In the past couple of days, a number of people at various online places (livejournal, myspace, flickr) have asked to read my work – or told me they “look forward to reading my work”. While on the one hand it’s flattering, on the other hand it’s frustrating. Clearly I can’t just point to the Blue Moon anthology and say “buy it and read my novella”, as most people assume that, like many other writers in this day and age, I’ll also have something online that they can read for free (besides, many people aren’t interested in erotica). So, whether one is a professional writer, a neopro, or a wannabe, it seems to be expected that one will have at least something online, so they can figure out if they like your writing or not – and so they can see for themselves if you really know how to write, or are just full of shit.
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4 Comments
One problem is that a large portion of the public has come to believe that since everything is on the Internet, all fiction should be and it should be FREE. “Why should I have to PAY for it?” they ask. Well, because writers have to live and eat.
I have very little published – one story in a print anthology (which one person I know of actually bought) and another on-line which obviously more people read because it’s free. But I would encourage you to point interested parties to your published work (in whatever format) and yes, damn it, they might just have to pay for it. I guess posting excerpts on your blog is okay, but I’d tend not to put post anything in its entirety. But that’s just my two centimos.
Well, my sentiment is also “if you want to read it, you have to pay for it” – and so much for whether people believe I’m “real” or “professional”. I think it’s interesting that people can equate professionalism in other art careers as being paid for your work, and don’t have a problem with paying for the privilege of owning/viewing said work. However with writers, there’s a tendency to equate professionalism with free online accessibility – not only with the writing, but in having a blog, interacting with others, etc. Because the Internet is still a very much a “words” environment, it makes it difficult to get web users to understand that not everything online has to be, or should be, given away – that not everything written *should* be online at all.
I have no intentions of posting anything here, unless it’s a story that’s already been published, that has no chance of being reprinted anywhere else. I may do that in the far future, when something like the Surreal Botany entry is long out of print.
*I* remember Brimstone Orange, and loved it. And I also plan on tracking down a copy of the anthology as soon as I have monies to spend on erotica. (Support, support!) Ahem. As much as I would love to have more of your work available to me online, I would just as soon have you work hard to publish it and I’d most happily get ahold of it that way.
Ha! Well, that’s the problem with anthologies and the like – it’s always at least a $10 investment or more, and there’s no guarantee you’ll like any of the stories. Except mine, of course.
Hopefully in the next year, I’ll get a few more stories pub’d online, and then it won’t be such a big issue anymore. It’s not a big issue, really. It’s just me, whining a bit.