April Dunford

Guest Posts Require Far More Effort than They Seem

Today, an exec says to me, "Must be easy to have a newsletter that's all guest posts." I hope Lenny Rachitsky doesn't mind, but I told him this story: Early last December, Lenny reached out to me about something, and I pitched him on an idea for a guest post. We went back and forth on ideas and settled on something. I spent a week over the holiday break writing a big, messy 8,000-word essay on positioning stuff and lobbed it back at him. Lenny does a first deep pass on it, and we go back and forth for a week or so. Next, he loops in one of his editors, who did a structural edit (publishers do this with books - this edit makes sure the structure works and it flows for readers). Her feedback was great, and I spent another couple of weeks rewriting it to incorporate it. The editor, Lenny, and I then go back and forth for about a month or so - adding and removing sections, messing with titles, and rewriting the confusing bits (aside - there are many confusing bits 😂). Lenny thought a graphic might help, so a graphics person was pulled in, and we messed around with that for a couple of weeks. We are now in late February and ready for a proper copy edit. A copy editor was added to our group, and we had a few iterations on the wording before we reached a final version. We spent another week or so messing around with titles and subtitles, and then it's ready to go. Three months start to finish - that's how you make it look "easy." Lenny's got a great podcast out today talking about how he grew the newsletter to 1.2 million subscribers - it's worth a listen. The finished product here - https://lnkd.in/gabnxcRK Lenny's podcast on how he grew the newsletter here - https://lnkd.in/gRSiKW_k