I recently wrote a short story and sent it to few online media properties that I felt were a good fit. I only heard back from one expressing regret (they do not publish short stories). Even after sending reminders I did not hear back from the rest. I was not sure whether the story failed to cut editorial muster or simply got lost in someone’s inbox. After a bit of online research I learned that this was not uncommon. Pitches sent by aspiring writers often go unanswered.

Before sending my pitch to the editors of online journals I had considered publishing it on Facebook and Medium, but there were two reasons that motivated me to go traditional route. First reason was: validation. As a non-published writer I wanted to know if my writing was any good. Getting a passing grade from a professional editor I hoped would validate that. The other motivation was audience. These literary online journals have self-selected audience and I would have loved for them to be readers of my work.

Since I did not have much luck the traditional route I next looked into Kindle Self Publishing Platform but quickly realized that it was way more elaborate and probably not ideal for aspirational writers. It probably is a good option once you’ve established some bonafides as a writer. I finally published the piece on Medium with a summary and links on Facebook. Medium has nice feature that provides various kinds of statistics so I could get a sense of where people were navigating from and how many actually read my story. Almost all were from Facebook.

Medium is a beautiful authoring tool and it’s obviously designed for the writer. But it’s hard to get readership. At least I could not figure out how to do so. In the past I’ve published on Medium and it failed to get much viewership. Although all my Facebook and Twitter followers are automatically my followers on Medium but they need to be on Medium in the first place for them to be able to read my work. This leads me to a suggestion for Facebook.

Facebook should allow writers to self-publish on Facebook platform. But the kind of publishing I have in mind is very different from the traditional model of write, editorialize, publish and promote.

The model I’m proposing recognizes and leverages unique aspects of Facebook’s social operating system (OS). This social OS includes affinity based collaborative dialogue, cohort-focused publication and discovery and viral promotion.

Stage 1: An Iterative and collaborative creative process

What is a writer’s creative process ? We often imagine the writer working in seclusion - chipping away in seclusion over multiple drafts, for months, to finally emerge once the work is done. The seed of creation may have been sown from walking around, from observation, from talking to people - but once the writer is ready to pen, it’s a straight line between her imagination, her notes, her pen and the written work. Without meaning to generalize, I think of this to be the classic model. In a world that is unavoidably hyper-social, can we imagine a new paradigm for creative writing. A model that is iterative end-to-end: from idea to audience. You write a little: the first page, a chapter or two - and you let the reader consume it. You pay attention to reader response. Did it stick? Did initial set of readers grok ? Is their response reflective of how the broader audience might react ? Are some of the comments insightful enough to taken as good feedback, trigger a revision or even plant a seed for what could come next? In my personal experience, whenever I sought/received feedback, more than editorial type of feedback, it was the insight into how readers were interpreting nuances of words, themes and settings that I found extremely useful. At times I was anguished when readers missed a nuanced reference that I felt strongly about. To be clear, I’m not suggesting that writing be reduced to popularity contest of ‘Likes’. I am suggesting tapping into readers’ pulse early in the creative process.

Stage 2: Marketing With Cohort Velocity

In traditional model, publishers takes leap of faith by printing out certain number of copies, marketing them and hoping the book is well received. Good market reception leads to frantic reprint runs while a lukewarm reception results in commercial loss. I can imagine a different way to market on Facebook platform. Facebook graph encapsulates many cohorts that can emerge along different edges. I have an edge that connects me to my school friends from way back in India, another one connects me to my co-workers, another to friendships I developed as a parent with other parents, geographic co-location, people who support a common interest/cause, and so on. Is it possible that, for reasons of affinity of certain type, a piece of writing may resonate more with one or more of these cohorts but not all. If that is the case then readership velocity along this outward-expanding cohort paths can result in a better readership match and increase the likelihood of people buying the finished product. As to the desired validation, what can be more fulfilling than direct feedback from readers themselves.

Stage 3: Commerce

I can think of many interesting buying experiences that Facebook could offer:

3.1 To Peek or to Keep, that is the question Some of the books on my shelf (of kindle library) make for good one-time reading but I rarely (or never) go back to them. Others are classics that I would re-read from time to time. How about an option to progressively purchase reading sessions/chapters in addition to outright purchase?

3.2 ‘Word of mouth’ over ‘Recommendations’ ‘Hey Raj, I think you would love this one …’ Amazon popularized ‘People who bought this also…’ form of recommendations based marketing, but word of mouth marketing is way more effective.

3.3 Allowing me to share a portion of my purchase with a friend Hey, John - I thought you’d love this poem from the book of poems I just bought. If John enjoys that poem I recommended, chances are he might buy rest of the book.

3.4 ‘The Making of < Title of your book >’ When I like a particular story (or sub-story), I am curious about the backstory and what shaped the creative process - inspiration, interactions, anecdotes etc. Sometimes it might be covered in author’s notes or in footnotes etc. but how about the ability to expand out the discourse that was happening during the writing stages of that piece - including comments, questions, corrections and author’s responses and clarifications. I can see many ways in which Facebook would be able to curate related content and build such back stories, adding more to the final product, if you will.

So Facebook, how about allowing writers to self-publish on Facebook ?