Who cares that you don’t have the right credentials?
Or that you break rules. Or that you break them because you didn’t know they were rules in the first place.
Or that you’re afraid.
Who cares that you stay up late, or get up early because you’re not happy with something you wrote and you need to fix it?
Who cares that it’s the wrong word and the right one won’t come?
Or that you hate semicolons as much as I do?
You’re the one behind the curtain.
You are in the magic business, friend. And only you knows how to push that idea along.
There is no license for writers. You chose this.
No one is ever going to give you permission to do this.
And you’re often going to find more reasons to stop than to go on.
No one cares if it’s luck or talent that saves you.
No one ever says “I used to be a writer” and means it. You’re in this for life.
The readers and the money are rewards. And good ones at that.
But there is only one thing keeping score in this business of stringing together letters and words.
There’s just the work.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
This post started out as a quick Q&A piece designed to answer the question: what is micropublishing and why should I care about it?
The trouble began when I tried to define it much the way that I might have about seven years ago.
If this were 2005, I’d have said the following…
In many ways, micropublishing works just like conventional publishing business, except it’s a much smaller company doing the printing, done in reduced volume, for a much smaller market.
I can’t entirely stand by that definition anymore. There are a few reasons for that.
To understand micropublishing today, you still have to describe it relative to publishing. So let’s start there.
What does publishing mean anymore, anyway?
Our conventional understanding of what constitutes “publishing” has changed. It had to.
Every industry offers a product or service that solves a problem.
Publishing as an industry no longer solves the problems that it used to.
It used to be the only game in town for choosing a select bunch of good ideas from many bad ones and getting those ideas (usually the good ones) in the hands of many people. Printing was the large-scale industrial process it used to achieve that.
There was a marketing component, too. But the jury’s still out on how effective they’ve been in that department for the past decade or so.
Two big disrupters
None of this is meant to denigrate the work of industry publishers today. There are some very smart people in that business who do (and will continue to do) great work. They just happen to be on the receiving end of not one but two of the biggest disruptive ideas in the history of human communication.
First, the rise of online media. Publishing is a moveable idea now. It’s not just about books and newspapers anymore. In fact, on the scale of who is engaged in the act of publishing today, it has very little to do with books and newspapers anymore.
We are all publishers now. Not just in the sense that we each can publish our ideas on the web though blogs and social media. Publishing now is an act: not an industry.
Ebooks are the second disrupter. And it’s astonishing how quickly they’re hollowing out a centuries-old industry. Granted, they’re not a substitute for the feel of a paper book in your hands. But they solve a very important problem.
Ebooks also have some unique advantages in terms of pricing. I’ll come back to that in an upcoming post.
Back to my problem with micropublishing
So where does that leave micropublishing? Good question. I still don’t really know how to define it anymore.
It’s still mostly a printing enterprise. It’s still all about being able to print in limited volumes if you want.
The trouble starts when you look at who is doing the printing and the size of the market for the work that’s done there.
When you can write a book or an annual report, design it, upload it to Amazon, distribute it electronically to readers worldwide, plus order and ship a select number of print versions of your book—however many or however few you want—it suggests that micropublishing is an idea that’s suddenly a lot more fluid than it used to be.
There’s not much that’s micro about it. If anything, it’s starting to look a lot more like just-in-time printing.
Publishing has become an idea that has outgrown the industry that created it. Micropublishing—whatever that’s supposed to mean anymore—has helped that along and has also been reshaped in the process.
What’s left and what’s ahead
Distribution is the last freestanding wall controlled by traditional publishing. It’s going to get really interesting when it falls soon.
It’s what’s holding back many entrepreneurs, professional speakers, authors, poets from leaving the traditional publishing model, because they’re looking to sell hard-copy books in high volumes and up until now, publishers still corner that market.
