Slashdot Mirror
Is the Internet Bad For Professional Writers
destinyland writes "The internet democratized writing — but has there been collateral damage? A former magazine editor asks 10 professional writers how the net has changed their profession, and even the act of writing itself. Has the net changed the demand for longer articles, or created more opportunities for more kinds of writing? It's a fascinating read that belongs in a time capsule for the variety of reactions captured — including the author who complains reading time was traded away for time to maintain our applications, and adding "Gates and Jobs...ought to be disemboweled — yes, on the internet.""
Has the net changed the demand for longer articles
I think that means "Has the net increased the demand for shorter articles".
Most print publications would have known to end that title with a question mark.
tl;dr
I think the opinion of "bad versus good" falls nearly directly in how in-bed the writer was with the old media. For most old media writers, their
"bosses" had massive control over the distribution of their form of media, be in newspapers, magazines, newsletters and journals. This was a "good thing" because the pseudo-monopoly gave them more income. It was bad for advertisers because they never knew how many impressions their ads received, who received them, and what their return was.
I'm a firm believer that the Internet is GOOD for writers. I've been a writer myself since the age of 13, and a newsletter editor since I was 18. The Internet has blown open the market for myself, and the writers I've hired to "pen" articles. We now know who reads our creations, how often they return, what they think of the articles, and even who they forwarded the articles to. Our advertisers know immediately what they're getting out of us, and they also have the ability to be selective over where they advertise and what form of advertising.
The other plus is that we can focus on shorter articles with links to articles providing more material within our own site. I know a site has gained power with our audience when the monthly stats pop up showing the average visitor has gone 4-6 pages deep and stayed over 10 minutes on the site. That's a VERY successful site, and makes excellent income for us via advertisements from direct sponsors who also know they're getting a return.
For many, the downside is competition, but to me this is the best thing possible. The more people that are writing about your topic, the bigger your audience grows. If you're a "top tier" writer in a given niche, your market is growing because of your competition, and they'll eventually find you. Another downside for old media authors is the lack of editors within the new media, because the financial overhead from the previous pseudo-monopoly is lost. I think there's a HUGE market for independent editors (I actually earn some money monthly editing other people's writings), but most old media editors don't like the idea of selling themselves to a large market and seem to prefer focusing on a few writers. The potential for being an editor is so large right now that I am turning away more work than I can manage (it was never meant to be an income source, but instead a form of education for me). The massive amount of corporate blogs, e-newsletters and e-journals is astonishing, and they all need outside consultants to help formulate the clearest writing and a decent SEO.
As to supporting the application, that's bunk. I spend about 10 minutes a week TOTAL on back-end support, and I use a "do it yourself" ISP to host my sites.
I'll write until the day I die, but most of my e-writings will continue for years after. For me, that's the ultimate profit: leaving a legacy of my opinions, teachings and ideas tomorrow and for the future.
it's always been tough to be a professional writer. i can't think of any given time in history where the number of people who could live solely off the income of writing hasn't been insignificant in comparison to the total population.
the internet is just new technology that will help in some ways and hurt in other ways. me, i'm not concerned about this dinky little group. my concern is - how has it impacted the reader. there have always been many more of us than the writers. have we been benefited by the internet? i think so.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
This entire article is the equivalent of a bunch of whining, wanking carpenters complaining that people can resort to do-it-yourself for many home projects these days or that "regular people" have video cameras at home and not just big film directors.
Yes, the internet has made a lot of people much stupider (witness your average idiot's abbreviated text message session) but the probability of such people being consumers of quality magazine or book content is low to begin with, even if the internet doesn't exist.
The ads on the side of the article might not be safe for work depending on how strict things are.
Has the Internet given mindless fact less fools equal footing as real journalists.
Just look at rob Enderle, Paul Thurrott, or most computer writers who will say just about anything for a buck. They won't check facts, they refuse to show how they come to conclusions when they actually do research, and the research itself is so one sided it's just plain sickening.
One Lady asked a group of dedicated windows admins if they were considering a switch to Linux. They are Windows admins not Linux admins.
this isn't a flame war, but it's like asking a group of Mac Admins when they are switching to windows. you are going to get skewed results.
i thought once I was found, but it was only a dream.
The Internet is good for amateur writers with talent.
I'm guessing the article says it's bad for professional writers with limited talent. And everyone else is to blame for the professional writers' comeuppance.
