In the same year my novel failed, this newsletter gained thousands of subscribers
I had two novels come out this year. One novel, Just Happy To Be Here, is a young adult novel that came out from HarperTeen in January. The other novel, The Default World, came out from Feminist Press in May.
My Substack audience mostly doesn’t read YA novels, so I hardly mentioned that one here, but I wrote about my literary novel a fair amount during the press cycle.
However, shortly after the book’s release I realized the novel wasn't going to get any attention, because it was impossible to break through the wall of noise—hundreds of new releases competing for the same limited set of eyeballs—so I started putting much more effort into my newsletter instead.
These latter efforts paid off. Since May, my newsletter readership has quadrupled. Most of you subscribed in the months after I lost faith in the efficacy of book promotion, and that's why you have never heard of these books.
The fact is, during a year when I have put out two traditionally-published novels, the most salient thing about me is that my Substack readership has grown tremendously. On the day my second novel came out, I had maybe 600 subscribers? Now I have almost 2900. That’s a lot more! Many of my readers are novelists, critics, editors, etc. To the extent that I’m known at all in the literary world, it’s because of this newsletter.
During this same span of time, my literary novel has sold…about 700 or 800 copies.
It makes sense, because most novels like mine (literary novels from a small press) don’t sell many copies. The only thing that makes this situation somewhat comical is that during this exact same span of time, I’ve gained thousands of readers, and every week I email these same readers my fiction.
Believe me, I am not comparing apples to oranges here. I understand that during the last six months, other novels have sold many more copies than mine did. The failure of my novel isn’t a general comment on society. Novels fail, it’s what they do.
Moreover, during this same period of time, some literary newsletters have grown much faster than mine. It would be hard to draw any conclusions from these two facts (my newsletter’s growth and my novel’s lack of sales) if they didn’t both concern the same person’s writing and how it was received over the exact same six months.
My own words, in one form (my newsletter), have gotten substantially more attention than my words in another form (my novel). The latter form involved a literary agent and a number of paid staff at the publisher—which has a rather substantial office space in New York. My novel was printed and shipped to bookstores around the country at major expense.
None of my friends think this discrepancy is incredible at all. They’re like, “Oh yeah, social media doesn’t necessarily translate to book sales.”
But…it’s the same thing! That’s what I keep trying to explain to people. My newsletter is basically the same thing as my novel. They’re both reading experiences marketed to a thoughtful reader who wants to better themselves.
And that’s why I don’t spend a lot of time marketing my novel to you, my newsletter subscribers. Because…why bother? It’s the same thing! If you want to read my words, you’ll get them next week, and the week after.
I publish fiction on this newsletter! And the audience for that fiction has grown rather substantially over this same period of time that people are ignoring my fiction in another form (my novel).
What I definitely do not want, by the way, is for you to get the impression that I feel like you, my newsletter subscriber, should go out and read my novel. Or that I feel upset that you haven’t read my novel. That would be absurd.
Seventy percent of you subscribed to this newsletter after my novel came out. Most of you didn’t even know about it. And the fact is, I read a lot of Substacks too, and everyone has a book. I often don’t read peoples’ books. Henry Oliver has a book. I love his Substack, I read it religiously. And his book, about people reinventing themselves, seems right up my alley. But I will read his book when it’s my moment to read it.
With fiction, it’s especially hard to know if a book is good. Most of the reviews of my literary novel over the last six months have come from people I know through the Substack ecosystem. They’re not exactly friends, but they’re also not going to pan my book, just like I would never pan, say, Henry Oliver or Ross Barkan’s book (only sociopaths pan their friends). And a mainstream review journal also probably isn’t going to print a highly-negative review of a small-press book like mine. So with these small books you’re basically swimming blind.
Substack-reading and book-reading operate on two parallel tracks. When it comes time to pick your next book, you have certain heuristics. When it comes time to subscribe to a Substack, you have different heuristics. They’re different forms. Prestige operates differently. Everything is different. You definitely don’t have to read either of my novels.