Even prolific fiction writers—people like Dean Wesley Smith, for example—who’ve embraced the new way of doing things make a point of noting that this is still new…even for them. “Traditional publishing,” says Smith, “was still the only real choice just two short years ago.”
So what does all this mean for anyone with an idea in search of an audience? (That includes you).
It means that it’s time to go beyond what publishing used to be and start planning based on what it is now and where it’s going to be.
“It’s time to go beyond what publishing used to be and start planning based on what it is now and where it’s going to be.”
Click to tweet this.
The blockbuster sellers in hard copy aren’t going to go away. But we’re going to be seeing a lot more long-tail projects get into the hands of a lot more people…and in far less time than before. Much of that is going to hinge on micropublishing and self-published ebooks.
It’s time to get serious about embracing Amazon’s publishing model and ebooks as a viable platform for mass audiences.
You’re a publisher now. You can do this.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
Anyone can be a writer, it’s true. But sometimes—whether you’re writing an article, webcopy, a direct marketing piece or a book—you’re going to get stuck and it can seem as if no amount of rewriting is going to fix your copy.
Don’t wait for that sinking feeling to set in.
Here’s the first thing you must do.
Keep writing.
Don’t give in to that feeling that says you need to walk away.
Giving in is easy. It’s what many people do.
There are cases where you need to shift gears for a bit (and I’ll come back to that). But unless you keep working at your craft and your ideas, you’re going to lose any momentum you started with.
There’s an even bigger danger.
Unless you’re in the deadlines business like I am, there is also a good chance that if you put that writing assignment away, you might not come back to it. Ever.
Stop with the Point-A-to-Point-B thinking. Be more abstract.
Ideas and the business of writing them down is not a linear practice. In fact, it’s rare to be struck by a fully formed thought that’s ready to share. That’s just the low-hanging fruit, my friends. The rest takes time to ripen. And often it’s going to take you in directions that may surprise you as much as your reader.
Here are a few methods I use when I get stuck. You can use any of these, too.
The tangential method
Find a good quote about the subject you are writing about. Don’t just slap that quote into your copy.
The writer’s first job is to ask questions. Who is the speaker behind the quote? What did he or she accomplish? Are there any articles posted online about this individual? Book reviews? Praise? Criticism? A few minutes of satisfied curiosity can provide you with an entirely new angle on what you’re writing about.
The switching gears method
I said earlier that you have to keep on writing when you’re stuck. But that doesn’t mean you have to keep bashing your head against the wall and wishing for a different result. Some ideas need to simmer. In the meantime, write something else.
Creativity is a weird visitor. It often walks into your house, puts its feet up on the sofa, grabs pen and paper and tells you it’s working on something. Let it do its job. Just don’t let it switch on the TV.
Switching gears means that you might not be working on the thing you started on in the first place, but you’re still producing. Practice and discipline. These are your best teachers.
The backstory method
This one applies to fiction writing. Having trouble making a character believable? Invent a backstory and write it down. Need help asking the right questions? Go to one of those free online dating sites and look at the questions they ask of people when creating a dating profile. Fill it in. The answers you’re being asked are meant to help other people decide if you’re likeable and compatible. So this is a good resource if you’re stumped.
With a fact-filled backstory (okay, made up facts, but I’m sure you get where I’m going with this), you have new ways to approach your subject and write convincingly. After all, you totally know this guy now.
The undoing method
Some ideas are just not ready for primetime. Some are just crappy ideas. A good way to test yours is to turn them inside out. Play devil’s advocate. Write a short piece arguing the opposing point of view.
One of my business lines is speechwriting. I sometimes use this method when I’m finding the copy isn’t as persuasive as my standards demand. Undo your arguments. You’ll quickly reveal the cut line that separates the facts you know are true from the rest of the points that you simply feel are true.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
Writers get asked this often and more often than not, the answer can be distilled to this: I don’t really know. They just come to me.
Ideas are like luck. You can believe they just happen and that you’re just fortunate to be there when they materialze. But that’s a pretty fanciful notion, isn’t it?
