I read in as-yet-unpublished post that the best approach for getting published in a major outlet without being on their staff is not to just write something and then send it to various publications, but rather to pick an outlet and optimise the piece (or versions of it) for that outlet’s style, topic choices, readership, etc. (I’m not sure what the evidence base for that claim was, and have 0 relevant knowledge of my own.)
If that is a good approach, one could still potentially pick a few outlets and write somewhat different versions for each, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket. Or write one optimised version at a time, and not invest additional effort until that one is rejected. And one version could also be posted to the EA Forum and/or Medium and/or similar places, in the meantime. (Unless that would reduce odds of publication by a major outlet?)
Makes a lot of sense, I’m sure Vox and the New York Times are interested in very different kinds of submissions, writing with a particular style in mind probably dramatically increases the odds of publication.
I still wonder what the success rate here is—closer to 1% or to 10%? If the latter, I could see this being pretty impactful and possibly scalable.
I read in as-yet-unpublished post that the best approach for getting published in a major outlet without being on their staff is not to just write something and then send it to various publications, but rather to pick an outlet and optimise the piece (or versions of it) for that outlet’s style, topic choices, readership, etc. (I’m not sure what the evidence base for that claim was, and have 0 relevant knowledge of my own.)
If that is a good approach, one could still potentially pick a few outlets and write somewhat different versions for each, rather than putting all their eggs in one basket. Or write one optimised version at a time, and not invest additional effort until that one is rejected. And one version could also be posted to the EA Forum and/or Medium and/or similar places, in the meantime. (Unless that would reduce odds of publication by a major outlet?)
Makes a lot of sense, I’m sure Vox and the New York Times are interested in very different kinds of submissions, writing with a particular style in mind probably dramatically increases the odds of publication.
I still wonder what the success rate here is—closer to 1% or to 10%? If the latter, I could see this being pretty impactful and possibly scalable.