The Art and Business of Online Writing: How to Beat the Game of Capturing and Keeping Attention

by Nicolas Cole

If you truly have no desire to be a professional writer, and exclusively see the craft as your own personal hobby, then please, feel free to write whatever it is you want to write about. Post it wherever your heart desires (your blog, for example). After all, life isn’t all about “winning”—the purpose of life is to play, learn, explore, and express. So again, if all you want is your art in your own corner of the web, by all means, throw this book in the trash and live your best life. But here’s the thing. If you say that’s what writing means to you, and only two people clap for what you wrote, then you aren’t allowed to complain. You can’t sit there and blame the internet or “the algorithm” or all the people on planet earth who “don’t know great writing.” You have to accept the fact that you’ve chosen to play the game unconsciously (that is to say, without any awareness or desire to pay attention to how readers react and respond to your work), which means you’re stuck in the two-clap club.