Publishing startup: early stages, frustrations and perseverance; And something about experience and life and death and resisting the exploitation model... you know how I roll. by Kevin Patrick Fitzgerald, Mnoty Press, Naawan, 2 November 2026.
I'm starting a publishing company.
The purpose of this company is to give people a venue for publishing dogma-challenging literature without playing the games of the content creation industry. This is for people who want to break out of the confines of that industry and to work a new path to financial freedom through artistic work.
It's an ambitious undertaking, and sometimes I get frustrated with my progress. I have not spent my life developing an online presence or learning the methods of online business. I've been going to college, living on the streets, and playing video games, and watching tv, spending time with family and friends. It's been great, yet sometimes I feel unprepared for this undertaking.
When I say I've been going to college, I'm kind of being glib. I've gone to a lot of college, and I'm very well educated. I had a hard time learning how to read due to my hyperactive nervous system, which I seem to have passed on to our daughter.
After I got sober about a decade ago, I found that again, I could not read. So, it's been quite a chore to work back the skill. And I've been successful, again, and yet I feel like I'm not doing enough.
Clearly, there's something wrong with my feelings, and I should keep going even when I feel like I'm failing, but to what extent? How do I know when something is not working and that I should change course?
Well, I've got some meditative practices and I study Helenistic astrology, and I trust the presence of a kind of spiritual river to guide me. This might sound silly to some, and that's fine. Connecting with and trusting the guidance of this river has brought me a very long way in building a good life.
A decade ago, I was living part time on a sailboat, part time in the woods, part time in a car. I worked fifty to seventy hours per week, used the marina's shower code, ate at community meals provided by churches, and spent my time with a group of people I call my street family.
Golly, I miss them. I don't know how they're doing. I lost touch some when I got sober, and then I lost touch completely when I moved 11,000 kilometers away.
When I was visiting my family recently, I got the idea of looking through obituaries to see if any of my street family were listed, and it's not just that they weren't; none of the people in our class were listed. By class, I mean transients, homeless, street people; whatever you want to call us is fine. I would argue that we're not bums; those are the ones running the government for their corporate donors. It's a different class.
Anyway, it's been quite a journey, and now I'm studying marketing and accounting and trying to put together a publishing company that can help people who might not fit in with the, I don't know, 'mainstream' currents of the present discourse.
The competitive writing circuit is toxic. The big companies at the controls get the kind of participation they are after, and they are making a fortune while we are fighting for scraps. It's breeding a sort of insincerity while we are coerced into shaping our messages to conform to the flow of the market.
I've written about this recently, and I'll write about it more in the future, I'm sure. AI doesn't even seem to be the problem, but it does amplify the problem. The bigger problem is this feeling that the content creation industrial elites have managed to instill within us that more participation, more aggressive activity directed toward their platforms, is our path to financial freedom.
And I fell for that at first. I started writing online soon after the covid outbreatk. I guess it's been five years, now. I started for free on Medium because I recognized the fascism that had grown in the US while I was living outside.
This realization hit me like a thunderbolt. It was Tucker Carlson yelling hatred toward a Black woman in government, and then asking a question of a congressman who was jumping up and down agreeing and yelling the same talking points.
So, I started writing and reading and reading and writing, and a friend showed me how to put my music online in streaming format around the same time, and between the two, I was starting my journey in internet content creation, and it was fine.
I got involved with a long distance relationship, and we got busy with it, and we got married, and we got pregnant, and oh the joy this has brought is indescribable.
It also brought fear. It was after we found out we were pregnant that I started to actually try to make money online, so this was about two years ago.
I set up three Medium accounts to receive money. I figured between the three, if I put enough effort in and created enough content, that surely I would make some solid money. I also thought it would be easy to find work teaching English online. I was wrong on both counts.
At Medium, I was working furiously and not making enough to pay for the five dollar monthly fee. I was putting out a lot of content, too. This was before we brought our daughter home from the hospital.
Then I tried Substack. What I got from Substack was basically a way to elicit money from friends and neighbors. It was not the answer I was looking for. After about a year and a half, I got my first paid subscriber who hadn't known me before.
Meanwhile, there's a kind of amateur elitism that spreads among these platforms. This idea that people should be writing for the art of it and that there's something wrong with trying to make money on art.
Well, no. That's incorrect. There's something wrong with a system that favors art so little that paying for it seems wrong, and an ideology that supports that is anti-art and pro-exploitation.
And that's what the content creation industry is. It's a process of exploitation that takes advantage of our fear and shame to keep us engaged while we work to manipulate and exploit each other… while they farm our data and sell our attention to advertisers, and hold our money, our revenue streams, and our traffic hostage.
One of the things I learned from living outside and from participating in my street family class was the virtue of sharing. It's not that it was an egalitarian social space, but sharing was among the most prized virtues.
I remember sitting on the sidewalk with two of my friends downtown. A third friend came up and asked if we could help him get some food. I was out of money. My friend next to me reached into his pocket and got out his food card; he said 'there's $3.85 on this card, get what you can.' I might be wrong about the '3.85', but it was less than $5 and he knew it to the penny.
Two of those three friends have died from heroine. I'm not sure if the other one is still alive because I lost touch and we don't show up in the obituaries.
So, this company I'm trying to build is buttressed by this kind of experience. We can build a different structure where sharing is part of the deal.
I was just listening to some soothing singing bowls, and the darn thing was interrupted by a commercial, yelling at me, it seems, about Agoda and going on vacation. Shit, man, vacation? Really missing their mark on that ad. Or are they? I don't know, my mind is being trained, and I'm sick of that, too.
Anyway, this is going on longer than expected, but I wanted to briefly mention that music is part of this, too. And maybe visual arts. I've got a cousin who does photography and maybe I can figure out how to give him space on the site.
It's a bunch of new skills I'm learning, and when I get frustrated, sometimes it's not because I'm failing, but because I'm persevering.
Anyway, the content creation industry is bullshit, and we can do better.
Oh, and I'm putting together a mailing list. If you're interested, please let me know at acutfitz@pm.me.
Thank you so much for reading. I hope you find some of this helpful. I hope you are living well and surrounded by people willing to share their love and their sandwiches. I'm truly grateful for your presence and your time. Thank you again. Please take good care.
Power to the People.
Freedom of the Soul.