Last month, I blogged about the increasing importance of platform to one’s chances of getting published. What I didn’t consider was what you get when the lines blur between platform and publishing, as arguably is the case with something like The Huffington Post (a kind of Mecca for bloggers). What you get, according to Jonathan Sulia, cited in a post by Matthew Ingram, are “platishers”–a publisher of content which also serves as a platform for individual writers.

Ingram mentions many others who have gone this route including Forbes, Medium, and LinkIn. On each of these, they solicit and pay for some content while allowing anyone to post.  The big issue, it appears is not that some get paid for this, which is great (and the others get a portal to attract an audience at no cost). It is rather the lack of transparency distinguishing between paid and unsolicited content contributors. There is also an issue that some platforms, like Facebook may remove content without the provider even knowing it or knowing why.

All this suggests to me that we are in a new kind of “wild west” of publishing. The enterprising writer has a variety of new ways to establish platform, and even be published without working with a traditional publisher. And the reader has a variety of new ways to discover fresh voices, if they are willing to sift through the mediocre or outright bad.