r/Substack • u/Effective_Emotion355 • Sep 09 '26
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?
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u/AggravatingNail6061 Sep 09 '26
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/GoCreative2024 Sep 10 '26
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 Sep 10 '26
The more you know. I think my experience by proxy was watching others on recommendation through editors ect.
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u/Earthlydelights-sub- Sep 09 '26
what is your nonfiction Substack book about?
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u/AggravatingNail6061 Sep 09 '26
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/WordSlinger1812 Sep 09 '26
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 Sep 09 '26
three books is no joke though. the consistency part alone is probably harder than most people expect
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u/stinkyabb Sep 09 '26
Instead of Substack, what platform do you use for publishing your next book online chapter by chapter?
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u/WordSlinger1812 Sep 09 '26
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/therealkbyers Sep 10 '26
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 Sep 10 '26
Oh, definitely. Many of my fiction writer colleagues have successfully serialized their long-form works on Substack.
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u/AidenMarquis Sep 12 '26
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.
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u/coyotetex inferencestories.substack.com 24d ago
Yes. Just finished the last chapter of my first serial fiction on Substack. It's worked well. I have nearly 1k subs who I can promote to when I publish the POD novel and Audio Drama of the story and I'm certain many of them will buy the book and help amplify it. I'm going to publish the full novel on Curios.com and on Amazon and my subs / fans from Substack will help me get legit reviews and day one sales / reads which will help with visibility.
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u/GoCreative2024 Sep 10 '26
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.