I believe that the increasing popularity of television, with its immediacy of coverage, its focus on 30-second soundbytes, and its tendency towards sensationalist presentation, has had a much more profound impact on traditional printed media (newspapers and such) than the world wide web.
Mainframe/UNIX Bit Twiddler and long time Windows/Linux Hobbyist.
The Theorem Theorem: If If, Then Then.
I think the same types of people who wanted longer articles 20 years ago, want them today. However, since the web is currently forcing a lot of short-article people to read, I think it simply seems like the demand is higher for shorter articles.
With the advent of talking heads to read the short articles to them, they'll wander off to listen instead of read, and the average article length will increase again.
On a less sardonic note; many newspapers and magazines--the people who actually produce the longer articles--still only put cropped versions online, in an attempt to lure you into buying their paper product, so the bigger articles don't always make it online.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Yes, because it's their fault you are too stupid to outsource that function. Because I'm sure all the magazine writers fix their own PCs, run the printing presses, empty the trash, and clean the bathrooms. And I'm sure they also fix their own cars, homeschool their kids, cook ALL their own meals, and dryclean their own clothes.
As much as I'm loathe to recommend a Google service, their Blogger tools are really quite great. You choose your template, set up the layout, and just write. You can even set it to publish things you email in to it, so you can concievably even blog from a mobile device. And if you DO want to get more technical, you even have access to the HTML code in the template.
I think Americans have collectively lost the ability to distinguish between petty and stupid complaints and valid criticisms. But after 10+ years of conservatives being in charge, that's sadly to be expected.
"Gates and Jobs...ought to be disemboweled -- yes, on the internet.""
Isn't that what we have Slashdot for?
I don't think the Internet is necessarily bad for professional writers. There is a trend, certainly among technical folks, to rely on blogs and wikis and the like for information, but I think that will pass. Just as politicians can get away with sound-bites for a while, so the technical audience will tire of reading the same 200-word blog posts with a somewhat rehashed idea of someone else's 200-word blog post, which was just a combination of a couple of ideas mentioned on a wiki they linked to anyway. People don't just read technical writing for a quick idea. They read it for some depth of understanding, an insightful explanation, clear examples, and countless other goals that Joe Amateur just can't satisfy with his 200 words of quickly and casually constructed blog post.
However, the Internet is going to be bad news for people who can't write for an Internet audience. You need a different writing style on-line. Most people don't sit down and read many screens of essay-like text all at once, nor do most people print such articles to read off-line. We can still have depth and insight and all that good stuff, but it has to be written the right way. It needs to be easy to scan. It needs to be organised in relatively short sections, or with other natural reading breaks that suit the material. There needs to be some effort put into effective presentation — and I don't mean turning every essay into a 3Gazzilibyte 1hour video interview, just because you can!
The Internet is also going to be bad news for bad writers. There are plenty of decent writers on the web, and more than enough excellent ones in technical fields. No-one needs to read paid-by-the-hour, padded-out-forever-to-bump-the-word-count text-that-goes-on-forever-pointlessly. Writers who have specialised in producing such text to satisfy their contracts are going to be out of luck.
The Internet is also going to be bad news for professional writers who occasionally write something really good, but mostly write filler. It is easy to link to a single article or blog post directly, and good work will typically be recognised as such. But if you want your home page to be the thing people think of, or you want people to subscribe to your blog, you're going to have to produce consistency. Sure, some work will always stand out from the everyday writing, even for the best author in the world. But no-one's getting famous for writing one article and then having nothing.
So the bottom line is, if you're a professional writer who can consistently produce worthwhile content with occasional really good stuff, and you can adapt your presentation to the medium, then there's no reason you can't be successful. If you're not a good writer, even if you once write a brilliant piece five years ago, or if you can't adapt your writing to the target audience, well, you're going to find fewer opportunities than you used to. It's not like writing books is going to die out (though writing for magazines is fast going that way), but the Internet is the ultimate meritocracy when it comes to content, so if you're not up to standard with enough material a cut above to get you noticed, this isn't the career for you.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I keep hearing about these things but so far I have yet to spot them. I wonder what they are like...
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Gee, might that have something to do with the article? Not just people like me blocking ads (privoxy and squid) but including people like you with their notsafeforwork attitude.
IF you write an article in playboy (yes they do have them) then you can include ads to pay for that that are slightly more risky. IF you write a very similar piece but publish it on the net, well then it better be safe for work and kids and right wingers.