The fact is, both of these novels were written within the traditional prestige environment. They’re about trans women of color. They’re not necessarily about oppression, but they’re certainly marketed as if they are about that.
I stand by these books, however, the only context within which these books can succeed is a prestige-based one, where mainstream outlets say, “Such-and-such book is the defining book that represents this identity.”
That prestige economy and everything associated with that economy have become a huge turn-off to many sophisticated readers, because these readers have realized that books which succeed jn this prestige economy tend to be over-written and self-important.
I wrote and published my novella, “Money Matters”, precisely so I’d have a longer work that I could point followers of my Substack to—something that wouldn’t be such a huge turn-off. This novella is the kind of thing I would write if I was 100 percent free to write only for the reader, without any publishing apparatus intervening. It’s been pretty well-received, and it’s gotten some good reactions, which is astonishing because…who wants to read a 15,000 word blog post! Not to put too fine a point on it, but
tried for a month to read Rachel Kushner, but she read my novella in two days.I do know Celine personally, so I highly doubt she would ever pan my book, which is why it’s so fun that her post about it has such a negative take on Kushner, to create the contrast.
What is great about this Substack is that I don’t need to convince people the work is good. You can read it for yourself, whenever you’re in the mood. If I want my work to last, I’ll need at some point to turn it into a book so that later on, when people say, “What did you produce during those years?” I can just point them to a book. The book definitely needs to exist. But you, my Substack readers, don’t necessarily need to read that book, because this is the book, right now.
A very brief biographical summary
I couldn’t find an artful way to shoehorn this into my newsletter, but I did want to introduce myself very briefly.
Most of you, I think have some sense of my background. I’m not at all mysterious. I grew up in Washington, D.C. My parents were immigrants from India. They both have Ph.Ds, my mom is Wiki-notable. I am married to a professor at UCSF. I myself went to Stanford and have an MFA from Johns Hopkins. I live in San Francisco and have a young daughter. I am trans—something I don't hide, but which I'm loathe to discuss at length on this substack. In fact, I've been debating taking the “not a transphobe” labeling off my Substack bio, as it's starting to feel a little aggressive.
My writing career has had three distinct, albeit overlapping, phases. First, I wrote science-fiction short stories, which were published in all the most reputable outlets (2008 to 2020).1 Then, I wrote contemporary realist young adult novels (2014 to 2024). And, later on, I started writing literary essays and published literary short stories and had a realist literary novel for adults come out from a small press (2018 to 2024). This Substack hopefully will inaugurate a productive fourth phase.
I wrote an article this year for Lithub / The Dirt about how contemporary novels tend to avoid the details of money. This is because many contemporary novelists, I find, tend to live within and write about highly privileged environments whose true details, if they were known, would make their works very unrelatable to the typical middle-class reader. As you can see from even the brief paragraph of biographical details that I’ve shared, I am no different. I worked for ten years as a consultant for the World Bank (another fact I was not anxious to share while I was trying to succeed in literary fiction), but I currently do not have a day job. Essentially, my wife and parents are bankrolling my writing career, such as it exists.
After this, I will continue to mostly eschew personal topics. Whatever I have to say about myself, I can always put into the stories. However I do think every four to six months, I'll try to reintroduce myself for the benefit of new reader.
Short fiction I’ve published this year
Aside from my two novels, I did have a number of other publications this year. I was in two young adult short story anthologies. One was about sports (Out of Our League). The other was monster stories with a queer subtext (We Mostly Come Out At Night).
But it honestly seems silly to direct you to short stories elsewhere, when my best stories were all published right here in this newsletter.
One thing I don’t like about the newsletter format is that I try to title my stories to be attention-getting within the blog-reading context, but these titles make them embarrassing to share later. My most successful story this year, by far, was “Editors don’t want male novelists”. This discourse has recurred endlessly this year. I am generally sympathetic to the male side here, but I think it’s more complicated than just “Editors discriminate against men.” This story explains why and how. I also think it’s just a great story that works well as a story.
