Step 1. Write something worth reading (good luck).
Step 2. Successfully write a query letter.
Step 3. Create a halfway convincing bio complete with ridiculous photo you wouldn’t show off.
Step 4. Research literary magazines; especially those printing only the most pretentious navel-gazing pap. Remember, you don’t have a MLA or PHD, which is why you’re not already on the staff.
Step 5. Silently struggle through mania and depression while you do everything in your power to build a legitimate platform in any number of these magazines.
Step 6. Create a website using Squarespace; pay the yearly fee so it looks nice and has some kind of functionality.
Step 7. Create a separate email address unique to your Squarespace website.
Step 8. Create a Facebook account for your Author alter-ego, even if you don’t have one for yourself because the idea of social media sickens you.
Step 9. Create Twitter/Tumblr/Instagram/Etc account for your author Alter-ego, and attach to your website. See above.
Step 10. Realize you’re a ham-fisted boor, unfit to publish in any given medium. Contemplate scrapping everything you’ve established above so you can focus your energy on something meaningful – like learning how to play pub-style darts. (Cricket, anyone!?)
Step 11. Give up on giving up. Post bitter blog entries, like this one, knowing no one will read them. Keep paying the yearly fee because, what the hell, it’s already set up.
Step 12. Find Zen-like peace in your apathy. Continue telling others you’re an author. Keep posting obnoxious things on your website. Keep churning out awful, uninspired crap. Hell, who knows, maybe one day when you’re dead, they’ll pull an Edgar Allen on you and teach kids what a great writer you were. (haha, no, just kidding. You must have skipped step 1.)