Hey brother. I was just curious if you had ever written an article about how to publish a novel or story? If not, do you have any advice? I've looked up a few things, but there's a lot of info out there and I'd rather hear from someone that's already gon

Hey Jeff.

I have not written such an article, mostly because I wouldn’t call myself an authority, as I’ve never published a novel. The good news/short answer is that there doesn’t seem to be a “right” way.

Jason Pargin (David Wong) posted John Dies at the End a chapter at a time on his old website, Pointless Waste of Time, years ago, before Cracked or any of the current internet culture as we know it existed. 50,000 people read it on the strength of how funny it was, and shared it. It was then acquired by a small publishing house so it could be sold as a book you could hold, and the rights were then acquired by a larger publishing house that wanted to print it, as well as Jason’s next book. At this point, Jason has a literary agent (and other fancy folks) and a movie based on his book, which means he got to sell three MORE books to his publisher.

Stephen King tells a story in his phenomenal book “On Writing” about how he was such an alcoholic that he doesn’t remember writing Cujo. Like, he just blacked out and months later was like “Oh, look, a book. I will name him ‘Cujo.’”

Robert Brockway wrote some freelance articles for Cracked years ago and a publishing house contact him to say “Hey, we think you should write a book.” He was then connected with an agent and he sold a nonfiction book. Then, completely on his own, he published his novel, RX: A Tale of Electronegativity, online. Which I believe attracted a lot of great attention, which in turn allowed him to strike a three-book deal with HIS publisher.

That fucking mop who wrote 50 Shades of Grey just spent a three-day-weekend coming all over a broken typewriter until she was somehow a millionaire.

I’d been writing about presidents for a long time and told my buddy Ryan Holiday about a loose idea I had for a book and he turned around and introduced me to the man who would become my literary agent, who would go on to sell my first book which would lead to the sale of my second book. I wrote  a proposal to sell the first and nothing for the second.

My friend and nemesis Liana just fucking wrote a whole novel and then showed it to friends, agents, publishers and then sold it and now it’s a thing you can buy and read.

See that? You can self-publish, you can post updates on a blog, you can just write a great book privately and shop it around when you’re ready. You can get a giant Twitter following and leverage that when talking to publishers, or do a Kickstarter or yada yada yada. So many paths are so different because none of us really know what we’re doing, and the only thing we all have in common is that we were willing to write books before anyone was paying for them and reading them. It’s the easiest, hardest first step.