Here’s what I know as someone who has been in the idea business for more than 10 years on my own, and more than 20 in the writing trade: luck and ideas come from practice.
You have to make a habit of being there—of showing up and doing the thing that needs to get done to get the things you really want. There is no shortcut.
I like what Neil Gaiman says about this: “You get ideas all the time. The only difference between writers and other people is we notice when we’re doing it.”
I want to share with you 10 more. The list is varied, but what they all have in common is an unyielding devotion to showing up regularly with great writing and solid ideas.
Who’s on your favourite list for creative inspiration? Let me know.
James Altucher
His positions on a lot of things might raise your eyebrows. He and I disagree, for instance, on the importance of voting (I see it as a civic duty in Canada, but I can see why he feels the way he does, living where he lives). But there’s a strange genius to what James does. I admire that, not to mention his deep sincerity. He also happens to be a prolific storyteller who understands the intimate bond between reader and writer. More than just teaching the value of not holding back at all in your writing, he also writes killer headlines. How can you help but click on a story called How I Screwed Yasser Arafat out of $2mm? I never miss a thing this guy writes.
Dan Zarella
I value a handful of field-tested research more than a truckload of opinions, and that’s why I read social media scientist Dan Zarella’s blog regularly (as well as his latest book). The takeway is more than just for social media. There’s insight here you can apply to all aspects of marketing and selling. As a direct result of Dan’s work—and his generosity in sharing his findings online—there’s a lot more certainty to writing for the web than ever before. Be sceptical of the opinionated. Act on verifiable data.
rob mclennan
Poetry is what reminds me that there are no easy answers to creative problems. As I say so often: simple is hard. I turn to many poets often for advice through their words. One in particular is rob mclennan, whom I’ve know since the days of Bard poetry readings in the basement of a downtown bar here in Ottawa. His blog isn’t just a platform for his own elegant prose, but for others, too.
Leo Babauta
As much as I’m a stickler for evidence-based research, one place where that can’t help much is in learning the mastery of living the good life in the fine sense that Aristotle once spoke of. The path to happiness is not through data, but through wisdom earned through practice. It’s that easy. And that hard. This is why I keep coming back to ZenHabits for more.
Colleen Francis
Wait, I know what you’re going to say. “Hey you’re plugging her because she’s a client!” Well, that’s partly true (I’ve been writing for Colleen for many, many years). But there’s an even more important reason. Colleen is one of the industry’s best speakers and coaches, teaching business owners and sales people to increase sales the smart way. I learn something new on every job I work on for her. If you want to be a better speaker, a better business owner and even just be smarter about working with people, Colleen has the world by the tail. So I’m happy to share her wisdom with you, dear reader.
Jane Friedman
Jane Friedman of the University of Cincinatti shares my passion for the future of publishing and has some very thoughtful things to say about that. She does a great job of helping to teach writers to think more like entrepreneurs. There are also valuable takeaways for everyone—not just writers–in search of advice and encouragement on keeping their creativity muscles well-exercised.
Jeff Goins
This is a recent find for me. Jeff’s a writer for writers. His blog is pitched at those who care about “writing, creativity, and changing the world.” And he does a great job of delivering on that. His stuff glows with an infectious positive energy and that’s why I subscribe to his updates. Bonus points for being a fellow guitar enthusiast.
Lisa Larter
She practices what she preaches about how businesses can do a better job of using social media in their marketing activities. Her post on why business owners need a “stop-doing” list helped give me a push in the right direction in 2011 and I’ve been reading her ever since. Lisa gets bonus marks for being a fellow resident of Ottawa–where a one-time non-existent entrepreneurial culture is growing today, thanks to the people who put in the time to make it happen.
