A Victorian-era practice is finding new purchase. What goes around comes around, I guess.
“Fight Club” author Chuck Palahniuk recently announced that he signed a deal with the Substack newsletter platform to produce both free and paid content, with the paid content being (for now) the exclusive serialization of a novel titled “Greener Pastures.”
This revives a practice dating back to Victorian-era England when Charles Dickens’ “The Pickwick Papers” established an audience of people willing to buy longer narratives on installment. Many novels we consider classics today (“The Three Musketeers,” “Anna Karenina,” “Uncle Tom’s Cabin”) saw life first as serialized narratives in periodicals.
“Greener Pastures” was originally scheduled to come out with publisher Hachette, but they agreed to give the book back to Palahniuk as long as he provides a makeup title at a future date.
Palahniuk’s news comes on the heels of Salman Rushdie’s own announcement of a Substack newsletter, where he will serialize a novella and share other content. Rushdie said in his first post, “The point of doing this is to have a closer relationship with readers.”
As someone who started a Substack newsletter to have a closer relationship with readers myself (biblioracle.substack.com), it feels uncharitable to express doubts about Rushdie’s motivations, but I have a sneaking suspicion that perhaps money is playing a motivating factor here.
Unlike yours truly who gives away his newsletter content for free, writers of the stature of Palahniuk and Rushdie can extract advances and support from Substack, mitigating the risk of putting some of their content behind a subscription paywall.
The deeper question is whether or not such a strategy is going to work in a way that may open up a new channel for authors to share their work and profit on their labor in the process.
Previous serialization experiments have been tried. Stephen King published “The Green Mile” as serialized novellas before collecting them into a single volume. A King online self-publishing experiment in serialization from the early 2000’s (“The Plant”) fizzled out.
Longtime publishing expert Jane Friedman points out to me that serialization has actually been going strong for years in terms of readership numbers at platforms like Wattpad, Royal Road, and Tapas, which appeal to young readers who love genre fiction. She’s skeptical that Substack giving money to prestige writers will create a serial fiction marketplace, “I don’t know how this helps the average emerging writer build an audience for their fiction. Most people do not read and discover fiction serials over email and I don’t think Substack is likely to change that behavior.”
I tend to agree. To me, these look like plays to provide additional revenue streams to established authors. You’ll hear no objection about this from me, but the notion that we’ll see serialized emails take market share from books seems far-fetched.
I’m skeptical for an additional reason. Binging beats serialization. Readers have known for ages the wonderful pleasure of reading deep into the night because you can’t put a book down. Thanks to streaming, we see that even serialization of TV shows was a function of the delivery system, not a superior way for a story to unfurl.
Expecting to build a paying audience for serial fiction from scratch is a near impossible order. Email platforms are useful ways to maintain contact with readers or intensify the positive feelings of fans when you do have something to sell, but the fiction writers who could capitalize on such a model seem few and far between.
John Warner is the author of “Why They Can’t Write: Killing the Five-Paragraph Essay and Other Necessities.”
Book recommendations from the Biblioracle
John Warner tells you what to read based on the last five books you’ve read.
1. “Shuggie Bain” by Douglas Stuart
2. “Anxious People” by Fredrik Backman
3. “The Dazzling Truth” by Helen Cullen
4. “A Passage North” by Anuk Arudpragasam
5. “The Heathens” by Ace Atkins
— Mary G., Rockford
I’m thinking that Mary is a good candidate for Elmore Leonard’s Raylan Givens series. The first book is “Pronto.”
1. “Nightbitch” by Rachel Yoder
2. “Revenge of the Sith” by Matthew Stover
3. “Crying in H Mart” by Michelle Zauner
4. “Howl’s Moving Castle” by Diana Wynne Jones
5. “The Caves of Steel” by Isaac Asimov
— Delphine W., Toronto
Some serious variety here, though a definite trend toward stories not quite of this Earth. Lauren Beukes feels like a good fit for that niche. My pick is “Broken Monsters.”
1. “Harlem Shuffle” by Colson Whitehead
2. “The Midnight Library” by Matt Haig
3. “Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents” by Isabel Wilkerson
4. “Written in My Own Heart’s Blood” Diana Gabaldon
5. “Circe” by Madeline Miller
— Suzie T., Chicago
I’m reaching back just a bit for a near guaranteed crowd-pleaser in Sue Monk Kidd’s “The Secret Life of Bees.”
Get a reading from the Biblioracle
Send a list of the last five books you’ve read and your hometown to biblioracle@gmail.com.