I am very partial to my story “Too many novels are lacking in moral vision”. This story retells the same story in four different ways, using different levels of moral vision. Very hard to explain the concept, but I think the story does it perfectly (and works well as a story).
A science-fiction story that I thought was very good and didn’t get as much attention (perhaps because I shared it early in the summer, when my audience was smaller) was “Mankind is inherently good”. This is a story about an AI who tries to help out its only friend, an IT guy, only to find that the latter is so suffused with resentment that it’s really difficult for the AI to reward him the way he’d like. It’s an intensely philosophical story, inspired by my reading of Schopenhauer. In a few years, I’ll probably try to get it reprinted in a sci-fi journal somewhere.
Woman of Letters is a literary journal
I also wrote many drafts of some kind of mission statement where I described what I’m doing here. What is this? What is this newsletter about? Essentially, this newsletter is a literary journal. It has a readership that’s larger than most literary journals, and the content is quite similar to a literary journal: book reviews, critical pieces, art criticism, fiction, and even some poetry.
Everything in this journal is about high culture. I have occasionally written, in my paid posts, about pop culture, but that's something I've avoided for at least the last four months and intend to avoid in the future.
For me, high culture in literature is defined primarily by the Great Books—the greatest works of literature from the past. I started to read these books when I was 23, under the mistaken impression that this was de rigeur for anyone aspiring to write fiction that was meant to be taken seriously as literature.
I later learned that I was comically mistaken in this assumption. In fact, most aspiring writers of literary fiction majored in English, where they often largely read 20th century literature, and after graduating they tend to mostly read post-WWII American, British, and European fiction. They read very little poetry, history or philosophy, not much from before 1945, and almost nothing from before 1800.
And, to be honest, if your aim in life is to write a contemporary literary novel that will be acquired by a big publisher for lots of money, and to have this publisher market you to the general reader as a genius, then that aim isn’t really served by reading a lot of classic literature. The Iliad and Chaucer and Milton will not teach you how to write a lyrical novel, written from a single close viewpoint, with strong attention to visual and sense detail, and a rather aimless plot that’s powered largely by the rapid alternation of strong and emotionally powerful images rather than by character progression or the fulfillment of any concrete aims.
I have learned to enjoy reading contemporary literary novels—just yesterday I re-read Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer, which is incredible—but I question how much life is really left in this form.
Our culture’s interest in the literary novel seems to be waning. This is a major problem for the editors, agents, writers, publishing companies, awards committees, residencies, reading series, foundations, professors, and literary journals that’ve built a business around extolling this kind of literature. But it’s not necessarily a problem for you, the reader, and it’s certainly not a problem for me, Naomi Kanakia.
Woman of Letters is pitched towards the world as I thought it existed: a world that is deeply engaged with the past and which sees value in the great literature of the past. I think many readers are just like me. People are much more interested in The Mahabharata than they are in, say, the Best American Short Stories.
I am aware that people mostly subscribe to my blog because of my polemics against contemporary fiction. However, they are certainly at least somewhat interested in the Mahabharata and in Indian literature more generally. That is amazing. What an absolute gift. The fact that during this time, when my blog has grown so tremendously, I’ve been able to write a number of blog posts about the Mahabharata—that has been very meaningful to me.
Similarly, my readers are at least somewhat-interested in my own fiction and in my evaluations of books like The Last Samurai or A Suitable Boy—books whose critical place isn’t yet entirely secure. I like to think that every part of this newsletter works together—that I have posts that are meant to be shared and to draw new readers, and other posts that are meant to deepen a connection with existing ones.
In my mind, Woman of Letters is mostly marked by things I try not to do.
First, I try to avoid various discourse topics, whether it’s about Cormac McCarthy’s teenage lover or Alice Munro’s misdeeds or Becca Rothfeld’s feelings about the ways in which Substack is worse than a traditional journal.
Second, I try to make sure that all my posts are anchored by an actual book that I’ve read recently. In the past, I was guilty sometimes of writing trend-pieces, like this one about the literati not reading new releases anymore. But as my audience has grown, I’ve quietly dialed those back. My thoughts have some interest, I suppose, but I think they’re more interesting when they’re sparked by some reading that I have done recently, which my reader has likely not done. That way, each post contains some fresh information for the reader, and with each post I add to the world’s knowledge instead of just generating a ‘take’.
