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A Wild Live with Elle Griffin on "How to publish a book on Substack" and creating a utopian collapse

A recording from Sarah Wilson's live video

Thank you

, , , , and many others for tuning into my live video with recorded in an BnB in Marseilles after a 18km hike in The Callanques. My phone is sitting a top a toaster, propped up by a sugar canister. Ever professional…

I’ve been following Elle’s work for a bit. At first because her utopian take on collapse challenged me when I first encountered it. She then wrote a viral post about the state of the publishing industry, highlighting facts like:

96 percent of books published in the US sell less than 1,000 copies.

50 percent sell less than a dozen copies.

She’s also something of a pioneer in the “book serialisation on Substack” thing and was kind enough to take a call from me when I first started out on my serialisation path, giving me super helpful advice.

I’ve made this post public so feel free to share it with friends…

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A bit about Elle

is the founder and editor of Substack exploring post-capitalist creativity and the future of media. A former Substack Fellow and Roots of Progress Fellow, she gave a TEDx talk after serialising her first novel and has been featured in The New York Times, BBC, Fast Company, and more.

She’s on a mission to transform our media landscape — from doomscrolling and dystopia to solutions, speculation, and generative, independent storytelling. And yes, she’s optimistic enough to believe that shifting the media could shift the world.

The posts I mention in our chat:

No one buys books

How Silicon Valley got rich

Who should control AI?

Mondragon as the new City-State

And here’s a guest post Elle wrote on This is Precious about a very particular kind of utopia:

Feel free to post questions for Elle in the comments…

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