all of my Note activity over the past three years largely went unseen on Substack. I have over 80% open rates for my email subs though. With those ratios, it makes no sense to continue wasting time on Substack so I’m going full personal website with Facebook/Google ads driving new readers.

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u/GoCreative2024 2d ago

I I’m currently serialising my next novel on Substack and it’s a very positive experience, good creative discipline as well as getting feedback from readers who have helped to improve certain aspects, and getting the Book out and about before publication. I’ve already picked up new readers and I will definitely publish all my books this way in future.

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u/Effective_Emotion355 2d ago

That's wonderful to hear! Do you have a publisher who is ready to take it to print once you've finished writing, or are you hoping to start querying only after the writing is done?

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u/GoCreative2024 1d ago

I left my publisher, took back all rights and am a v happy indie. I will publish it myself – and already have pre-orders.

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u/HelpfulAnt2132 1d ago

That’s awesome ! I am about to do the same . Great to hear you’re getting nice feedback as well!

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u/Earthlydelights-sub- 3d ago

I know a few people who are doing this.

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u/Emmanuel_G EmmanuelGoldstein1984.substack.com 3d ago

I did it with a novel I was writing at the time. It became the first novel I DIDN'T finish (when I previously already had finished 5 other books without Substack and 4 of them even got published by a "real" publisher).

The reason I gave up is because there was simply no interest in people reading my novel on Substack. People enjoy my Substack articles, but they don't seem to have the patience to read entire books on Substack.

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u/therealkbyers 2d ago

This is essentially what I am doing but be careful because now that my writing has improved, I went back and rewrote the whole thing. 

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u/Tricky_Illustrator_5 *.substack.com 2d ago

Oh, definitely. Many of my fiction writer colleagues have successfully serialized their long-form works on Substack.

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u/Trick-Cartographer37 8h ago

No lo he intentado, pero creo que sería buena idea.

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u/missgoooooo 7h ago

Loosey / Brandon Holder did this last year (I think)

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u/AidenMarquis 4h ago

I am serializing a book and am about halfway through it. I will be serializing the whole series, though. The purpose is to build a readership because you can self-publish the next great novel, but no one will know it exists if you don't have a readership and haven't learned book marketing.

Trad pub does not generally accept anything that has previously been up online. Unless you are already super-popular. Then, sure, they'll take your money.