What I Learned Trying to Get a Book Published

One of the most valuable things I ever learned about publishing came before Jotter existed.

At the time, I was helping a colleague try to get a book published. I was not entering the process as a career publisher or as a long-time industry insider. I came to it with curiosity, a willingness to learn, and the instinctive belief that if a book had merit and an audience, there should be a pathway to bring those two things together.

What I discovered was a system that was far more complex, slower, narrower, and more intermediated than I had expected.

To understand it better, I spent time speaking with people in the industry and learning how the process actually worked. I wanted to know how manuscripts moved, how decisions were made, what publishers were really looking for, how economics flowed, and where the major constraints sat. I also interviewed the CEO of the largest publisher in the country, which gave me a useful perspective on how the system looked from the top as well as from the edge.

What struck me most was not that there was expertise involved. Of course there is. Editing, positioning, design, and distribution all matter. What struck me was how much of the process depended on a relatively small number of people deciding what would move forward and what would not.

That is understandable to a point. Every industry has filters. But in publishing, those filters can have outsized power because they shape not just commercial outcomes, but cultural visibility. They influence which stories get supported, which voices are amplified, which genres are favoured, and how long creators may have to wait before they even know whether there is a path ahead.

For writers, that can be brutal.

You can spend years producing something meaningful and still face silence, delay, or rejection without ever really knowing whether the issue is the quality of the work, the fit with current market preferences, the internal priorities of a publisher, timing, category constraints, or simply luck. That opacity creates discouragement. It also creates distance between the audience and the work itself.

The second thing I learned was how economic value was distributed.

Again, I do not say that to dismiss the role of publishers. They provide real services. But it became very clear that the creator — the person without whom none of this exists — often receives a relatively modest share of the value while carrying the bulk of the creative risk and labour. That stayed with me.

It made me ask a simple question: why should the writer so often be the weakest economic participant in a system built on writing?

The third thing I learned was that the whole model felt too slow for the world around it.

Not because books should be rushed, but because there was too much distance between creation, audience response, and adaptation. In many other parts of digital culture, creators can put work out, learn from real behaviour, build audience over time, and improve with direct feedback. In publishing, by contrast, the path often felt serial, gated, and delayed. There was little room for iterative connection.

Reducing the distance

That made me wonder what would happen if you built a model that reduced the distance.

What if writers could publish earlier and more directly?
What if readers could discover and respond sooner?
What if community could help shape momentum?
What if data could support craft development instead of being hidden behind intermediaries?
What if audience demand could play a greater role in determining what rises?

The more I learned, the more I felt that publishing needed a more open, participatory model sitting alongside the traditional one. Not a replacement for every part of the existing industry, but a meaningful evolution. A model where quality still mattered, but access improved. A model where discovery was not limited to gatekeeper pathways. A model where a writer could begin building an audience before a final “yes” from a small set of institutions.

That experience did not just teach me about publishing. It changed how I thought about the relationship between creators, platforms, and audiences.

It made me realise that there was room for something different. Something more direct. More democratic. More community-driven. More supportive of both readers and writers.

That belief stayed with me for years and became one of the key foundations for Jotter.

At its core, Jotter reflects many of the lessons I took from that experience:
that writers need fairer economics,
that readers should have more influence over what succeeds,
that stories deserve communities,
and that technology should be used to reduce friction between creative work and meaningful audience engagement.

Trying to get a book published taught me that there are many talented people with valuable stories who never quite find the right path into the system.

Building Jotter is, in part, my response to that.

Because I do not believe the future of storytelling should be decided only by whoever manages to get through the narrowest gate.