This all ads up to less revenue to pay the writers.
So less money, means less writing obviously, so shorter articles, less time to attract eyeballs, less time to get them watch ads, fewer ads, less money. Voila downwards spiral of doom leading to articles with no contents spanning 20 pages to which somekind slashdotter posts the print link meaning that NOT just do they not get ads views from me, but not even any pageviews.
I could almost feel sorry for them... Well not really.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
It's hard to plagi^h^h^h^h^h quote an article if it is too large. More than a paragraph or so and it won't fit into the summary at Digg.
It certainly seems that the net has created a cottage industry built on not citing the original article and driving technorati. One might say that one denies the other. The drive isn't news anymore, it's notoriety and advertising. Long articles and sources sour both of those. I don't think there's a shortage of people who want to read the long stuff, there's just so many that can't be bothered. Both groups pay the same per view, so who are you going to appeal to?
The internet may have changed some things, but it's AdSense that is murdering information on the web. Is it any wonder that the more successful google is, the less useful their index has become.
Platform advocacy is like choosing a favorite severely developmentally disabled child.
Almost no one pays for subscriptions and everyone runs an adblocker these days. Writers are going to starve.
Remember, censoring porn from kids is bad; censoring porn from hurting women's feelings is good.
Look who's complaining. The whiners are all second-tier essayists, pundits, or worse. The article itself is by "RU Sirius". Complaints are by people like Erik Davis, who used to write music articles for Details and Spin. That's groupie journalism. Mark Dery wrote psuedo-journalistic crap like "The Pyrotechnic Insanitarium: American Culture on the Brink". John Shirley was an early cyberpunk author, and not one of the better ones. These guys are no great loss.
The top-tier essayists, like John McPhee, are doing fine. The top-tier political writers are getting their books published. Novelists continue to flood bookstores with paperbacks. Even romance novel sales are up.
The real damage from the Internet is that pounding-the-pavement newspaper journalism is no longer cost effective. That's not because anyone can blog; it's because Internet advertising is killing local newspapers. Ads for jobs, apartments, garage sales - all have moved to the Internet. Classified ads were a major money stream for newspapers, and that stream has dried up. Most newspaper content today is driven by press releases and other publicity. "News is what someone doesn't want published - all else is publicity". Pick up your local paper and mark the stories that didn't start from a speech, press release, wire service, or police report. In many papers, there won't be any. That's the problem.
Yes.
Err, No.
Well, maybe.
Depends.
I guess.
There are different media outlets for writers so I suppose it might depend on the type of writer that you are. As an avid reader I would say that it is GOOD for authors of (mainly) fiction. Several of my favorite writers have their own websites with forums that they actually contribute to.
Instead of having to rely on jacket cover blurbs, these writers can steer me toward other good writers with links to their websites. It's what the world wide web was designed for, it works well, and I believe these types of writers benefit from it. Not to mention that they can sell things directly to their fans (not just books, other novelties or even autographed works and limited editions).
"A government is a body of people, usually notably ungoverned." - Shepard Book Quoting Malcolm Reynolds
Maybe you're a good editor when serving as that extra pair of eyes looking over someone else's work; we all tend to have that blind spot looking at our own writing.
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
They need to learn how to make something besides "Buggy Whips".
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
It's a mixed blessing.
If the hardest part of writing is just making yourself sit there and write, and what used to be a typewriter and a blank sheet of paper has been transformed into a magical portal to a zillion fascinating destinations, then the internet can be a giant and addictive distraction.
On the other hand, it's a quick and simple way to do research without ever leaving your chair, and that can be a real time-saver.
So, on those counts at least -- color me ambivalent. I think you need to draw a distinction between people practicing writing as an art/hobby and those who make it their profession. As far as the actual practice of writing, I agree with the quote above.
I think there is a good point to be made that the amateur writer has a far greater audience than ever before. In the past, amateurs produced their own newspapers or pamphlets two hundred years ago or fanzines in more recent times -- now those same sorts can blog and circulate the information amongst their friends. I think it's a bad time for the professional and a good time for the amateur.
Kwisatz Haderach
Sell the spice to CHOAM
This Mahdi took Shaddam's Throne
Loathe.
Loathe
Loathe Loathe (l[=o][th]), v. t. [imp. & p. p. Loathed
(l[=o][th]d); p. pr. & vb. n. Loathing.] [AS. l[=a][eth]ian
to hate. See Loath.]
