Thoughts on Publishing a Novel in 2025

Plus, the Counter Craft Year-End Round-Up

Before I dive into the year’s final Counter Craft article, let me brag a little and say that Metallic Realms was just named a Best Book of 2025 by Esquire! Reviews have called it “brilliant” (Esquire), “a total blast” (Chicago Tribune), “unrelentingly smart and inventive” (Locus), and “just plain wonderful” (Booklist). If you need a last-minute holiday gift for a book reader, maybe Metallic Realms would do?

William Caxton and his printing press by Paul Hardy

Okay, this will be my last post of the year. I’m going to start with my usual year-end round-up of Counter Craft posts, and then end with some scattered thoughts on the state of publishing and my experiences publishing my third book this year.

Counter Craft Year in Review

This was a rewarding year in Counter Craft. I published 50 pieces, meeting my goal of roughly one article a week. And I managed this while working a full-time job, publishing a novel (see above), and becoming a father. Several Counter Craft pieces went viral and my subscriber count increased several thousand over the year to just a hair under 19k today. As someone who used to edit a large literary website, I know how hard it is to build a consistent readership. I’m quite grateful to have built one here. So, thank you, dear subscribers.

And if you aren’t a subscriber yet, perhaps you’d like to sign up? I publish every new article for free, and have—at this point—a quite extensive archive for paying subscribers.

Here I’ll list a few highlights from the year of Counter Craft. First, I continued my author process interview series and expanded it to begin interviewing translators (Sam Bett), editors (Sean deLone), and booksellers (Fisher the Bookseller). I will aim to continue expanding the series in 2026 to other parts of the literary and publishing world.

In publishing demystification, I waded into the arguments about the alleged decline of literary fiction, discussed the book club industrial complex, and explained how to read a royalty statement.

In craft essays, I wrote about how “Style Is More than Sentences,” “Boredom Is Good (For Writers)” and asked “Is Your Worldbuilding Up to Code?”

In what I call “syllabi,” I wrote about “Literary Philosophy and Philosophical Literature,” “The Strange Shadow of Kafka’s Parables and Paradoxes,” and—in my most popular post—“Short Little Difficult Books.”

Why You Should Still Build Your Raft of Art in the Sea of Slop

In more general literary musings, I laid out my “Grand Ballroom Theory of Literature,” asked “What’s Not to Like about Unlikable Characters?”, and made an argument for “Why You Should Still Build Your Raft of Art in the Sea of Slop.”

Metallic Realms and Thoughts on Publishing a Book in 2025

I didn’t have much time to write outside of Counter Craft this year, beyond publishing the short story “The Tugwort” in Nightmare. Of course, my most important publication this year was my second novel, Metallic Realms. It is a weird novel that was written initially for my own enjoyment, attempting to cram as many things that I love about literature into one book without worrying myself about publication. I wrote about that process, and writing for yourself instead of the market, in this post. The fact that this weird and personal novel has received many glowing reviews, appeared on best of the year lists, and made strangers reach out to me to say it was the most fun they had reading this year or that it made them fall in love with science fiction again is extremely gratifying.

Metallic Realms Lands! And Thoughts on Writing for Yourself Instead of the Market

I’ve had a couple thrilling things happen with the book, including a deluxe edition with decked-out art and a forthcoming Italian translation. (As someone who largely reads translated literature, it has always been my dream to be translated. If any translators are reading this and need a new book to translate, hmu!) Obviously, one dreams of winning every award and topping the bestseller lists. But, I am proud of the novel and happy with how it was received. And I met my most important goal: selling the next book. I always tell my friends and loved ones that my goal is for the new book to do well enough to let me sell the next book. I want to write lots of books. I want a long bibliography. So, getting to the next book is the biggest thing.

Because I had a good experience, I feel like I can talk about the strange state of publishing in 2025 without bitterness clouding my vision.

Publishing is in a weird state. Perhaps it is always in a weird state, but each era of publishing is weird in its own way. My brief backstory is that I published my first book (a story collection on an independent press) in 2015, my first novel (a science fiction novel on Orbit) in 2021, and Metallic Realms this year. So, my history only goes back 10 years. Yet even in that short span of time I noticed some dramatic shifts.

Traditional Book Coverage Is Dwindling

The first shift I noticed was in book coverage. Or what is left of it. Earlier this year, Adam Morgan noted that there are only about seven full-time book reviewers left in America. It is harder than ever to get coverage in the traditional spaces of newspapers, glossy magazines, and radio. It is no secret that newspaper review space is shrinking and magazines are shuttering books coverage. Yet I still assumed that because my first two books got good reviews and my “name” has grown (thanks mostly to this Substack) that I would get more coverage in big outlets this time than last. That didn’t happen. My first two books got a fair number of newspaper and glossy mag coverage, including one being named a top 10 SFF book of the year by the NYT. I didn’t think this meant I’d get good reviews in those spaces this time. But I thought I’d get reviews. Instead, outside of a lovely review from John Warner at the Chicago Tribune and a couple “anticipated” lists, I didn’t get coverage in newspapers, glossy mags, or radio.

