MacKenzie Scott Is Publishing Her New Novel for Free on Substack

MacKenzie Scott is returning to fiction after a thirteen-year break, but in a way few would expect from one of the richest women in the world. Since August 8, the writer and philanthropist has been serializing her third novel, Last Days in Two Nations (A History in Eighteen Minds), for free on Substack.

At roughly 80,000 words, the book is a political dystopia told through eighteen different minds. America is no longer one country. It has been divided between the so-called Still United States and the breakaway Dakota Membership.

The story unfolds against the backdrop of a partial fascist takeover, with two rival presidents competing for power. Amid political radicalization and the collapse of any shared sense of reality, eighteen characters try to understand what is actually happening around them.

And if that description sounds unusual, the novel itself is even harder to categorize. I read the prologue and, at least for now, found both the story and the genre abstract enough that I probably will not continue.

But in this case, that is actually the less interesting part of the story. Far more intriguing is the way MacKenzie Scott has chosen to publish the book.

80,000 Words, No Publisher and No Price

Scott has not chosen a major publishing house. There were no pre-orders. No traditional book launch. There is also none of the usual campaign of interviews, television appearances, and paid promotion that tends to accompany a new novel.

Instead, she turned to Substack and began releasing the book directly to readers, in installments, completely free. This is where the experiment becomes more interesting than the novel itself.

For independent authors, direct access to readers is often presented as a way to bypass traditional publishing gatekeepers and retain greater control over their work. In Scott’s case, however, the financial equation is almost irrelevant.

She does not need an advance. She does not need sales to finance her next book. She is not dependent on bookstore distribution. She does not even need the novel to become commercially successful.

And that raises a far more interesting question: Does money free an author from the market, or does it simply make possible a kind of independence that almost no other writer can afford?

A Writer Long Before She Became Known as a Philanthropist

Today, MacKenzie Scott’s name is associated primarily with her extraordinary charitable giving and with her former marriage to Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. But writing came long before either of those things defined her public image.

Scott was born in 1970 in the San Francisco Bay Area and studied literature and creative writing at Princeton. One of her professors was Toni Morrison, the Pulitzer Prize and Nobel Prize-winning author, who later described Scott as one of the best students she had taught in her creative writing classes.

Scott’s first novel, The Testing of Luther Albright, was published in 2005 and won an American Book Award. Her second, Traps, followed in 2013. Then came a thirteen-year break from fiction.

In the meantime, Scott’s life changed dramatically. Following her divorce from Jeff Bezos in 2019, she received a substantial stake in Amazon and gradually became one of the world’s most significant private philanthropists, donating tens of billions of dollars to thousands of organizations.

Now she is returning to the role she chose long before the billions – writer.