1. To feel extreme disgust at, or aversion for.
[1913 Webster]
Loathing the honeyed cakes, I Ionged for bread.
--Cowley.
[1913 Webster]
2. To dislike greatly; to abhor; to hate; to detest.
[1913 Webster]
The secret which I loathe. --Waller.
[1913 Webster]
She loathes the vital sir. --Dryden.
Syn: To hate; abhor; detest; abominate. See Hate.
[1913 Webster]
-- From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Loathe Loathe, v. i.
To feel disgust or nausea. [Obs.]
[1913 Webster]
-- From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
I misread what you were correcting. Your correction is correct. My mistake.
Loath
Loath Loath (l[=o]th), a. [OE. looth, loth, AS. l[=a][eth]
hostile, odious; akin to OS. l[=a][eth], G. leid, Icel.
lei[eth]r, Sw. led, G. leiden to suffer, OHG. l[imac]dan to
suffer, go, cf. AS. l[imac][eth]an to go, Goth. leipan, and
E. lead to guide.]
1. Hateful; odious; disliked. [Obs.] --Chaucer.
[1913 Webster]
2. Filled with disgust or aversion; averse; unwilling;
reluctant; as, loath to part.
[1913 Webster]
Full loth were him to curse for his tithes.
--Chaucer.
[1913 Webster]
Why, then, though loath, yet must I be content.
--Shak.
[1913 Webster]
-- From The Collaborative International Dictionary of English v.0.48
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
of people you've never heard of who claim to be Writers who write about writing. Like musicians who write songs about being on the road doing gigs or business people who spend all their time attending effectiveness training seminars, it demonstrates a certain loss of perspective in the craft. Isn't it interesting how most people who write these "how to publish a novel" books are either obscure or unpublished themselves? That snippy comment aside, I think the hubris-ridden article raises some good points. Writing well is a craft, but like any craft it takes place within constraints. Those constraints are dynamic and writers should be judged within their appropriate local conditions. However, if the constraints on your craft are rapidly expanding (e.g. in the case of writing and the internet) and you don't acknowledge the adjustment, your rigidity sounds about as silly as a Sumerian high priest bitching about how no one seems to do cuneiform right anymore.
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
It's a mixed bag, I think.
On the one hand, there are a lot more opportunities for making money from writing--blogs, namely. The downside of that, however, is that because there are so many people doing so, the pay is usually crap. To be successful, writers have to work much harder at promoting themselves directly to the readers. In the Olde Days(tm), writers had to promote their work to publishers, who then in turn promoted their work to their readers.
For fiction writers, I think it's a different animal altogether--in fact, I'd say that beyond offering a new medium for promotion and sales (Amazon), the Net hasn't had much effect on fiction writing. eBooks are not getting any traction. Online fiction zines typically don't pay very well (if at all), and aren't really well respected or frequented by readers.
I was at a con this weekend where there was a panel on Print-On-Demand, which is a technology used mainly by self-publishing companies and "vanity presses." Sites like Lulu.com are taking some of the stigma out of self-publishing (I've done it myself), but self-publishing again requires massive amount of work at self-promotion. (And some of the sleazier methods of said promotion are creating yet another stigma on the concept.) It's really only useful if you either have an audience already, or if you don't intend to sell more than a few hundred copies. As a means to earn a living, it just plain sucks.
For a fiction writer, the world hasn't changed much--dead trees are still the name of the game, as are the publishing firms that control them.
Gifts for Geeks - Stuff that really matters!
Is the internet bad for ________ - insert latest thing here.
Well, because of e-mail, deadlines can be shifted for journalists to whatever time the editor damn pleases.
I can imagine a future where old people will be whining about how Google used to be a harmless little search engine, or when you could download Linux freely because it wasn't an illegal hacking tool.
And the young Slashdoters (or equivilant) will be saying those fucking whiners are always going on about dual-booting and typewritters as if they were better that what we have today. And they will receive scores of +5 Interesting.
First of all, it's a pretty poor time in the history of humanity to be a professional writer. Hobbyists and semi-professional writers can easily reach wide audiences and they often submit their material to the same places as the professionals. Supply becomes higher than demand.
Second, I get almost all of my news from the internet and I think I know what's going on in the world at any given time. However, I will occassionally sit down with a newspaper when I can string together several minutes of free time. By the time I am through reading a long article about a current event, I am always amazed at how much I didn't know about it.
