A few comments on writing: If you want to publish your book, you may not want to post all the chapters on this site. I understand that diminishes the interest of publishers, if it is all already published somewhere. What you might do is put just the juiciest bits on this site, which would a) make posts shorter b) possibly make it more appealing to casual readers and c) be enough of a sample of your writing to intrigue an agent and a publishing house. Plus your weekly sidebars. If what you really want is to do the writing but you don't actually care about getting a non-fiction book published professionally, then by all means post it all.
I find your writing style charming. And it sounds like your voice, which is also a good thing in writing.
Last, and you already know this, I'm sure, once you have written all the chapters, you may want to edit and re-organize and you may even change your thesis or the overarching plot or essential moral of the story if the research takes you somewhere else. So hold it lightly. Be ready to kill your darlings. As they say.
Thank you for that! I think I've been evolving towards a similar viewpoint since I posted this a couple of months ago, which is: let the Substack be the Substack. Don't publish book chapters on a Substack. Instead, leverage Substack to do things I can't do with a book, like include endless free images from Wikimedia Commons and music videos from YouTube. Get an online following on Substack first, establish my expertise, and then figure out what of this material is best curated into a book.
A few comments on writing: If you want to publish your book, you may not want to post all the chapters on this site. I understand that diminishes the interest of publishers, if it is all already published somewhere. What you might do is put just the juiciest bits on this site, which would a) make posts shorter b) possibly make it more appealing to casual readers and c) be enough of a sample of your writing to intrigue an agent and a publishing house. Plus your weekly sidebars. If what you really want is to do the writing but you don't actually care about getting a non-fiction book published professionally, then by all means post it all.
I find your writing style charming. And it sounds like your voice, which is also a good thing in writing.
Last, and you already know this, I'm sure, once you have written all the chapters, you may want to edit and re-organize and you may even change your thesis or the overarching plot or essential moral of the story if the research takes you somewhere else. So hold it lightly. Be ready to kill your darlings. As they say.
Thank you for that! I think I've been evolving towards a similar viewpoint since I posted this a couple of months ago, which is: let the Substack be the Substack. Don't publish book chapters on a Substack. Instead, leverage Substack to do things I can't do with a book, like include endless free images from Wikimedia Commons and music videos from YouTube. Get an online following on Substack first, establish my expertise, and then figure out what of this material is best curated into a book.