Third, I do not hate-read books or read books purely in order to write about them, although I know that might be somewhat hard to believe. I’ve praised a number of contemporary books over the last six months. Perhaps my most effusive praise was for The Last Samurai, but I wrote good reviews of Fleishman Is In Trouble and Megan Nolan’s Acts Of Desperation. I’ve also given a few mixed reviews—most notably to Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection and Emma Cline’s The Guest. While it’s true that my negative reviews have garnered the most engagement, I do not go out of my way to read books that I know I’ll dislike. Nor do I write about every book I dislike—I only write about a book if I have something to say.
Thank you very much for reading this newsletter. Although it sometimes feels anxiety-provoking to have so much instant feedback on what I write, it is a pleasure to actually be read.
It’s not easy to gain traction on Substack, and this newsletter’s audience remains small enough that if I was to query agents and editors, they wouldn’t be impressed by my numbers. I don’t want to sound a triumphalist note. I still have trouble believing that I, personally, will benefit in some long-term material way from this newsletter. But I do consider myself a winner on this platform. After twenty years of failing to be achieve a readership in a variety of writing endeavors, my experience on Substack has been quite distinctly different, and that’s been both a gift and a relief.
I have theories as to why this particular Substack has grown so much, but the largest part of it is simply that the zeitgeist has turned against literary journals. As they've lost credibility, their readers are looking elsewhere for information. I am exactly the same, this year I've read a number of books that were recommended by other Substackers, whereas a rave review in a traditional publication tends to have no effect whatsoever on my reading decisions.
I’d also be remiss in noting that I’ve formed a number of friendships through this platform. I’ve met several substackers in person, and there are more than a few that I text or direct message somewhat frequently.
Nota Bene
As someone who publishes fiction on Substack, I feel like I should write about the four other alt-lit figures whose Substacks I actually read. What I write isn’t really alt-lit on a formal level, but it is certainly created and distributed through the same mechanisms as alt-lit, and to some extent it has similar themes. I spend a lot of time writing about my critical community on Substack, people like
and and , etc, but I also want to acknowledge my fiction-writing community.- writes short tales and sketches, often influenced by fairy tales, that have a dreamy, but well-observed quality. I particularly liked this sketch, about a woman who is lesbian until graduation.
she is not quite conscious of her satisfaction in simultaneously following and breaking their rules. it’s not that they are okay with this life path; it just didn’t seem as salient to them when they were hammering her into shape. and, unfortunately, she has been warned so much about the humiliation of being cast aside by men after they date you, that she gets some satisfaction out of the fact that her girlfriend, a lesbian, has fewer options than she does. (her attraction to men is all mixed up but she recognizes it enough to keep it in her back pocket to limit her dependencies.)”
- writes auto-fiction about a guy in Indiana who’s a writer and is basically de-classed, college-educated but constantly working menial jobs. His treatment of sex is fascinating (Caudell was born impotent and can only have sex through the use of a penile implant). Read his interview with Ross Barkan here. I read his most recent book, Hardly Working, and I never quite found a way to talk about it, because while I was fascinated by individual sketches, I ultimately wanted more—some kind of story, some kind of escape from this drudgery. What structures the book is ultimately the effort to make a living and stay alive—an attention to material reality that keeps it from being fully hopeless. I tend to enjoy Caudell’s Substack posts much more than I enjoyed his book, and I highly recommend subscribing.