Roger Ebert
Yes, the man’s a giant in film review. But at his core, Roger’s a writer who just happens to talk about film. His ideas often touch on things that transcend cinema. He built a rather fine career on his considerable writing talents, and yet in the last several years, his skills have grown even more. It’s partly in defiance of illness and loss, but there’s something else that drives this guy’s incredible passion for words. He’s not afraid to colour outside the lines. He reminds that there is endless satisfaction in digging deeper into your thinking and to not just settle for what comes quickly.
Artie Isaac
I was first drawn to Artie because of his speaking style, which I admire greatly (and that includes his trademark bowtie). He’s a powerful advocate for anyone who is in the ideas business. What I’ve found has really been keeping me coming back, however, is his emphasis on ethics. He’s also a fan of Thich Nhat Hanh. So again, bonus points.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
Let me share with you an infographic from those smart guys over at Frugaldad.
The problem in a nutshell: patents are a 19th century solution to 21st century problems. Click to continue
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
I’ve revised this post because I’m open to having my mind changed.
Originally, I had titled this “Why you shouldn’t enable comments on your site anymore.”
Maybe that was too broad of a brush.
I’m still not a fan of comments on blogs. I post on a few myself, but more often than not, I skip them altogether.
I have a few reasons for that and I’ll get to those in a moment.
But first, a point about you.
As my reader, you value great content and creating a fantastic reading experience as much as I do.
I want your readership here to be a great experience every time. I’m always happy when my readers tell me what they have to say in response to my posts. Those comments are good. And the idea behind doing that is a good one.
That’s not why comments have fallen out of favour with me.
I just don’t think they are for everyone who has a blog. The default position should be don’t do it.
Before you enable comments, you should ask yourself why you’re doing this in the first place.
Does it add to your reader’s experience?
In its infancy, the web was small and operated like a community of communities. Comment-enabled blogs were very handy for people to share thoughtful ideas to help build on what you were saying. It also was a place where diverging opinions could hash things out. It also tended to be a key place for link exchanges.
There was, in many ways, self-enforced civility in what people had to say in their posts. Just like that old maxim: reputations are made and undone faster in a small town.
That’s often not the case anymore.
Have a look at the calibre of comments that populate the bulk of newspaper websites, for example.
Much of it borders on being unreadable.
If you’re in the business of finding ways to create the best possible reading experience for your reader, comments are the last place you are going to find inspiration.
It’s a telling point that Seth Godin and John Gruber–well-read people with no shortage of opinions–don’t have a comment-enabled section to accompany their posts.
Does it contribute value to your reader?
Sure, there are still websites and blogs out there today where built-in comments still add value to original content. But for every good example, it is no effort at all to find tens of thousands of bad ones.
You are in control of your content. But there are considerably more constraints on what you can do about who posts and what they have to say in the comments section of your site.
Look past the pointless arguments, the self-promotional replies and the “great-post-I-agree-completely” responses. Does any of what’s left in comments really help your reader? I’m less and less convinced.
Don’t get me wrong. There are some great examples of comment-enabled content out there. I even comment on a few. But in each case, it is clear that a blog moderator has asked themselves the hard question about who is benefitting from having this feature in the first place.
Do you have the time for this?
Remember that in many countries, you can be held legally responsible for what gets posted in your comments section. Couple that with your wish to create great content, and you can quickly find yourself spending a large chunk of your time moderating discussions and writing reply posts. Is that really the best use of your time, both in terms of product and serving your audience?
Can you address authenticity issues?
Anonymous posts are troublesome. I struggle with this myself. Inauthentic content equals zero value.
And poor-calibre comments aren’t independent of your content. They become part of your product.
Is this something you’re doing because you can or because you should?
I’m always tempted to call this the JBYCDMYS principle. But that would look really awkward. Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should is a principle that ought to be exercized far more than it is these days.
Our world online is crammed with this kind of thinking: features and ornamentations that look nice at first glance or do things that initially seem like good ideas, but deliver questionable long-term value.
