The Last Q&A Thursday of 2025

Hello friends,

Well, it's been a year hasn't it We're all settled here in our new home on Ghost and I think it's going well, don't you? I'm going to optimize and add some bells and whistles to this place in the coming months, so let me know if there's anything specific you'd like to see. Leave me a comment below or reach out to me at kate@katemckean.com.

Now, let's answer one last question for the year, shall we? If you want to get something in the queue for next year, submit your question here (paid subscribers only).

Anon asks: I have a lot of book ideas and can’t decide which to work on next. One of my ideas that I’m excited about might be a little controversial, and I have no idea how it would be received by the publishing industry. I read widely in my genre but unfortunately that hasn’t helped me gauge how my idea would be received. Before I spend 12 months on something that might not have a chance, I would love someone with industry knowledge to bounce them off—in the way an agented author would bounce ideas off their agent or editor—but I unfortunately don’t have an agent or an editor yet. Do you have any suggestions?

I get questions like this all the time. They usually come through a friend of a friend who wants to pick my brain about their next book idea. Honestly, I've done this very same thing to editors over lunch and publishing-friends over drinks–for both my own and my clients' ideas. The thing is: there's only one answer to this question.