This is a live document which I keep updating as I learn new things on publishing
Publishing content in the Internet is easy. Sharing is easy too if you want your friends and family to access it. It’s hard to deliver the content to people who you don’t know. Why would anyone read your post? You don’t read stuff other people wrote, after all. This is the ultimate challenge: to take your writing and deliver it to readers and implant seeds of your thoughts into their minds.
Stories of article becoming an instant hit are scarce. I think it was more common in the past. Before Google you couldn’t find anything in the web, so maybe getting popular was easier. Yahoo was a “list of websites”, and if you’ve put your website there, people would notice. Today it’s different.
Today you have outstanding writers in the Internet. You can go to The New York Time, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, and many independent writers on Medium. And you must compete with them. These websites are megaphones, where people go and expect great stuff.
Today you need to let people find you easily, and be very happy with what you gave them. And do it for free.
My belief is that unless you take an effort to make, distribute and market your content, you’ll be perceived as a lonely person on the Internet sidewalk. Imagine going to the Market Street in San Francisco, standing on the curb and wispering to yourself. And doing just that–whispering. Nobody will notice you. You can stand and wisper all they long, and nobody will give a darn about you. Maybe unless you give them a cigarette.
Making content today is like making a luxury candy. It must look outstanding, smell great and be immediately useful. And then you’re an obedient servant who delivers is to the doorstep of your readers.
I can’t teach you how to make content well, like roses and be extr