The Pros and Cons of Writing for Major Publications
Some writers want nothing more than to publish in the biggest, most prestigious publications out there. These writers dream of impressive bylines and lots of back-pats from other writers when their piece goes viral and gets a million reads.
Other writers want nothing more than to self-publish their way to glory. These writers dream of flipping the bird to gatekeepers, controlling their destiny, and wielding an enormous following on Medium, Substack, X, or the trending platform of the year.
Of course, the greedy writers among us desire all of the above.
Okay, but which approach is better? Should you shoot for publication in major outlets, or is it better to own your destiny, self-publish, and build your personal platform?
Which approach does more for your career as a writer?
Which does more for your craft?
And which approach will make you a happier, more fulfilled writer?
Spoiler alert: Neither approach is objectively superior. Both approaches have strong pros and cons. Both can work well, depending on your goals and your disposition.
The topic du jour is to understand the pros and cons of publishing in major publications versus self-publishing.
I’ve come to understand these pros and cons by experiencing them. I’ve written humor for some major publications such as The New Yorker and Eater, and I’ve also self-published hundreds of pieces on Medium and personal blogs of varying quality.
Before we dive in, let’s define terms. What is a “major publication”? We’re talking about the big publications on the web, or in print, here. For travel and nature, think National Geographic. For tech, WIRED. For journalism and opinion, perhaps the New York Times, or the top news outlet of your preferred ideological tribe that annoys me.
However, no need to get too specific here, “major publication” could mean any large publication that gets, say, a million or more readers a month or is the top publication in your niche. The commonality is that these major publications get lots of eyeballs, and it is competitive to get published there.
On to the pros and cons!
Pro #1: Writing for major publications improves your craft
Many writers view the challenge of cracking into a major publication as one of its biggest downsides. These writers see picky editors with stringent standards. They see formidable gatekeepers who get high on rejecting people. I see these whiny writers, and I smell their fear. I see them complaining on social media like an annoyed dad sees a bunch of loafing kids who won’t mow the damn lawn.
The truth is that the difficulty of cracking into tough publications is the best thing about them.
If you were an aspiring soccer player trying to master the game, would you practice solely by kicking the ball at an empty, undefended goal? No, that would be idiotic. It’s too easy. It doesn’t challenge you or test you. You wouldn’t improve. The best way to get better would be to choose the nastiest, toughest goalie who can block 99% of your shots and go head-to-head with that beast, over and over.
Similarly, if you think of editors at major publications as terrible obstacles to your success, you are looking at things backwards. Cracking into difficult publications forces you to improve your craft. It forces you to write and re-write, to get feedback and iterate again and again, until you write a piece that’s truly good enough.
Editors with demanding standards might be the best friends of your long-term growth, just like the heavy barbell is the best friend of the growing bodybuilder.
Pro #2: Major publications get your work widely read
The first widely-read humor piece I ever published was in McSweeney’s, a piece about open offices. Was it the first humor piece I wrote? No way. I wrote a hundred crappy humor blog posts before that, blog posts that mostly no one read. And I’d bet $200 that if I had dropped the same open-offices piece as a blog post, it would have gotten ten reads at best.
One of the joys of major publications is that when you write something truly good, and when the piece has a hook with some emotional relevance to a large enough group, your piece will probably go viral. Top publications can virtually guarantee this because they can seed every piece they publish with sufficient numbers of readers to share your work if it truly merits sharing.
On the other hand, when you drop a stunning, first-rate piece on Medium or Substack, it is anyone’s guess whether it will get 50 reads or 500,000 reads. Unless you command hundreds of thousands of followers on social or on your email list, self-publishing your way to widely-read pieces is a crap shoot.
This is not to say that the correlation between the quality of your self-published work and the readership is “random.” When you publish crap, you will get a crap result, regardless of the outlet. The point is that when you self-publish, you may get crickets even when the work is truly outstanding. In self-publishing land, quality writing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a readership. This is a frustration that major publications can relieve.
Pro #3: Major publications give you credibility and social proof
If I were the Supreme Literary Dictator Of Everything—say, a Kim Jong Un of Arts & Letters—I’d issue a decree that every piece of writing is to be judged on its merits alone, not the reputation of where it was published. Readers everywhere would be thrown in prison for caring about pedigree rather than the intelligence, imagination, wit, and mind-expanding originality of a story.
But, alas, I’m not the Literary Kim Jong Un. It’s an inescapable feature of human nature that we are impressed by popularity and prestige.
When you publish in a big-name publication, it will open doors. People will notice. Other writers and gatekeepers will notice. Many more eyeballs will grace your work. An aspiring essayist who lands their first piece in the New York Times has changed their career. They could have published the same piece on their Substack to far less acclaim. Is this reasonable? No. Is this “fair”? No. Is it reality? Yes.
There are two slight exceptions to the above. First exception: if you manage to build a huge personal following, this carries a prestige of its own. A famous sub-stacker with eighty-thousand readers can, for the most, skip the major publications and do just fine.
Second exception: writers who are known badasses can publish wherever they please, and their fans will love it. George Saunders or Ted Chiang could self-publish some short stories on the crappiest-looking WordPress blog in existence, and those stories would get widely read and judged on their merits.
Pro #4: Major publications pay you a nontrivial amount of money
With apologies to struggling writers who depend on writing income to purchase their oatmeal, I rank this benefit last. Your self-publishing could earn little to nothing for a very long time, at least until you build a real audience or score some big pieces.
