Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk to serialise new book on Substack

on Sep 23, 2021

Palahniuk’s sixteenth novel, Greener Pastures, shall be printed in regular installments from subsequent Monday, at a subscription value of $6 a month or $40 12 months.

It follows Salman Rushdie’s deal to publish his subsequent work of fiction as a serialized novella on Substack, whereas Patti Smith and the Israeli writer Etgar Keret have additionally signed up with the corporate. Substack, which has based mostly a lot of its attraction on attracting well-known journalists such because the Rolling Stone contributor Matt Taibi, has greater than 500,000 clients subscribing to its roster of writers.

Palahniuk stated he was approached by Substack to publish his subsequent work on the platform and was drawn to a providing of editorial independence. “That’s really attractive, the idea that you don’t have somebody editing the content of your work.”

Substack has paid Palahniuk an upfront sum for Greener Pastures and, not like with a typical publishing advance, there are not any circumstances connected over what he writes. The serialization shall be interspersed with quick tales from Palahniuk and present and former college students from his writing workshop in Portland, Oregon, in addition to classes on writing craft and the way to navigate the publishing business.

The first three chapters of Greener Pastures shall be made out there without spending a dime and shall be printed on 27 September and 4 October. His Substack launched formally at 5 pm on Monday with a publication containing anecdotes and writing classes. Palahniuk followers pay $200 to be “founder members” of his enterprise.

The 59-year-old author stated Greener Pastures began out as a bit of younger grownup fiction and have become “really dark and somewhat sexualized”. It depicts “the crisis young people face as they must choose a career, a partner, and find a home and job,” and is a couple of group of high school college students who’re supplied the prospect to public sale themselves off as successors to billionaires and royalty all over the world.

The novel comprises signature, jolting Palahniuk scenes. It opens with a 14-year-old lady climbing the stained-glass window of a church in the entrance of a hostile congregation, bleeding from glass cuts as she tries to free a trapped hummingbird. Later within the novel, two dads and mom search refuge from a forest hearth by hiding in their very own partially stuffed septic tank. “I was told young adult fiction could not be too dark but it’s a slippery slope,” stated the author.

Palahniuk, whose most famed novel depicts a disaffected, remoted group of males, hopes that his publication and serialization will construct an extra optimistic online neighborhood. Admitting that he’s “sick” of “editorializing” online articles and prefers extra helpful web content material reminiscent of YouTube tutorials on how to clear backyard furnishings, Palahniuk stated: “If it’s just opinion I don’t want to hear it. With this, I want to be offering people the nuts and bolts, the skills that people have taught me over the years.”

In the offline world, Palahniuk has a three-book take care of Hachette, underneath which he has printed his two most up-to-date novels. A book model of Greener Pastures could possibly be printed by the French-owned writer, which has proper of the first refusal. “My readership tends to be completist and they want copies of all the books,” stated Palahniuk.

The publishing business shall be “phlegmatic” about well-known novelists transferring into the digital sphere, in accordance to one knowledgeable. “In the history of modern publishing, no one has really worked out how to make long-form narrative fiction or nonfiction work commercially unless it is in a book format,” stated Philip Jones, editor of commerce title The Bookseller.

The Substack deal comes after Palahniuk discovered himself “close to broke” when he was the sufferer of embezzlement by an accountant working for his former literary agency. Darin Webb, a bookkeeper for Donadio & Olson, was sentenced to two years in jail in 2018 after Palahniuk misplaced an estimated $2.5m as a part of the fraud.

“I was compelled to sell my house, but Hachette has helped me regain my footing. The Substack deal was not motivated by money, but my curiosity,” stated Palahniuk.

Source: Pehalnews