When MacKenzie Scott gives, she does so freely, with few strings attached and little regard for convention beyond the rules she sets for herself. That same unabashed approach to philanthropy now appears to extend to MacKenzie Scott the author. For her third book, an 80,000-word novel titled Last Days in Two Nations (A History in Eighteen Minds), the megadonor self-published it for free, releasing it serially on Substack throughout August 2026 before completing the novel on August 31. The entire book can now be downloaded free as an ebook or PDF. It has been 13 years since she published her last novel, Traps, and more than two decades since her 2005 debut, The Testing of Luther Albright. So why is a billionaire worth roughly $33 billion giving away an 80,000-word book for nothing?
Perhaps the answer lies in scale. Scott has distributed more than $26 billion through over 2,700 gifts in recent years, making whatever royalties she might sacrifice on a novel almost microscopic by comparison. What is arguably more interesting, however, is not that she is giving the book away, but how she has chosen to release it.
The woman who was there during Amazon’s earliest years, as it grew from an online bookstore into the company that transformed how books are bought and distributed, has once again chosen not to publish through Amazon. The Testing of Luther Albright went to Fourth Estate/HarperCollins, while Traps was published by Knopf. Her former husband Jeff Bezos once jokingly described her as “the fish that got away” because she had taken her books elsewhere.
Last Days in Two Nations (A History in Eighteen Minds) is a speculative political thriller that imagines a post-pandemic America fractured into two territories: the relatively free Still United and the authoritarian Dakota Membership. Told through a sprawling collection of perspectives, the dystopian story deals with power, control and personal freedom.
Scott studied creative writing at Princeton University under Toni Morrison, who became her mentor, and her 2005 debut, The Testing of Luther Albright, went on to win an American Book Award. Commercially, though, her first two novels originally sold for roughly $24 and $25 in hardcover and reportedly moved only a few thousand print copies. Sales of only several thousand copies would likely have translated into thousands or perhaps low five figures in royalties.
Clearly, money does not appear to be the agenda here. MacKenzie Scott helped Jeff Bezos build a life alongside Amazon as it evolved from a bookseller into one of the most powerful companies in the world. Yet when it comes to her own books, she has repeatedly followed a different path. Amazon changed how the world bought books. It just never dictated how MacKenzie Scott sold hers. And this time, she isn’t selling one at all.