Lots of folks have already said that the internet is driving short, data dense prose and I agree that we are all the poorer for it. However, I know that I will continue to bypass longer stuff for higher density content because I can get my info quicker. I am a lazy bastard at heart and want to get my info and move on with the least amount of effort possible. I am frankly amazed that I was able to overcome my laziness and complete this post.
A little misunderstanding? Galileo and the Pope had a little misunderstanding...
Western Civilization is a spectrum, and even though I'm a conservative, I'd rather thought that we ought to have a place of value for our crazy liberal friends, because, at the end of the day, they do amazing work.
We have before us, a class of people whose livelihood depends on control over the mechanical means of producing a copy of a work, and that means is stripped away from them. So, yeah, the internet screws writers, along with phographers, artists, musicians, and anyone else who used to make a living selling copies of their work.
Who are these people getting screwed?
They are really, liberals. And, as a right winger, I have to admit, I find this funny and sad at the same time. It's funny, because all of the people really leading the charge to get rid of copyrights and the writing class, are those who tend to have a leftist bent themselves. It's sad though, because by the same token, those people do make good work. I may not like all of Bob Dylan's politics, or Vonneguts tirades against Reagan, but, I love Highway 61 and Slaughterhouse 5.
Today's liberals owe their political lives and the way they think to a literary tradition and they are destroying for reasons that are positively vain. "Free beer" for Steinbeck? Dickens? Vonnegut? Without the likes of a number of great liberal writers, there could be no liberalism, and honestly, there could be no western culture. Conservatism can't exist by itself, any more than liberalism can.
Liberalism, in its truest (that is, pan political party sense), is based on ideas that are deeply contemplative, and, you can't stuff that into an angry blog post. It's about images and ideas and emotions, and, really, the arts is what drives it. Daily Kos and liberal blogs cannot hold a candle to the likes of Steinbeck or a Dickens, to just name two great progressive (gasp liberal) writers, and it is reckless and irresponsible to pretend they can. This culture that the internet is trashing is -important-, and it is a downright disgrace that liberals own leaders of today are doing the trashing of their own roots, and, viewed broadly enough, are undermining the very basis for western culture.
We are what we Art. Is art really so expensive that it must be free? Are songs really that mundane that you need to have thousands of them? Are images so cheap? Must they be?
I counsel my liberal patriots to think carefully before you act, and I don't think that you are.
This is my sig.
Are you kidding me? I mean, do you really think that there will be many people who are paid to write for online publications that will say, "yeah, internet is the cause of rapid degradation of writing style" or something like that? Would this news even get published here if the authors concluded that internet sucks for writers?
Internet is bad for the quality of writing. Trying to type this goddamn message before the page gets swamped with other replies is one of many examples why. If you really think that 2-kilobyte blog entry, unedited and hyperliked all the way through is better than (or equal to) a real article, then you simply engage in groupthink.
Internet can be a conductor of good writing, of high-quality articles that rely on words (rather than pictures and hyperlinks) to conduct the meaning. It can be good for writing, but right not it is not. Right now it's mostly a source of fast-food writing where being quick and cheap is much more important than being meaningful and thoughtful.
I'm a gamer, so I offer you gaming media as an excellent example. Take some paper magazine from 10 years ago. Take some popular website now. Compare, see the difference.
And how is one to make money on the Internet? Rather than being paid by the word or royalties from book sales, one can earn money through advertising - Google AdSense, affiliate ads and so on.
I have earned as much as five thousand dollars per month from Google AdSense on my articles. Quite a few people in the Webmasterworld AdSense forum report earning ten thousand per month or more.
At one time it was my ambition to be a dead-tree author, but no more. I'm happier publishing on the web. Read, for example, my essays on mental illness and recovery.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
Dan Brown's books are good examples of what can make people that don't usually read pick up a book. The chapters are short, something is always happening and there is a cliffhanger at the end of each chapter. Each chapter is built to entertain someone who has 20 minutes of free time.
As you can see, I don't think TV is the cause. I think that the rythm of today's society is the cause of the change in entertainment. If you can only relax for 20 minutes at a time, reading the Lord of the Rings is more difficult than reading short stories on the net.
Paragraph one: SNARKY COMMENT TO GRAB ATTENTION - two sentences.
Paragraphs two - six: each a sentence that supports the main point.
Bold face subhead - to make it seem like there's a change in substance, when in actuality, it's just a development of the main theme.
