Pitfalls Of Self Publishing
Playing the game is the game itself.
Lately I’ve been thinking about how writing online has changed. Not just what gets shared, but how everyone's supposed to show up, too.
My drug of choice isn't Instagram as it once was. These days, it's Substack. The platform promotes itself as a home for newsletters, but behaves more like a social feed. And that's starting to wear on me a bit.
Substack claims to be a place for writers, but it's engineered for scrollers. And, ok sure, that's needed for any platform to provide some sort of user experience… However, Substack used to be talked about as “independent media” and served as a way for writers to publish their work without gatekeepers or algorithmic consumption models.
Now, even the App Store tagline reads “Videos, writing & podcasts” with a user interface like that of Twitter and TikTok rolled into one. This part unfortunately makes sense, given their recent funding from media conglomerates like Andreesen Horowitz. That's the same venture firm who built the entire attention economy.
My point is this: how are people—not corporations—supposed to gain any sort of publishing traction without using some form of social media? And even using social media is a toss-up, since people are fed up with ads and algorithms and less likely to find new creators at all.
Kevin Kelly, author and founding executive editor of Wired magazine, originally wrote about 1,000 true fans in 2008. The premise is that you don't need millions of social media followers if your goal is monetization for a decent living. Instead, he shared a sustainable model for generating 1,000 true fans that will happily consume your work.
Everything I Know about Self-Publishing by Kevin Kelly
Read on Substack
Is Kevin's 1,000 true fans still true? Yes.
Is it possible for someone starting from zero? No. Not without social media, anyway.
These are the pitfalls of self publishing. And I hate that. Otherwise, I wouldn't be on social media at all. But here I am. I keep showing up. Because I like the work. That’s also why The MAP Year starts next week... because I’m done spending time on trying to play that game. I’d rather build and write alongside people who still care about the work itself.
Less competition and more collaboration, please.
onward.
-dmac