Q&A Friday

My friends,

This is the second newsletter in the last two weeks I've written from an airport. I've been traveling non-stop for various bookish and literary things, and this weekend I'm off to Hollins University to speak at the 64th Annual Lex Allen Literary Festival. I'm looking forward to being down south again, and for my southern accent to make its reappearance. (I grew up in the south.) Anyway, how about we answer some questions in the near hour I have before boarding? (Which is just how I like it.)

D asks: I've been working on my first novel since the end of the Ice Age. (the actual Ice Age–not the movie) Partly because I never thought I'd finish it, and just to get it out into the world, I've started publishing it as a weekly serial on Substack. I have 28, fairly consistent readers, 95% of whom, are friends and family. I don't promote the serial on social media because - for me - social media is a depressing time-suck. I've been reading through the past Q&As and see a lot of questions about submitting previously published work. When I get to the point of querying my novel will the fact it has been "published" as a serial be a strike against me?

In short, no. Serializing your novel on a newsletter platform like Substack will not mark your novel as "published" when it comes to querying agents in an effort to be traditionally published. A few recent book deals have come out of serializations like this, but tbh, I think it's a tough path to go if you're looking to build a fiction platform. For starters, if I wanted to hop in now, I'd have to read all the posts you've published so far, and I don't enjoy reading fiction that way. But maybe it's just me. So, its fine you're doing this.

But you should probably stop and just focus on finishing your novel.