I have not read
’s novel Incel yet—someday I will, but not yet. However I find his contemporary literature takes to be extremely entertaining. He’s a pseudonymous writer, and these posts are so aggressive: it’s hard to imagine anyone would ever publish them under their own name. Here’s a decent example. His language is very ‘internet-pilled’ (am I using that slang formulation correctly?) and at times it can be a bit much, but that very over-the-top quality really the draw. Here’s an example of his high style: We are in a macro-historical super-trend where leading-edge secular progressive morality (and its aforementioned contradictions) has hit a “local top” in our domestic culture.I must also confess that I read
, who also writes auto-fiction. It’s a bit of a guilty pleasure and is surely lowering my credibility with my readers. But…I actually do read and enjoy it. What makes his work better than a lot of autofiction is that his persona is so self-satisfied! There’s definitely some pretense of shame, but it’s not really crippling. The thoughts are much, much worse than what you’d be allowed to reveal in a typical literary novel, but in the grand scheme of things, they’re no worse than the sort of thoughts most men have. Here’s a post about Larry King’s sexual proclivities.I saw [a blind item] from a prostitute who said an elderly man hired her. He paid her 260 grand a year. She couldn't see other men. What he wanted was he'd meet her at a bar. She'd be talking to another man. He'd come up and steal her away with the power of his wit and celebrity. They'd go home and he'd get naked and watch her do kinky shit, which was unspecified. At the bottom the blind item was revealed: Larry King.
Sorry if this is a little crass for you! But…I assume that the subset of you that are drawn to my fiction will find at least one of these writers to be of interest. The main question to ask about any Substack is: “Can this work hold my interest?” And these four writers do.
What’s So Great About The Great Books? will be out in 2026
Finally, I’ve gotten word from my editor at Princeton Press that my nonfiction book about the Great Books has received positive peer reviews. Which means that it’ll likely be published. I’m a bit shocked, because the tone and style of the book are quite similar to that of my Substack, and I wasn’t sure if Princeton University Press really wanted to be in the business of publishing something so informal.
However, it’s happening! As a result, I need to start articulating some pitch for this book. Basically, it’s my case that people should read the Great Books. And by Great Books I am referring very specifically to a certain movement that arose in America in the early 20th century, which advocated that lay readers ought to educate themselves by reading about a hundred of the world’s classics, spanning three thousand years of history, with non-English works read primarily in translation.
This is not an age-old concept. Before the middle of the 19th-century, even the concept of an English-language classic was somewhat suspect. The classics meant…the Greek and Roman classics! So the concept of the Great Books arose at a specific time and place where, for the first time, there was a highly-literate monolingual audience of working people with a hunger for knowledge and a significant, though not infinite, amount of free time. This movement lost steam in the late 20th century, but its ideas had an after-life within religious institutions, like the Catholic school where I attended middle school and high school. It was from this school that I imbibed my idea of what it meant to be educated, and since I was a terrible college student who never attended class, this idea lay undisturbed until I turned twenty-three, when I thought to myself, “Welp, I better go and read those books that everyone is supposed to read.”
What a beautiful delusion!
Most apologetics for the classics are written by college professors and they tend to focus liberal education—what should kids be taught in college? I have no interest in this question. I think people should read the Great Books on their own, for various reasons that I elaborate in this book.
My book also takes seriously the questions that most books about the classics tend to elide: the issue of gender and racial diversity, the problem of world literature, and the question of whether reading the Great Books can inculcate regressive ideas. I have very strong opinions on all these questions, and you can read those questions in my book.
Out of everything I’ve ever written, I think this book has the greatest chance of breaking out and becoming a critical and commercial success. I very much hope it’ll be reviewed in all the major outlets, including the New York Times, New York Review of Books, London Review of Books, etc. My understanding is that while this outcome is unlikely, it is not at all impossible for this book—a similar book put out by my publisher was widely reviewed several years ago. And it begins with creating some kind of awareness amongst my readership that this book is coming and that it’s likely to be very good and very different from anything that currently exists.
P.S. If you actually want to check out my literary novel, here is the link. And my novella is here.
This year I’ve sold two short stories to Lightspeed, so I suppose the science-fictional phase of my career continues even to this day!
a strange and funny feature of the newsletter format is that you're launched straight into a writer's mind and can remain subscribed for months (maybe years) with no preamble or context, so i genuinely appreciate the introduction here!
I've read your literary novel *and* your YA novel! Please praise me accordingly as the One True Naomi Fan.