Major publications, on the other hand, always pay you a little something. A lot? Ha. No. But a little something. Perhaps, at minimum, you will earn a few hundred bucks for a short web article, or a few thousand bucks for a longer article in print. This isn’t yacht buyin’ money, but it is better than nothing money.
Those are the four biggest pros of major publications. Now, on to the downsides!
Con #1: Major publications make you play by their artistic rules
Landing pieces in top publications requires at least two things: (1) A level of craft that will impress the editors, and (2) A willingness to play by their rules.
Every publication will have certain topics and headlines they will accept and not accept. They will have specific style and length requirements that you cannot break. The editors will also have a variety of political and ideological commitments that you may or may not love. These constraints form a walled garden of “allowable writing” within that publication. This is true whether you’re trying to publish an op-ed in TIME or an essay on cheese tasting in a top cheesemonger publication. Whether you’re writing short essays, long-form narrative nonfiction, short stories, food reviews, travelogues, or whatever, bigger publications simply have more constraints on your range and expression as a writer.
Major publications are not a great fit if you can’t stand playing by any rules beyond your own, or if you need the absolute freedom to explore and experiment on your terms.
Con #2: Major publications are suboptimal for self-promotion and growing your platform
Your self-published writing can include whatever calls-to-action, self-promotion, and self-serving links you like, including:
A call-to-action to join your email list
A call-to-action to buy your book, course, or digital product
A link to your personal website, your LinkTree, or your social media
Links to other articles you’ve written
Links to anything whatsoever
When publishing on your blog, Substack, or Medium account, you can link this stuff to your heart’s content. If you become obnoxious and socially unintelligent about it, it won’t work well. But the ability to deliberately and strategically choose precisely what you want to self-promote within a piece of writing is a colossal benefit of self-publishing, and, for me, it is the biggest downside of publishing in major publications.
Generally, when you publish in someone else’s sandbox, you can’t just promote what you want. The bigger the publication, the more stringent the rules around this kind of thing. Try getting your first op-ed or essay in a major news outlet, then saying to the editor, “Hey, would you mind linking to my Substack—which I know is also a competitor of yours that fills you with fear?”
The promotional benefit of self-publishing is magnified by the size of your readership. Imagine: You self-publish a highly successful Medium piece that gets 25,000 readers. Let’s say you throw an exceedingly simple “join my email list” call-to-action at the end of your article. With a modest 1% opt-in rate, that’s 250 new subscribers on your list from one article.
Were you to publish the same piece in a major outlet, *a few* people who absolutely loved the piece might go so far as to Google you, seek you out, and join your list. But the numbers will be a small fraction of what a proper call-to-action in the article will accomplish. And if you get a million readers, what good are they if you can’t immediately ask them to join your list?
Con #3: Major publications can push you into an “employee mentality”
When you publish in external publications, ultimately, your pitches must please the editor. If what you want to publish lines up perfectly with what the editor loves, great. That’s a win-win.
However, if and when your literary taste and artistic vision diverge from the editor’s, you can end up in a place where you are not forging your path as a writer, you’re just serving as a de facto employee of a few big-shot editors. You’re focusing all your energy on pitches and pieces that you pray they will accept. This is especially true of writers who psychically depend on the validation of certain “big publications” to feel successful. This mentality can undermine your development as a writer if you let it get out of control.
Con #4: Major publications pay less, in the long run, than a self-owned empire
Self-publishing pays little to nothing in the beginning when you are new and have no audience. But as you grow your audience, the long-term monetary payoff of owning your platform will exceed what a mainstream publisher can pay you.
An email list with thousands or tens of thousands of people can generate serious income from selling products or courses. A Substack or Patreon with a thousand paid subscribers can generate a full-time salary. And so on. I won’t dwell on the specifics because the economics have been extensively covered elsewhere.
Of course, it’s not easy to repeatedly self-publish your way to a big following and big-time Benjamins. But it’s also not easy to repeatedly outcompete other writers and publish in top publications. Pick your poison!
Let’s sum up the pros and cons…
Major publications (pros):
are a hugely positive force for improving your craft, especially when you are just breaking in
can get many more eyeballs on your writing and help you go viral
give you a lot of social proof—given flawed human nature
always pay you a little something
Major publications (cons):
Make you play by their artistic rules, potentially stifling your creativity
Are not ideal for self-promotion, growing your platform, and cultivating your personal audience
Can give you an employee mentality where you chase a ‘yes’ from an editor
Will pay you less in the long run than a self-owned empire
The joys of the mixed strategy
All writers can choose to pursue a mix of self-publishing and publishing in big publications. There is nothing to stop you from pursuing both strategies and reaping the benefits of both approaches. For many of us, the “mixed strategy” is pragmatic and suited to our long-term goals.
Some writers benefit from focusing on one strategy. For a writer who has a high level of craft and no entrepreneurial instincts, perhaps simply developing great relationships with a few top publications and publishing in them repeatedly is the right path.
For another writer who is entrepreneurial and who writes anti-mainstream opinions in an unorthodox style, perhaps a 100% self-publishing approach is ideal.
So here’s a pair of questions to contemplate:
“What percentage of your time should you spend trying to publish in major publications? And what percentage of your time should you spend self-publishing?”
For many writers, a mix of both is healthy, and both percentages are non-zero.