Paragraphs seven through ten - each at most 3 sentences, tops.
Bold face subhead - announces conclusions with a snarky headline.
Three sentences form a paragraph or two. done.
It's just awful.
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Apparently.
It looks like most of the posters agree that amateurs are just as good as the professionals. In the interests of disclosure, I didn't actually read the postings that were several paragraphs long and filled with punctuation symbols, but if I spent my morning trying to read all that I wouldn't have time to update my blog.
Support microSD: in a post 9/11 world, it is unwise to carry your data on media that you cannot comfortably swallow.
Here's my two cents: Aside from article length, writing on the web contains significantly more typographic erros than any print publication I have ever perused. This includes articlesd here on /.. The article immediately proceeding this one says . . .
Seizures get worse when they abnormal activity of brain cells overheats the brain and causes more abnormal firing patterns.
I see this downward trend in much of our world because, sadly, people are lazy and in a hurry. I feel that if you will not do it correctly, you shouldn't be doing it at all. Most people in out society are cows. Their finite, narrow world is all that's important to them. They feel that just getting the information out is the important thing. ERRR - Wrong you pusillanimous creton. They care not to look ahead and consider the ramifications of their actions and how it will impact our children or community. As much care should be taken with grammar and spelling on the web as on paper. The excuse, "Information on the web needs to be posted faster," is pure bull shit. I'd rather hear about something 30 minutes later and be able to read it without mentally correcting than have to re-read some idiot-posted scratch.
...free (as in beer) software. It's a matter of people creating a product to sell or give away for free. The same arguments that apply to proprietary software versus free software applies here. Obviously, if people spend time reading free blogs and online-zine articles, they will reduce time spent on reading newspapers, magazines, and books. The number of hours in a day are fixed. That's a negative aspect, but I believe it's one of the few negatives. (Publication of wrong, unvetted information would be the other negative).
I believe time is the primary resource that's in competition, not subject matter. Many blogs, message board posts, and websites I read are much more narrowly focused than print media, so competition for subject matter seems limited. Narrowly focused topics are a good thing. If it were not for the Internet, I simply would have no outlet for what I write about, because my stuff is unpublishable due to the nature of the content. In the print world, that would be bad for me and those who read my blog.
There is a societal benefit to free information and the online publication infrastructure. More people writing means more people learning to communicate, which makes more effective workers. It also means audience reach is farther compared to print publishing, so there will be more people sympathetic to your issues. On my blog, I regularly see readers coming from China, India, Russia, Iran, and Australia. If I were publish a magazine column, my readers would only be Americans. It's easy to convince those culturally similar to me, but it's satisfying to know I may be convincing those very different from me.
This concept that articles and fiction pieces have to be brief, power-packed, and trendy strikes me as a cop out. People eat up message board threads consisting of nearly 500 words each and 20 messages deep. A thread can easily reach 10,000 words of material, so I don't buy the short attention span argument.
What I buy into is that people are simply uninterested in your work if you believe you need to be brief and trendy. If someone buys a $25 hard cover book, they have an investment in the book for which they need to recoup by reading it from beginning to end, so they may put up with a book that's less than thrilling. They have no investment with your free online piece, so they're going to be far more sensitive deciding if your content is interesting and thus worthy of further reading.
People like interactivity. How many times have you read a newspaper article and disagreed with a critical point? You had no means providing feedback, other than "letters to the editor", which was up to the whim of an editor to publish or not. The Internet provides the ultimate channel for feedback.
Camping on quad since 1996.
After RTFA I was left with the sense of many of the "traditional" authors/publishers as analogues to the Catholic Church after Gutenberg invented the printing press (alluded to by Mr. Shirky). While I agree that there is much chaff to be sorted through in the Internet to get at the precious few seeds, the freedom for authors to reach an audience and the ability of that audience to be reached without a group deciding for them how it "should be" is only good for truly free thought and speech. While holding onto a defunct distribution method may not be the financial best option for those plying their trade in the literary arts (cough, MAFIAA, cough) change is inevitable.
Being of the IT persuasion myself, the possibility of future systems that write and fix themselves terrifies me. However, the onus would be on me to keep myself current with the ebb and flow of technology, instead of hiding under a blanket, suckling my left thumb whilst pining for the "good 'ol days". And so it goes...
The good writers will still be there. The bad writers will be filterd out much faster.
