Random Thoughts on One Year with Substack
Plus: Next Book Club Selection!
About one year ago, I was working with my publisher SparkPress and their distributor Simon & Schuster in the early stages of planning for the promotion of my second novel Open Bar, which was scheduled to be published that August. Back then, I knew very little about successful book promotion (and now I know only a little more than that). But I kept hearing over and over from authors, book publicists, and others in the publishing industry that having a Substack was an important part of establishing and growing an author platform.
What was Substack? I had no idea. But the suggestion of starting a Substack came up so many times that I decided to look into it more. And I was inspired by the informative and interesting Substacks of SparkPress publisher Brooke Warner, friend and public policy expert Olivia of Troye, author Daisy Alpert Florin, and others.
The more I saw, the more I liked. Substack provides a great forum for long-form expression about reading, writing, and other ideas. It also doesn’t seem to have the constant toxic negativity of other social media sites. So I decided to give it a chance, and created this Substack: Guys Don’t Read Novels. Then, one year ago this month, I sent out my first Substack post to a vast audience of eleven subscribers, all of whom were relatives or close friends. It started like this:
When my debut novel Final Table was published, a really weird thing happened. Over and over, guy friends and acquaintances said some version of this to me: “Congratulations! Your book sounds so interesting. I would totally read it if I read novels.” Another (better) male comment I sometimes received was, “I never read novels but I read yours!”
I grew up with a mother who was a high school English teacher and gave me a love of novels at a young age, then I majored in English in college with a dream of being a writer. I was constantly exposed to great books and others who loved reading so in my bubble I was completely unaware that guys don’t read novels.
I aimed to write a weekly Tuesday morning Substack post, and over the past year I’ve produced forty-two, including this one. Not exactly weekly, but close. So far I’ve posted about the fiction writing process, my personal writing journey, the publication of Open Bar, the challenges of book promotion, whether books are sexy, a lot of book recommendations, and much more. I’ve greatly enjoyed having this new forum for creative expression about all things fiction writing and reading, and sharing interactions with subscribers and others on Substack.
There’s still a lot on this platform that I haven’t taken advantage of, or figured out how to use effectively, such as the Substack Live video feature. The conversation I had with Olivia Troye was one of the highlights of the Open Bar book promotion process, and I’d like to start doing more videos with other authors and reader Q&As about our books.
It seems that other social media sites see the growing threat of Substack. When I post anything about my novels on Facebook or LinkedIn, I generally get a lot of engagement from others. But if I include a link to a Substack post on these sites with the same content, it mostly goes unseen. I guess these other sites don’t want to steer traffic to Substack. It’s frustrating, but I understand their focus on self-preservation.
In addition to creating this Substack to build my author platform, I very much wanted to create a new, fun, and interesting community for fiction readers and writers. I think it’s challenging to find others to discuss novels and writing, and this has provided a great forum. A big part of this reader/writing community is our Book Club. I introduced the Book Club a year ago this way:
Unfortunately, while my wife Jen gets invited to join book clubs, as a guy no one ever invites me join a book club. So I’m starting my own.
Why start a new book club? Well, I read a lot of novels, mostly current or recent literary fiction. Some are mainstream, but others are less well-known. For example, a few recent novels I’ve really enjoyed are All-Night Pharmacy by Ruth Madievsky, All Fours by Miranda July, The Stockwell Letters by Jacqueline Friedland, Post-Traumatic by Chantal V. Johnson, My Last Innocent Year by Daisy Alpert Florin, Bunny by Mona Awad, Shmutz by Felicia Berliner, I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness by Claire Vaye Watkins, Sea of Tranquility by Emily St. John Mandel, My Year of Rest and Relaxation by Ottessa Moshfegh, A Burning by Megha Majumdar, Luster by Raven Leilani, My Dark Vanessa by Kate Elizabeth Russell, and I’m a Fan by Sheena Patel.
I find that I rarely know people who are reading the same novels, so I hardly ever have someone to discuss them with. If you’d like to join me in reading and talking about interesting novels like those above, or would just like to attend and hear about some great books, I’d love for you to join.
The Guys Don’t Read Novels Book Club will meet via Zoom and is open to everyone. More info coming soon. If you’re interested, please respond in the comments or message me!
Since then, the Book Club has met six times and read Counting Backwards by Jacqueline Friedland, North Woods by Daniel Mason, Smokebirds by Daniel Breyer, Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, Ripe by Sarah Rose Etter, and Her Cowboy Billionaire Best Friend by … okay, we didn’t really read that last one.
(As an aside, can you believe that Goodreads shows seven different authors who have written novels about billionaire cowboy best friends? I have two questions: 1) Is there really that much to write about billionaire cowboy best friends? and 2) Why do ads for these books keep popping up on my Kindle? Also, please stay tuned for my debut novel’s upcoming sequel, Billionaire Cowboy Best Friend at the Final Table.)
But back to Book Club: we have a fun, lively, and welcoming group that has discussed a variety of great novels. More information about our next meeting is below. Hope you can join us!
Most importantly, I’d like to thank all of you so much for subscribing to Guys Don’t Read Novels, and for your comments, suggestions, and encouragement over the past year as this Substack has continued to grow - I greatly appreciate it!
Quote of the Week
“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” - Earnest Hemingway
Next Book Club Selection
Our next Book Club will take place via Zoom on Monday, March 30 at 8pm ET, when we’ll discuss Notes on Infinity by Austin Taylor. Registration is open here.
This novel was recommended by a couple of our Book Club members, and it sounds very interesting and timely. Here’s the Goodreads description:
Harvard students Zoe and Jack find themselves propelled into the intoxicating biotech startup world when they announce they’ve discovered the cure for aging.
Zoe, the daughter of an MIT professor who grew up in her brother’s shadow, can envision her future anew at Harvard University. Jack, a boy in Zoe’s organic chemistry class with unruly hair and a gleam of competitiveness, matches her intellect and curiosity with every breath. When Jack refers Zoe for a position in a prestigious professor’s lab, the two become entwined as colleagues, staying up late to discuss scientific ideas. They find themselves on the cusp of a breakthrough: the promise of immortality through a novel anti-ageing drug.
Zoe and Jack set off on their new project in secret. Finding encouraging results, they bring their work to an investor, drop out of Harvard, and form a startup. But after the money, the magazine covers, and the national news stories detailing their success, Zoe and Jack receive a startling accusation that threatens to destroy both the company they built and their partnership.
Feel free to attend even if you don’t read the book, and please pass on the info to anyone else who might be interesting in joining!
Open Bar Info
My second novel Open Bar is published by SparkPress and distributed by Simon & Schuster. Based on my experience as a New York sex crimes prosecutor and a sexual misconduct investigator for educational institutions, Open Bar follows the chaotic fallout when a high-profile sexual misconduct scandal rocks a prominent university.
You can find more information and links to order here and here. Kirkus Reviews calls Open Bar “A timely and absorbing novel that asks what it costs to tell the truth” and says, “Schorr’s prose is clean, fast-moving, and often laced with dark humor” (full review here). The American Fiction Awards named Open Bar as this year’s Winner in the Thriller: Political category, and the Firebird Book Awards selected Open Bar as its Fiction Winner.
You can also listen to the first chapter of the Open Bar audiobook, narrated by Moniqua Plante.
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