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?
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.
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
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.
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.
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/
