I published a magazine for a few years. Off the top of my head:

- publishing is fucking hard. Early on, you need a constant stream of dependable writers who do not value their time. Later on, you have a constant stream of writers but have to figure out who will make you hate your life the least.

- good writers are flaky and they always have options. A little less than half of good pitches get published. 100% of good pitches take work.

- there is a difference between good and dependable writers. Early on, you need dependable even though each one eats a lot of time. Layer on, you need good. You won’t know when to switch until your readers tell you that you suck. Then it’s too late to save your publication.

- I published before generative AI was possible but at each stage of popularity, I dealt with more PR shit bags. Add in generative AI and I’m not sure my naïveté would have survived as long as it did.

- at its best, publishing is a very expensive way to harm yourself. Back in the day, Jim Rose would have paid me to fuck myself up in equivalent ways. Naïveté convinces you that you’re changing the world through self flagellation, but when that’s gone you’re just beating the shit out of yourself.

- my co-founder handled editorial and I handled publishing. The gap between them is so massive that we really needed double the headcount. Alas, publishing is totally fucked so our budget was so low that we needed slave labour yet couldn’t even afford the slave in the first place. Without the editorial/publication divide, I would have had a heart attack five years before I did.

- there’s this thing in publishing called the trough of zero ideas. You won’t believe it’s possible in the beginning but it will hit you hard. It’s not so much there aren’t ideas; it’s that you’re tired and ideas stop feeling good… they feel like work because they are.

- in publishing it’s really easy to come up with business models. Unfortunately, every single business model requires consistently exceptional content, a reality distortion field and a lot of hand holding.

- all those membership plans etc will be invaded by sales or PR fucks as soon as you launch them. $25 a month makes a lot of people feel entitled to explain your dreams to you.

Edit - This sounds very negative and it is… but I want to publish again.

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