Scouting Report 📝
New: Collaboration Opportunities Inside!
Welcome to the Scouting Report! This is a monthly edition of the newsletter that will be sent to all subscribers with a round-up of favorite reads, resources, publishing news, updates, and team-building ideas and opportunities. This email is designed to be skimmable and value-packed. If you’ve missed my last few emails, this is where you can get caught up.
The Starting Line-Up 📚
📕This month on Writing Is A Team Sport, I offered up some coaching for those who didn’t have the strongest start to their 2025 and also helped answer the question on whether or not you should use your writing platform to engage in political discourse.
📗Coming up in February: I’m getting a lot of questions about platform and social media strategy as our digital landscapes continue to evolve and shift, so I’ll be writing and coaching about best practices and considerations for practicing authorship in online spaces. Paid subscribers will receive a video training to help them clarify their own digital strategy for 2025.
📘I still have a limited number of 1-on-1 book coaching spots available for the spring. If you’re eager to make progress on your book proposal or manuscript in 2025, now is the time to make a move.
Ask Me Anything 🔎
❓What is the average amount of an advance with a traditional publisher? Is there a number too low that you would not advise authors to accept?
I wish I had a straightforward answer to these questions, but as with most things in the publishing industry, it depends on so many different factors. Fiction or non-fiction? Literary or commercial? Small press or large publisher? First-time author or veteran author? Is the author known or unknown? Qualified or unqualified? What is currently trending in publishing and in culture? How is the economy doing? Is the book’s concept fresh or is there saturation around its topic? How well did similar books sell? Is the author or the book’s topic in demand or not?
As for the second question about a number “too low” to accept, the answer is completely dependent on the author and their own personal goals and options for achieving those. A minimum number is going to be subjective to each person and each project. Only you know what guaranteed amount would make it worth it for you. Remember that an advance is simply the guaranteed income from your book. It’s not a cap. A lower advance means that you will hopefully be seeing royalties beyond your advance come in sooner rather than later.
Do keep in mind that what makes traditional publishing unique to self- and hybrid publishing is that the publisher is the one responsible for the cost of and labor for the editorial, production, and distribution—not you. In the current state of the industry and in our current economy, for most authors (especially those who are unagented), any offer of publication from a traditional publisher that includes an advance is worthy of being proud of. Even if you ultimately decide to go a different route in your publishing journey.
Do you have a question for me? Ask me here. I’ll be selecting questions to answer in upcoming posts and using your questions to guide my upcoming content.
Team Up 🤝
New for 2025 is an opportunity for readers of Writing Is A Team Sport to connect and find others to collaborate with. Team Up is for writers who would like to be invited as a guest to share on another creator’s Substack, podcast, Instagram, or another platform. This is also for creators who are looking for guests to host on your platform. Find your writing team by filling out this form or perusing the collab bulletin board below.
📌 is looking for platforms to share about her forthcoming memoir, Famished, releasing in late 2025. She writes about purity culture, diet culture, and other theme around fundamentalism and faith after deconstruction.
📌 is promoting her hilarious new memoir God, Sex, and Rich People: A Recovering Evangelical Testimony and would like to connect with readers, writers, and influencers who are looking to share their platforms with like-minded authors.
📌 is looking for progressive, fully affirming Christian perspectives beyond her own, with priority to queer Christian leaders, to feature on Invisible Cake Society. She is also looking to guests on podcasts who are seeking voices of faith from the LGBTQ+ community.
📌 features a guest writer each month on Beautiful Discipleship, and will also be hosting monthly podcast conversations in 2025. She is looking for excellent writers who reflect God’s beauty through ordinary faithfulness.
📌 is looking for people from a variety of faith and spiritual backgrounds, whether Christian or otherwise, to share with her readers about their faith journeys on Caitlin Chats .
📌 is looking for podcast guests who have stories or testimonies about “growing and going” with God: discipleship, encouragement, and helping believers go the distance in their faith. Em is also looking to be a guest on other podcasts or platforms on the topics of “Believe the Best: Taking Thoughts Captive so They Don’t Takeover” or “The Power of Again,” which are both topics that speak to the power of neuroplasticity in discipleship and thought lives.
📌 is looking for guests for Just One More Chapter who have compelling stories of authenticity, resilience, and hope to share with her readers. She is also looking for guest-writing or podcast-guest opportunities to share her story of hope forged through hardship with like-minded women of faith.
📌 Jessica is looking to share on podcasts or Substacks how the historical context of the Bible reveals God's heart as pro-women alongside re-evaluating the stories of women of the Bible in their historical context. She is also looking for guests on her podcast and blog who are experts in fields related to trauma, therapy, women's concerns, parenting topics, etc.
📌 is looking to share about her book, Religious Rebels: Finding Jesus in the Awkward Middle Way, on podcasts. Christy also welcomes writers who are just starting out to reach out to her if you are feeling discouraged about platform growth. She finds joy in encouraging new writers and coaching them to find their voice and their audience.
Skill Development 🔖
🎯 Steal ’s Writing Launch Plan GAANT Chart template! If you want to be an author, you can’t just be a writer. You also need to be a project manager.
🎯 Have you ever wondered how books end up in small local bookstores? My friends and , owners of Nooks in Lancaster, PA, pull back the curtain on how they curate their bookshop inventory in an episode of So, We Bought a Bookshop.
🎯 teaches us How To Write Cold Emails That Don’t Suck. Whether you are pitching yourself, your project, or just reaching out to make a new connection, knowing how to effectively write a cold email is an undervalued skill.
🎯 A lot of people are evaluating their relationship with social media in 2025 and Substack is seeing a lot of new writers and readers jumping on the platform as a result. explores the question, what happens when we shift our creative energy away from algorithms?
Win Record 📋
🏆 I have two exciting speaking opportunities this month. First, I’ll be speaking with the iconic ’s The Book Academy cohort. Then later this month I’ll be in Charleston, SC for ’s Book Camp! I’d love to schedule more speaking events like these in 2025!
🏆 I did a lot of reading it January, thanks to my new Kindle. The two stand-out books I read were Seven Days In June by Tia Williams and How We Learn To Be Brave by Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde. (Yes, I also read Onyx Storm, and I’m still processing it. Thanks for giving me my privacy during this difficult time.)
💬 You’re up! What have you read or learned lately that you want to share with the team?
Not ready for a paid subscription to Writing Is A Team Sport but still want to support my work? Here are some ways to consider:
❤️ Comment, like, or restack this post here on Substack.
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Wow wow wow what a rich resource filled edition! I will be reaching out to so many of the women you listed here and extending their info accordingly! Thank you, Morgan. Also I’m getting together with Kelsey Pomeroy tonight ☺️
So many fantastic resources! I just stumbled upon your work (thanks algorithm!) and am glad I did. Also, I can attest that @meganjconner is a dream to work with, as she just featured one of my stories on her substack!