Now, it might be the particular book. Maybe Metallic Realms was in a nether zone between literary fiction and science fiction and editors didn’t know what to do with it. But many of my author friends experienced the same. They were getting fewer reviews, even when their past sales were strong and profile growing. Editors and agents tell me this is the new norm. It is just much harder to get review coverage in traditional outlets. Especially if you aren’t a debut. And especially for literary work—I mean this broadly, including innovative genre fiction—as many of the remaining legacy review sections are giving more attention to commercial fiction.

I wrote the above last week, and then saw Kathleen Schmidt (a great Substack follow for insights into publishing, especially the marketing and publicity side) confirm what I was noticing in her 2026 publishing predictions:

There will be even fewer opportunities with legacy media.

Can we please finally say the quiet part out loud? Most publicists spend their days emailing a banal list of media that will never respond. Why? What is the purpose? To show that an effort was made for a book? The industry must accept that some books absolutely will not get attention from legacy media and move towards what works for each book, whether that’s a marketing-heavy campaign or just pitching podcasts.

Sigh.

But there are perhaps two quasi upsides here. The first is that traditional book coverage is of decreasing importance. Over and over I’ve heard publishing insiders say that traditional book reviews just don’t sell books anymore. So, declining reviews doesn’t matter as much as it used to. As for the second upside:

Substack and Other Platforms Are (Somewhat) Filling the Gap

While legacy media book coverage withers, other seeds are sprouting. Podcasts and newsletters are replacing much of legacy media book coverage. My first novel came out in 2021, when Substack was buzzy yet didn’t have much of an impact in publishing. Four years later, and the difference is obvious. In the case of Metallic Realms, I got probably as much coverage on Substack as everywhere else combined. Fellow authors talked about doing “Substack tours” for their books. Publishers are noticing this shift and seem excited about the rise of newsletters. Maybe they learned from being late-to-the-party with booktok, or maybe they are just hoping for a life raft as other publicity venues disappear. But they are paying attention. Hell, to the groans of many on here, the traditional venues are also coming here. Even Harper’s and The New Yorker have Substacks now…

I think many on literary Substack get a little too romantic about Substack. This is still a tech platform that could at any moment pivot or enshittify in a way that ruins it for authors. Still, in 2025 it is hard to deny that Substack is central to the literary conversation. By virtue of being a longform text platform, Substack is inherently a better field for serious discussion of books to blossom than TikTok or Twitter. If any platform can fill the gap of traditional book coverage for literature, it is Substack.

The Balkanization of Books

Another change I noticed was how much publishing—like most of contemporary culture—is fracturing. Readers and publishers have always existed in different genre ecosystems. But now this is true of formats. While ebooks have been somewhat stagnant, audiobooks have dramatically grown in importance over the last decade. In print books, the rise of subscription boxes and book clubs means that many print sales occur in separate editions than the books sold in stores. The same novel might take off in audio while bombing in print, or vice versa. I imagine the readers of the OwlCrate deluxe edition of Metallic Realms are different than the ones who bought the main version from Atria Books. Just as books take off in different formats, they also take off in different platforms. The books that literary Substack raves are different than the books gushed about on BookTok. Add in self-publishing, Substack, Patreon, and the rest and it is a more chaotic publishing world.

You Have to Chart Your Own Path through the Chaos

But that also makes it a more freeing one. Authors can chart their own paths in these swirling seas, and a book’s poor sales in one format don’t necessarily hamper their sales in another. In general, the publishing world is both more fragmented and less restricted. When I began writing, most authors got slotted into a specific path. If you started publishing with science-fiction presses, it was hard to sell to literary imprints and vice versa. Small press authors rarely switched over to big presses. Self-published authors were never taken seriously. Etc. These days, those rules don’t exist.

I can think of plenty of authors who move between genre imprints to literary ones, or who publish on both big and small presses. I’m one of those authors myself, having published on an independent press (Coffee House) then an SFF imprint (Orbit) and then a general/literary imprint (Atria Books). So many writers of my generation follow a similar winding path. I also see lots of authors who supplement traditional books with self-publishing or serialize a novel on a place like Substack that then gets picked up by traditional press. I have only briefly experimented with publishing fiction on here, but if you’re interested in doing so I’d recommend Naomi Kanakia’s recent essay on the subject. Kanakia’s newsletter, Women of Letters, is always thought-provoking and her own career is a good example of charting your own path in publishing.

Today is a strange time to write, but a freeing one. The rules are gone. No one knows what works. Everyone is throwing things against the wall to see what sticks. It is a time to be nimble, try different things, and construct a career for yourself from whatever works for you.

Onto 2026

Okay, that’s it for me in 2025. See you all in 2026, when I plan to continue expanding Counter Craft’s interview series, explain more of my half-serious theories of literature, write about more weird books I love, and other things that come up as they come up.

Until then.

---

My new novel Metallic Realms is out in stores! Reviews have called the book “brilliant” (Esquire), “riveting” (Publishers Weekly), “hilariously clever” (Elle), “a total blast” (Chicago Tribune), “unrelentingly smart and inventive” (Locus), and “just plain wonderful” (Booklist). My previous books are the science fiction noir novel The Body Scout and the genre-bending story collection Upright Beasts. If you enjoy this newsletter, perhaps you’ll enjoy one or more of those books too.