I want to discuss two things with you anons: >1. What avenues of monetization other than traditional publishing are available to writers today? To clarify, I don't mean ways to squeeze every cent out of a short story or a serialized novel or a poem, I'm more interested in the middle way between putting the work out there for free and pursuing traditional publication.And more importantly:>2. What are ways to reach the eyes of potential readers (again, other than uploading on a personal blog or getting an agent and going through tradpub channels)?
fucking retardyou know the answer is self-publishing through Amazon/Kindlefuck off
>>25558669Saying "rely on the Amazon algorithms to reach readers once you've self-published" is not an answer. Say you're a short story writer or a poet who is continually producing work, or you have a project which is larger than self-publishing a collection on Amazon. Does nobody have experience with trying alternative ways to find and engage readers? There must be weird/interesting Patreon campaigns out there or something I don't know about yet
>>25558663>What avenues of monetization other than traditional publishing are available to writers today? Prostitution>What are ways to reach the eyes of potential readers?Commit to a prolonged stint of domestic terrorism and then submit your manifesto to a large newspaper
>>25559040Hi, uncle, but I thought we buried you?
>>25559062My ghost appears if an Anon posts the cringey forestanon chart 3 times on the board
>>25558663Something along the lines of gaining a following on social media (e-whoredom).
Everyone just thinks of writing as another form of content now, and 99% of people implicitly feel that content should be free, that really they're doing the noble thing for the creator by bothering to consume it rather than something else. There is no way to make the content valuable or especially attractive in this environment. It goes the other way. You get clout which gets you money, and then you can get more people to read your writing. Most authors would be more successful if they spent three years on a twitch channel than if they spent three years getting an MFA.Getting known and paid through writing is like being a concert pianist. There are competition venues (for writing it's getting something published over all the other submissions in 20 or so lit mags) and if you succeed in those maybe you'll get an institutional patron, which means a university teaching job for writers most of the time. Good luck with that, fighting other talented people who will also sacrifice everything for a chance at the end result, and who have demographic advantages over you (not a lot of tenure track spots for white males, even less if your writing is in any way objectionable).
>>25559196I think you hit the nail on the head with the inversion of first clout then money, which is not like a "traditional business". This leaves the question, how exactly do you get clout? Say you're writing sci-fi or fantasy, then you have AO3 or Roaylroad or some forums where you can start gathering readers and so on, but what if you write poetry or literary fiction? If you look at things like needing to find an institutional patron as you called it, it feels like a chunk of the market logic behind writing as something capable of paying the bills is currently missing from the world. And I say writing, because social media at present provide an avenue for decent income if you're making music/sound design or doing something like photography, film, editing, graphic design and visual art of any kind (hell, if you're a drawfag you can do nsfw stuff on patron/substar). Substack plugged the hole to some extent by providing a way to make a buck out of political/tech/finance/culture writing, RR/AO3 and so on plug the hole for genre stuff, and then you have what seems like should've been solved before the others given its role as a cultural engine so often in the past - literary fiction and poetry. One could argue that Rupi Kaur and instapoets managed to capitalize on the advent of social media, but it came at such an expense of quality of work that it's basically useless for anyone who isn't writing specifically for the widest possible audience (unlike the genre stuff). In any case, that is an unstable arrangement.
>>25559211You get clout by becoming an online personality. Look at how people like Mike Ma or Tao Lin are still being talked about more than several other young authors, regardless of how good or bad their writing really is. You can grab attention by putting out arresting content of some form on social media and developing a small cult around it. ARGs are played out now so you can't hide behind that anymore. Then you get those people who are already attached to you to read your bullshit so they can shill it elsewhere because they can feel like they're part of something now. If Nick Mullen published a book right now I can guarantee you that several feeds across the social media sphere, including this place, would get flooded with posts about it, and that's just one obvious example. In a way it's not so different from how literary circles used to work. You only heard about Burroughs or Mandelstam because their friends were captivated by them and hurriedly used their connections to get a publishing deal for their writings, not because they had ''credentials''. Fiction and poetry depended a lot more on nepotism and friendships than, say, non-fiction at large. Attracting a group of followers is part of the same spectrum of social phenomena.
>>25559211People just stare at their phones to try to feel like they kind of have friends and a community to be a part of. It's why you're on here asking this right now. Getting clout means becoming knowable and available as a surrogate to a real friend. This means demonstrating some polarizing social behavior so you cold read 3% of your viewers in. You can't do it through writing. It's something else. Louis CK wanted to be an author his whole life. He spent decades doing comedy so he could publish a book. Not a comedy book, by the way.You're still asking "how can I use my writing to get people to be interested in my writing." That's the lit mags. Outside of that you cannot use your wiring to get people interested in your writing. You need a second job to get them interested in you. Once they are interested in you a few of them will read what you write, even if it's not that good. If it is good then a publisher will contact you because they know your fans will buy your book at least, and they then won't have another item on their resume that they published and no one was interested in.It's ok to actually care about writing, but it won't help. If Prince Harry kept a diarrhea diary it would outsell a lost work of Cormac McCarthy's if they were both published tomorrow. And McCarthy has some clout.
>>25559069
>>25558663>2. What are ways to reach the eyes of potential readersAdvertising. If you have an epub that is competently written and its for a market of readers that exists, and it's slightly better than shit, you will be making money. But the ads have to be pdProfitable, so ROI... This assumes you do actually have a sellable epub in the works or already in the market. No need for clout when anyone can delivery an ad pointing to their book.Your second book will get you the clout.
>>25559235>>25559241So the missing element is being a person who draws people to themselves as a person rather than simply to their work. It would certainly explain why nepos have a massive advantage beyond their direct access to the industry, they call attention to themselves before their work by virtue of simply being who they are. But this means that anyone who has the qualities to form a "cult" of this sort around themselves is at an advantage. The only thing left is to see what kind of audience they can "curate" with how they present themselves publicly.
>>25559069I got put on to De Ira from the forestanon chart which led me to the Tusculan Disputations. That I am forever thankful for.
