Path to Product Submission Guidelines

Welcome, product writers! We’re so glad you’re here. Elevating your learnings and sharing your voice is a big part of our mission. As we continue to grow, we wanted to give you all more clarity and structure around submitting your content.

What we look for in submissions

1. The writing is focused on part of our target audience: aspiring PMs, early- and mid-career PMs seeking additional learning.
2. The writing is specific, using anecdotes and examples from your real work wherever possible. We know this is hard with NDAs, etc and may not always be possible, but it’s a lot easier to see PM principles applied rather than discussed in a theoretical way.
3. The writing fits into one of our designated publication categories: Stories, Product Critiques, or Insights. In Stories, we publish tales of how you transitioned into a product manager role from a different background, and what challenges you encountered or steps you took along the way. In Product Critiques, we publish an outward look at products in the market that you think could be improved. In Insights, we publish key realizations you’ve had that changed your PM practice (these could be on a variety of topics: working with interdisciplinary teams, shipping your first product, growing as a leader, etc).
4. The writing takes a unique point of view on the PM experience. We don’t publish high-level lists on “how to be a good PM” — there’s plenty of that content out there already, and those principles are hard to internalize and apply for early-career PMs. We do publish unique perspectives on how to be a good PM that include actionable advice, like: how to be a good PM for e-commerce products, how to be a good PM when your team is way behind schedule, how to be a good PM when vision above your pay grade is missing…

What to expect from us

• You can get started by emailing us a draft or article idea (pathtoproduct@gmail.com). In that email, we’d love to know a little about you (what’s your product background?) and what category (Stories, Product Critiques, or Insights) your piece fits into.
• We prefer to discuss your draft through Google Docs if possible (it’s more flexible than the Medium interface for commenting).
• We try to respond to all submissions in less than a week — usually it takes us no more than a few days. We make edit suggestions to the piece if we see opportunities to better fit the submission criteria above, with the intent to enhance both the product content and your voice as an author. We often spend 2–3 hours workshopping each article with the author, focusing on clarity and originality.
• After edits, we’ll add you as a writer to the Medium publication. You’ll be able to submit pieces directly into the publication queue, and we’ll roll them out and publicize them on our various social channels.

Other FAQ

I’m not a PM. Can I still write for Path to Product?

Absolutely! If you feel like you have something to share that could help educate the next generation of PMs, we welcome it.

I want some graphics to go along with my piece. Do you have design resources?

We typically make our own graphics using Sketch, Photoshop, Google Draw, or Google Slides. We’re happy to chip in and help create that content for submissions if needed.

I’m not quite ready to write yet. Are there other things I can do to help?

Yes! We want to build a community, which means more than just reading and writing longer-form pieces. You can send Path to Product to PMs in your network. We’d love if you wrote responses to our existing content, adding your own experiences and pushing us to think in new ways. We also welcome your PM-ing questions, ideas for growing our reader and writer-ship, or just feedback on what you see here overall. Our email inbox is always open. :)

Happy reading & writing!
— Emma and Sherman