Traditional vs Digital Publication

Nicolas Cole ???? shares in a podcast interview that a well meaning university lecturer advised the path to becoming a published author would entail countless rejections and years of struggle.

[Stephen King, shares a similar experience of endless rejection before achieving success as a published author.]

For Cole, already gaining traction writing for Reddit and receiving payment for online articles, this future was just not true.

Several years and several millions of dollars later in earnings from writing, Cole is now an advocate for digital publication - the art of writing online - and the science of not waiting for permission.

The advent of the internet means writing and being read, building an audience and being paid for one's writing, is much more immediately a reality.

One might mourn this innovation, and the lack of discerning curation of quality provided by publishing intermediaries.

Surely, the flood of substandard quality that is [and will be] shared with the world in the name of ‘self publication,’ means the death of good writing.

Right?!

Wrong.

The power of Google algorithms, Reddit ‘upvotes’ and networked social media, means that the public votes.

Quality content, when produced with enough regularity, does indeed surface, and poor quality content is suppressed.

What does this mean for the expert, thought leader, consultant or humble introvert like you or me?

Eseentially the path to success is still paved with hard work, endless repetition, iteration and practice. However the feedback loops are much faster.

Digital publication online, means that any person [you or me even], can build an audience wherever they are in the world, share their expertise [without waiting for approval] and gain immediate feedback from a live audience.

Of course, it takes time to build an audience as it also takes time to hone a craft, develop a strong voice, sharpen creative intuition and well - basically - get good.

However the creatives of the future will not come from traditional centers of publishing - Hollywood, or Oxford Press and the like - but from digital content creators on the internet.

Case in point, Mr Beast, at only 25 years of age has already 10+ years invested into publishing excellent and entertaining videos, building an audience, learning from feedback loops and perfecting his craft. In this recent interview with Lex Fridman, he explained how he hired staff from Disney and other traditional media before realising his own systems developed from trial and error were superior. He since has rejected outside help and trains his team in house.

Few film or tv shows receive 100 million views per episode but Mr Beast has a winning formula down pat.

The lesson for today is - don’t wait to gain acceptance and permission from traditional media publishers - before sharing your thought leadership, ideas and insights with the world.

Write, create and share in real time.

Carve out a niche, build an audience, generate a clear aritistic voice and create your own revenue in the process.

The future is digital publication.