This is my third crack at publishing and is thus the third time that I have experienced a publisher’s void. If you have ever started a publication, you know that void. If you haven’t or you’re in the process of starting your first, let me explain it to you.
There’s a really big gap between coming up with an idea, letting it percolate and actually launching it. The launch is really hard because you run face into the most difficult chicken or the egg problem there is - good contributors avoid new publications for a reason; new publications can’t build a big enough readership to attract good contributors unless they have good contributors.
But you get through that, come up with a business model and push on. In some cases (as in 78solutions), your business model is really badly flawed but in others, the business model is actually workable. Then the next problem starts.
The idea percolated for so long that the idea weighed more than editorial. It’s okay during launch because content was always a big part of the overall vision. But then you get some initial content published and realize that you have nothing left to say.
It’s the hangover from launch - that moment when you’ve used up all your creative energy doing the opposite thing of why you launched in the first place. In my case, I primarily publish because I love to write, but love working with writers more. My secondary reason for publishing is that I hate how modern journalism is loaded with ad trackers, click bait and paywalls.
Now, it turns out that ad trackers, click bait and paywall are not only the easiest to implement but also the only real working solution for publishing revenues in 2025. Don’t worry - I’ll cover that in long lament form in an upcoming long lament form article tentatively titled “I’d rather be broke and have a whole lotta respect, but now I’m wondering if I’m just dumb”.
Where was I? Oh yeah, nothing else to say and rambling content because…I have nothing else to say.
You are hereby granted permission to suck
There are three principles to the 78solutions method. Choose the right problems, solve them well and stand on your own shoulders. Part of standing on your own shoulders is giving yourself permission to suck. In the case of the publishing void, give yourself permission to feel like there’s nothing left to say. You have a lot to say, but you just used up a lot of creative energy getting the beast out in the first place.
This shouldn’t be surprising or revelatory. In fact, this is the third time in my life that I’ve come to this conclusion while publishing. The first time was after a local publisher and my co-founder had a coffee and he named the phenomenon. The second was one month after the launch of End…when it felt like everything had been said. And now here I am, trying to plan out editorial for the first real edition…and I’ve got nothing.
So, I have had to give myself permission to suck. This article formalizes that - I am running 78solutions badly right now and that’s going to have to be okay.
And then the void passes
Once again, this shouldn’t be surprising to me. But as soon as I gave myself permission to suck, I figured things out. Once I figured things out, I got tossed right back into the next part of the loop - the publishing glut stage. If you have ever published before, you’ll recognize this glut. If you have never published before or you’re starting your first one, let me explain it to you.
There’s a point after the hangover from launch ends when all the creative juices that made you pull the trigger and launch the beast just kind of return. For me, they return it stages - it starts off with a concept for an edition, then I typically rewrite all the main/masthead content and the editorial vision. And then, I plan out 16 other editions.
But, I don’t publish monthly because I launched with a really bad business model and have to focus on the software side of my life. So I’m really looking at about three years of content in a world where people constantly solve difficult problems in novel ways. Then the prioritizing stage kicks in and I realize that my conundrum has totally changed. Now I have too much content and it feels like anything I put out will either have to cover a bit of everything, or it will target the wrong thing and leave so many things unsaid.
Standing on my own shoulders
The joy of solo founding a publication is that you can have board meetings in the shower. In case you’re thinking ‘hey, OnlyFans content could solve your business model problems’ you’re an optimist and I like that, but let me tell you. When I’m in the shower, I look a lot like Brad Pitt in Fight Club if you have no idea who Brad Pitt is, have never seen Fight Club and have remarkably bad vision.
I made a couple of decisions. My whole edition obsession comes from the one time that I co-founded a print magazine. Print is my favourite medium of them all - there is nothing as addictive as the smell of something you sourced content for, sold ads against, laid out and delivered to the print shop after a marathon 42 hour session before deadline. Editions make a lot of sense when you publish in bursts like print requires. They make more sense when you look at how printers actually sell bulk printing. But I can’t do print only again until I retire so I have an entirely different medium to work with.
78solutions will drop content in terms of theme. Major content drops will follow a publishing schedule but those ’editions’ will never truly end. Rather, 78s will publish perpetual volumes. A lot of good news about problem solving comes out of science so this perpetual volume model makes one of my dreams a possibility - if 78solutions lasts long enough, one day I will get to republish a volume showing that everything written here was proven to be bullshit in the latest articles.
Get in touch
Want to book your deck chairs on the Titanic? Contact 78 Solutions errrr, crap, the marketing degree failed me again. Let me try this again.
78 Solutions cannot install any form of ad tech, tracking software or even analytics software aside from basic information on visits that is provided by Cloudflare. 78 Solutions also won’t sell ads until they have a good separation between editorial and publishing, so it’s a zero revenue publication. Part of being a zero revenue publication is that we pay zero. Doesn’t that sound great?
So if working for exposure and feeling warm and fuzzy sounds good, contact 78 Solutions and maybe get the warm and fuzzy feeling checked out by a doctor. That’s technically a symptom of dying of exposure.
That’s not much better. Save me from myself?