Revolutionize Literature and use Substack to Do It

Lessons from publishing history and the bastardization of Lord of the Rings.

Once again, the fiction side of Substack is asking what’s to be done about fiction on Substack, and I’ve come across a video that has reset my thinking on the matter. The vast majority of my readers won’t click on the video, but fear not, I’ll be careful to word what I have to say so that you won’t miss anything if you don’t.

For the rebels, here’s your chance to see it for yourself.

The focus of her video essay is fantasy, but don’t let that worry you if your neither read nor write fantasy. Taking our focus off of the genre concerns of the publishing industry is very likely one of the steps we’ll need to take if we are to…

Revolutionize Literature and use Substack to Do It

Hilary Layne gets one bit of publishing history wrong and tries to correct herself with subtitles added in the editing, but that didn’t quite get us there. The mistake was that she conflated the 1954 hardcover publishing of Lord of the Rings with the 1965 paperback publishing, and that difference is crucial in understanding the books’ success.

Publisher or author, I’m not sure which, but someone decided that The Lord of the Rings was above a paperback edition. Without that paperback, there would never have been the student obsession with the novels that then spawned the cultural obsession and after that the intellectual obsession.

When someone released a bootleg paperback, that created the urgency needed, and a genuine paperback release quickly materialized. The history of fantasy and publishing in general would have been significantly different without it.

The relatable point here is that there existed an accessible publishing form that seemed beneath legitimate publishing but was the key to birthing a phenomenon. The role that paperbacks filled in the 1960’s, might be played by Substack, today.

Beyond that slip-up, I trust that the rest of Hilary Layne’s history is correct because none of it just happens to hit some tidbit of publishing history of which I’m keenly aware.

The History of the Modern Fantasy Genre is the History of Modern Publishing

In the 1990’s Michael Moorcock and George R. R. Martin were central in a movement in fantasy publishing that positioned itself as the anti-Tolkien. There are attempts today to react against that reaction. The heart of Layne’s video essay points out that these are formulaic responses to a formulaic problem, one that wasn’t caused by Tolkien but Lester Del Rey.

Del Rey wanted to ride the coat-tails of culture’s obsession with Tolkien and created a formula for derivative material of various qualities that became the publishing model of Del Rey from The Sword of Shanarra through to The Wheel of Time. It’s success became the standard.

Side Note:

Please understand, that I’m not engaged in a take down of these books. I don’t know their quality because that was never my interest. I’ve read The Lord of the Rings but none of Del Rey books. It’s okay to love these books. That’s not the point. For me personally, I see myself as a fantasy writer, but I feel out of place standing in the fantasy isle of a bookstore. That’s just me being me.

On the other hand, I’ve read The Master and Margarita three times since discovering it in 1989. It’s my favorite novel.

The formula that Del Rey insisted upon was this:

Original novels. Invented worlds where magic works. A male central character who, with his innate virtue, triumphs over the forces of evil who were generally associated with technology.

Del Rey came at a time when the publishing houses had been purchased from the founding families by big conglomerates. Publishing had gone from focusing on the art to focusing on the business, and that’s what his formula was meant to capture. It worked.

Those who rebelled against the trend in the nineties inverted the formula to the same purpose.

Layne says the answer won’t be found in those trying to write the anti-Game of Thrones. It won’t be a response to the formulas but will rather ignore them.

It’s Not About Me

I’ll confess to the fantasies that darted through my mind as I watched the video. I wanted to be the publishing magnate that turned Substack into something profitable for fiction, but that’s already holding to the same problematic formula. It’s about me, and it’s about the buck.

Of course, writers need to earn from their work, but I’m not thinking of myself as the writer in that scenario. So let’s back up and start again.

It’s About the Work

We’re looking for a story to capture the imagination of Substack, and it has to be genuine. Suggestions are often made for catapulting a writer or a story into the Substack’s collective consciousness, but these ideas are usually artificial, planned out like any other industry push where the quality of the story is of secondary importance.

If there’s a formula or a response to formula here, it should be this. The dictates of the old publishing world are meaningless here. It’s not about associating ourselves with a genre but creating the best work possible. We aren’t creating the inverse of an old formula but seeking to create stories based on the needs and demands of that story.

Perhaps we’re doing that now. So… why have none of us taken Substack by storm? The answer’s obvious, but you’re not going to like it: our work has to be better.

Traditional publishing is its own worst enemy. We’re not going to get anywhere by comparing ourselves to that. We have to be better than traditional publishing. That’s a given. Ignore it. We have to be better than self publishing. That’s a given; ignore it.

By comparing ourselves to outdated, formulaic business models, we will only hinder our growth.

Substack becomes relevant when we focus on writing better than we’ve ever written before. That’s when Substack ceases to be an alternative means of consumption and starts being the new home of creative freedom. We’re so used to being artificially manipulated into buying whatever someone wants us to buy, we believe that’s the model we need to imitate. It’s not.

We must be authentic. We must be focused on the quality of the art. Fiction will be recognized on Substack when it deserves to be.

To be of comparable quality is to consign ourselves to anonymity.

How can we hope to achieve this when they have all the resources and full-time, world-class editors and entire teams dedicated to the production of a single book? Those systems will only ever produce a book of the quality it allows. We’ve been brainwashed into believing they’re better by virtue of being chosen.

We don’t have their resources, but we don’t have their limitations either.

At least, we shouldn’t have their limitations, but we’ve adopted their constraints as our own. We write within their prison walls because that’s the only freedom we’ve ever been allowed. Until that changes, nothing else will.

If we’re writing the equivalent of knock-off purses, we’ll never be better than the original. If we’re doing our own thing, we can go places and accomplish miracles the traditional published author never dreamed of.

But that’s a choice. One we each have to choose for ourselves.

And here’s where I depart from Layne. It’s not enough to ignore formula because it’s baked into us now. To ignore is to recreate it.

She’s right though, doing the opposite is to do the same. That puts us in a place where it can seem there is no escape.

If there’s interest, I can try to follow up with a few essays exploring how we challenge the narrative limits baked within us, but this isn’t about me. It’s about us as a community. We have to challenge this together and help each other recognize the old limitations and push past them.

It’s also about becoming active in each other’s micro-communities, because that’s where the real work is done.

— Thaddeus Thomas