this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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I write short stories and poetry. I've posted here on Lemmy a bit. I'd like to start publishing/ posting.

I'm afraid medium/ substack needs a lot of "publicity" and requires me to have social media accounts to promote it.

What other options are there? Any publications I can submit to? And are substack and medium any good?

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[–] xmunk@sh.itjust.works 16 points 5 days ago (1 children)

A surprising number of writers just hone their craft on Ao3 (archive of our own) and then self publish on Amazon. A friend of mine did that and while she doesn't make a ton she does get a continous trickle of sales. Amazon is a big back of dicks but it is the marketplace unfortunately.

Thats interesting. I know of the kindle method but first I'm hearing of ao3. Thanks

[–] satanmat@lemmy.world 15 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Good points from other users.

You’re kinda asking the wrong question.

Where to start writing? Wherever you are when you write.

Where to publish? Seems to be what you’re looking for—

You’re likely an unknown author. So you are going to have to figure it out yourself In terms of marketing

Do you just want your stuff out there? You can put it almost anywhere

Do you want people to find you? Then you’ll need to market yourself (and yes I just threw up a little writing that)

It will be up to you to get people to find and read your stuff , sorry but yeah you mostly have to market yourself

So yeah put your page in there when you post your content here, and blue sky, and everywhere. Make a podcast of you reading your stuff, make it easy to share so new people can discover you.

Self published books and print on demand— worked for Andy Weir (the Martian) and Hugh Howey (Silo) and 50 shades of gray

Good luck

Thanks. Yes i honestly wanted to keep the question open ended for the community rules but I think I ended up with the wrong question

[–] AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 3 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I asked a similar question of a writer friend recently (though I am interested in non-fiction). They told me something that I already knew, but was unhappy to hear nonetheless — that the start of one's writing "career" will inevitably involve a fair bit of writing into the void; even for publications that are accepting open submissions, it's useful to have an established presence so that someone who can read more of your work and get a sense of what you're about. "Established presence" in this case may mean a blog/substance that has little to no readership, even though putting your writing out there when you have zero platform can feel pretty demoralising. It is good practice though, and the more your body of work grows, the easier it is to make a sort of dynamic portfolio of the best of what you can do.

One takeaway from my friend was that a lot of opportunities arise from word-of-mouth interpersonal stuff: when people think of you as a writer, they are more likely to suggest your name to publications that may be looking for writers (which is why having an established presence can be so useful).

I don't have platform specific advice unfortunately.

Yes the writing industry is fascinating and quite bad I'd say. There's a brilliant podcast on it called the missing pages podcast

[–] Azzu@lemm.ee 8 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

So I assume you're asking where to publish your writing to start earning money with it?

Because to "start writing" like answering the question in your title, you just need a pen and some paper or a keyboard and computer or anything similar and start putting words in them.

And it also seems like you're already publishing it. Something is missing from your question.

[–] SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Kind of. If I do go onto smth like substack, I don't necessarily need to make money off of it but the idea that I could is kind of cool enough.

Also I don't particularly feel ownership of my writing when I post on Lemmy. I love Lemmy and will continue posting here, infact I started !ocpoetry@literature.cafe and post there too and will continue to do so.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 3 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Are you saying that you want to retain ownership of your content and see lots of people read it?

What is your goal, in the simplest possible words?

[–] SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Well I suppose that is what I'm looking for. Retain 'ownership' and find an audience of sorts.

[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Would you like feedback on your writing?

[–] SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)
[–] intensely_human@lemm.ee 1 points 3 days ago

Reading your descriptions of what you’re looking for has been a little frustrating. It’s felt as if I’ve needed to read between the lines a little to determine your goals.

It’s not totally opaque, and you’ve done a good job of clarifying. It helps that this is a two-way forum where we can ask you questions. But if I just had to go off of the original post, I would have just had to guess what your goals were.

By extrapolation, if you’ve been publishing in some places already and haven’t been getting much traction, it may be that the clarity of your published works — and therefore the engagement they generate by resonating with the mind of the reader — may be a little lacking.

If I were to provide advice it would be: more detail, even if you think it’s obvious or goes without saying. Less implication and more explicit declaration.

