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?
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
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.
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.
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.
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?
Well I suppose that is what I’m looking for. Retain ‘ownership’ and find an audience of sorts.
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.
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!
Oh thats incredible thank you. I might just take you up on the offer to beta read a story! Thanks.