Compare it to the camera vs painters or horsebreeders vs carmakers. Things evolve and change. Get over it.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
There are now so many people convinced they are writers, and so many of them are terrible, that fewer people are reading and if they are, they are turning to what the large publishers are putting out. I think there's two definitions of writers, one the "you get paid to do it" definition and the other the one advanced by Beckett in the original article. Some people are truly artists with text. The vast majority just pretend to be.
technical writing / development
Your discussion remind me of this excellent essay by Robert J. Samuelson entitled The Sad Fate of the Comma.
If you mod me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.
The Internet is a different sort of writing. What works on the Internet are short pieces. There are no novels on the Internet because nobody has the attention span or time to read a novel there.
For a professional writer that is any good, it is almost impossible to work within the bounds of the Internet. It is damn confining. We're not talking about having to polish something to get it expressed in absolutely the fewest words possible. That doesn't work either. What is required are both speed and terseness.
Also, the Internet is free. You might find some people getting shown ads in exchange for their reading, but nobody is going to pay enough to keep a writer from starving. All of the tip-jar and subscription services have pretty much proven that you can't get people to pay directly on the Internet. Ads are an indirect form of payment, but that only goes so far. The thing you need to make ads pay is massive numbers of lookers and immediate, topical content. Again we're back to speed and terseness.
I don't see it being good for people trying to break into writing as a career unless they are looking to write press releases and advertising copy. The misspelled bad grammer that is taken as a given on the Internet is no way to polish your craft. There are no "editors" just harsh critics, most of whom are not interested in grooming an author for success but just complaining about crap. Sure, the Internet also enables some collaborative work and that can be good. But a bunch of beginning writers trying to find their way without any guidance is like a little league team without the coach.
I'd say if you are good at "Internet writing" you are unlikely to be good in other published works. If you are a professional author you probably have nothing to fear from the Internet either.
I think most people understand that almost nobody has ever really made big money writing--and of those who do, even fewer make it for very long. I've done much better than a lot of writers, but except for a few years in the late 1990s, I could not have considered my writing income a "living." (Fortunately, I had a good day job and didn't have to.) What I find fascinating is that I am now making about as much money writing as I did back in the late 1970s and all through the late 1980s (until my books became popular) but the shape of the money has changed. I have a blog, and I've posted numerous articles in various hobby areas (mostly retro electronics) all with AdSense ads. I used to get money from publishers in lumps. Now I get it in dribbles, but from Web ads. And over time (and by time I mean eighteen months to two years) I get about as much money from the ads in accumulated dribbles for a given article as I used to get all in one lump for the same kind and size of article. The bad news is that it is not and has never been a lot of money. The good news is that the money keeps coming. If people keep looking for radio circuits to lash up on boards, well, the dribbles will continue, and after five years or so, I expect that the articles will have paid considerably more than I could ever have gotten from the niche magazines, back when there were niche magazines. An article in a print magazine is seen for a few weeks and then vanishes from sight. Web articles are always there, and anyone who really wants to find them can.
Add to that the fact that research is now hugely easier than it used to be, well, the Internet is a big win for writers who keep up with the online culture and do it as it needs to be done. Ironically, the key is patience. Write stuff that some small audience wants, and it will slowly generate money for years, with no additional work. I'm good with that.
The internet is good if you're:
An unpublished writer.
A copywriter or web content writer--it's a new venue and a new market to make money.
A writer, published or not, who doesn't live next door to the library.
A writer who works with others in collaboration.
A writer who plans to self-publish and promote.
Someone who writes for the joy of writing, ("open-source" writing) and if someone notices, that's icing on the cake.
A small publisher/printer working with self-publishing authors.
The internet is bad if you're:
A large publishing house.
A journalist who thinks their degree makes them "special." Yes, there are some bad amateur journalists, but providing you do the research and you can construct a sentence, there is no special anointing from on high that makes one a reporter. (And before anyone starts loading up stones, my degree is in journalism.)
Against a diversity of ideas and opinions, whether a government, a news outlet or an individual.
As long as there are readers, writing is good no matter what the venue. But therein lies the question: Will people keep reading as we turn into short-attention span, sound-byte monkeys? A few years ago, I had my doubts. But the Harry Potter, Eragon and other series have left me with some faith that, if you can write it, readers will come.
There's really no downside to having a new venue in this business, unless you choose to create one or are so insecure you're afraid of a little competition.