Which brings me to another question I didn’t think of before: Are you wanting to publish stories, news articles, essays, what kind of thing?

[–] dsilverz@thelemmy.club 4 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I was curious and I tried to find your poetry within your Lemmy profile history. I saw some posts with drawings (for example, the rabbits trying to rescue the rabbit from the magician, the horse chess piece instructing a tower piece on how to arrive somewhere, and so on). They're really nice and smart.

As for where to publish, I'll tell what I perceive as I'm someone who sometimes write, too (although I probably differ on genre and styles). I ditched all the mainstream social platforms, so the "biggest" social platforms I'm currently participating are Mastodon and Lemmy (and as from yesterday, I've been navigating in Geminispace, but I guess it's not as big as fediverse, yet).

Interestingly, Lemmy is the platform I get to interact the most, even when Mastodon has way more users. It seems, to me, that Lemmy is more socially active than Mastodon.

But there's a catch: Lemmy often focuses on what we're doing right now, discussing things, exchanging ideas and informations. While there are a few communities focused on sharing art, they don't seem to have the same activity and visibility as, let's say, Ask Lemmy, Shower thoughts, News, Technology and similar communities.

I saw people recommending Writefreely and Plume. I created accounts on those platforms and tried to publish some texts over there, but I had no relevant interaction whatsoever. They have even fewer users than Mastodon and Lemmy, however, they're more appropriate for publishing poetry, because they have UIs better made for them.

Perhaps the visibility also depends on the genre and style. I write about eerie, existential and dark things, so I guess it's not something that's expected to have much of a reception. People often seek "good vibing" content, especially "funny" content (that's why memes perform the best). It's a factor for you to consider asking yourself: "How many people would resonate with my texts?"

That said, I guess you don't really need social media accounts, you need a public that will resonate with your works and will read them and interact with them. This public can be from fediverse depending on your genres and themes. Publishing the text across different platforms can improve their visibility. Maybe we, as Lemmy users and writers/artists (although I consider myself neither a "writer" nor an "artist"), should seek to post more on Lemmy communities focused on art sharing in order to balance the main Lemmy feed.

Those comics are not mine. Thats ash perlman! I think I forgot to credit him since he signs his comics anyways. Thats my bad.

My poetry is over on !ocpoetry@literature.cafe

I do agree with your opinion though

[–] Chump@hexbear.net 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

When I was first publishing short stories, the best single piece of advice I received was to use thegrinder.diabolicalplots.com It's a repository of (most) journals and magazines that publish short stories/novellas. Definitely skews more SFF than strictly literary, but it was truly revolutionary in getting my stories to actual publications. I think it does poetry as well, but poetry was always way too difficult for me lol.

Also, if you want someone to beta read your stories just shoot me a DM and I'll be happy to provide feedback/tips :) Good luck, and don't get discouraged by rejections in the beginning!

[–] SnokenKeekaGuard@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Oh thats incredible thank you. I might just take you up on the offer to beta read a story! Thanks.

[–] Chump@hexbear.net 2 points 5 days ago

No worries :) one of the better kept secrets in selling short stories for sure

[–] codexarcanum@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 5 days ago (1 children)

In all seriousness, visit your local library and ask them about it. Most library systems work with local authors to promote their work and regularly hold meetups and workshops for writers. Many cities have local zines, publishers, and anthologies. By getting to know your local writing scene, you can find opportunities to do readings of your work, have works published in collections, and so on.

Third world country with no libraries. But I didnt know that was a thing anywhere. Thats really cool!

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 6 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

If you want to stay within the fediverse, maybe have a look at federated blogging/publishing platforms like WriteFreely or Plume. (Both are also selfhostable).

Edit:

WriteFreely: https://writefreely.org/
Plume: https://joinplu.me/

[–] oxjox@lemmy.ml 3 points 5 days ago
[–] LifeLemons@lemmy.ml 2 points 5 days ago

I dont know much about writing stories/poetry, but for publicity in fediverse (I assume you meant in fediverse too) here would be my response:

Lemmy is good but the main part of fediverse is the mastodon clients (twitter equivalent). Most of the users use a mastodon instance.

So posting to mastodon and lemmy seems like a good option. Although mastodon will limit post text length. Better to repost or boost it from lemmy to mastodon.