So what if your new content management system makes it easy to enable comments? So what if this is something that everybody else is doing? The only measure that really counts is whether it helps your reader solve a problem.
You can only determine so much of that with metrics. You can’t measure good taste.
Are there better alternatives?
There are many alternatives now to commenting (and the hassles of registering to do that). Tweet about it. Or write your own post. Or post something on Google+. You can even kick it old school and email somebody. There are plenty of great ways to engage people that do a better job of ensuring authenticity while delivering a better experience for readers.
Having asked all these questions…
There is one more question to ask and it’s a biggie.
What do your readers have to say?
Mine are telling me that comments matter to them. And a few were peeved that I shut off comments on this blog.
Well I’m all about doing right by my readers, so I’m ready to be proven wrong about this.
I’ve re-enabled comments on this site (and hopefully have addressed the spam-comment issue, too).
So how about it, reader? Are you still using comments on your site? If so, are you asking yourself the tough questions first about why you’re making this available?
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
With this sad news today, let me share with you something personal.
I was one of the people who appeared in the original batch of Apple “Switch” ads, back in 2002.
They ran for a little while on TV and elsewhere (a decade later and surprisingly it’s still not hard to find the entire series of ads on YouTube).
Back then, it was a different time for Apple. But already, you could see this was a company in the midst of a remarkable rebirth, thanks to the creative genius of Steve Jobs. I was happy to lend a hand when I emailed Apple way-back-when, explaining why I took a chance and bought that first iMac when I had launched my new company a year earlier. That email led to my involvement in the campaign, which was a lot of fun at what was for me a huge personal turning-point in life. So in many ways, I’ve always had a particular fondness for Steve Jobs and Apple.
It wasn’t just that Steve was the head of a company that made great products that helped in my own personal rebirth, building my business into what it is today. Steve set an example for so many of us: the best way to give a damn about things that matter deeply to you is to show it with great work that moves and inspires others.
Thank you, Steve.
I’ll keep giving a damn, working hard to put my own dent in the universe.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
The evidence is everywhere. We are entering a new era in design.
Today—more than at any other point in human history—more thought goes into the construction of things around us. That’s a development that has implications for everyone in the business of marketing to other people. In other words, everyone.
Today, design is about more than creating objects of beauty. It’s about creating ideas that are memorable, or an approach that strikes an emotional chord with people. It’s also about having better tools to understand and filter a world that’s cluttered with messages. Just as important, it’s about finding the right methods to execute those great ideas, approaches and tools.
You see it in consumer products that have a fit and finish once reserved for high-end scientific equipment. You see it in the way that some businesses set an example for others in the market by saying that consumer experience matters to them ahead of just selling more stuff.
You see it in self-published ebooks: an industry that once required a publishing firm just to get your foot in the door. You see it in the array of consumer apps developed for mobile users. You also see it in consumer signage that you see every day. Whereas we used to see material printed on paper and updated on a fairly slow cycle, today a lot of signage is being switched to LED and LCD monitors—products that cost a fraction of what they used to and that can be updated and tweaked regularly without incurring many of the expenses that saddled conventional marketing.
Design today is the sum of a million little things that, when added together, become something that connects with people on a deep, meaningful level. That doesn’t just mean that you need great visuals and colours that match. It means that visual elements and the written word have to bond closer than ever before so that audiences connect, understand and respond.
As a result, professionals who are skilled in design, strategy and content matter a lot. They can help you make better choices on developing your products, services and ideas so that messages are clear and purposeful. Just as important, they can show you through field-tested experience the right approaches to presenting those products, services or ideas.
They are brokers in good taste: and that’s something every business can benefit from having more of.
About the author:Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
CreativeBoost gives you valuable updates about unlocking the power of writing that sells. It's free. Join today.
About the author: Patrick Gant is a writer & speaker. He owns thinkit creative, a company that specializes in writing and editing digital content for the web. Follow him on twitter here.