If you've never been modded as "flamebait" or "troll," you've never tried to argue a minority viewpoint here!
ne1 nos 2 mak short msgs use txt
prblm solvd
We've had hyperlinks for a long time now, yet when how often do you see them used in news stories and other common online writings? How many articles have you read and wondered, "WTF is this article ABOUT?"
The internet allows articles to supplement themselves with reams of additional information, but no one makes use of it, mainly because Big Media seems the online environment itself as just a supplement to print.
The problem isn't the public's attention span; it's the failure of vision in online publishing. When writers choose (and are allowed to choose) to make use of the strengths of hypertext, their writing will have more value in demand will grow.
You get the same facts in 20 dinky stories, with none of the depth of a really good, well-researched story.
Having 20 people write the same shallow story isn't "more" information. Sure, you have the resources to look the stuff up yourself. That's one of the things I like about Slashdot; everybody looks up some of it, and you actually end up with all the information.
But without a body of knowlegable people who actually give a damn, the loss of those big articles is a pain in the ass, because no one has time to look it all up themselves.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Is the world that much a better place with career writers, musicians, and politicians? I'm a believer that all of these tasks are done better when they aren't the primary source of income for the person. Notice how at least one of these writers doesn't even make it one sentence into his response before promoting his book? Get out there and get your hands dirty. If you are truly passionate about it you'll still manage to do it.
[link]I have earned as much as five thousand dollars per month[/link] from Google AdSense on my articles. Quite a few people in the Webmasterworld AdSense forum report earning ten thousand per month or more.
At one time it was my ambition to be a dead-tree author, but no more. I'm happier publishing on the web. Read, for example, [link]my essays on mental illness and recovery.[/link]
Wow. And you managed it without stooping to shameless self promo... wait a minute.
In addition to all the other frustrations which writers are forced to endure, if you click on the "Print-friendly" link to this article [in tiny little fonts, wwwaaaaayyyyyyy down at the bottom of the page]: then, after enduring a couple of Javascript errors, you are automatically re-directed to an entirely different article, about the 2008 presidential candidates.
God in heaven, I hate bad code.
Maybe I should just have put, interferring busy bodies.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Television focuses on sensationalist presentation? The USA once went to war over sensationalist presentation in the print media.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The parent speaks truth. Romance may not really have "the lion's share" of all fiction publishing, but in 2004 romance novels really did account for about 55 percent of all paperback book sales, totaling some $1.2 billion.
Here's another factoid for you armchair publishing-industry pundits to ponder: That same year, the Christian book market was said to be worth about $1.3 billion in net sales. You may not realize it, but there's a whole parallel market for Christian romances, Christian mysteries, and even Christian sci-fi and fantasy. And in 2004, it apparently brought in more money than romance books -- or, the equivalent of more than 55 percent of mainstream paperback book sales.
Remember these points, the next time you want to start mouthing platitudes like "only bad writers need to worry" and "the quality will rise to the top." When it comes to the business of writing, those writers who are most capable at reaching the market -- the real market, not the one they assume exists -- will be the most successful.
Breakfast served all day!
Oh, comma: how to count the ways that you help us?
[100% ISO 646 Compliant]
SVM, ERGO MONSTRO.
I hear that phrase echo in my head every time statements like these are made. What? Could just average jokers bring down our societies should they be permitted to... *GASP*... OMFG!... read and, when inclined, write? Will someone PLEASE think of the children?
I have long been of the opinion that the democratization of writing offered by the Internet exposes something that most "professional writers" don't want exposed, and which anyone who has ever read a movie review or some other such drivel piece has long suspected: if you paid most "professional" writers $1, you'd probably be overpaying them.
Excellent writers who can make money off of their wordsmithing talents have very little to worry about from the democratization of writing. People will pay to read their work because it is such a high caliber of discourse, or has the ability to entertain or provoke. But there are quite a few "professional" writers about whom we've all thought from time to time, "I could write better than this!" These are the ones who have banked their future on being a member of a club whose exclusivity has always been in question, and being at the lower end of what little exclusivity exists, are now finding it difficult to justify why they should be paid for their efforts while other "amateurs" seem to have a better facility for the written word.
You prefectly illustrate the basic, vital difference between conservatives and liberals. Liberals are, by nature, far and away more creative than conservatives. It's just fact.
The bulk of your "hack", "wannabe" artists are conservatives. That's why when you have the one-hit wonder: because they literally "blew their load" on one effort, and didn't possess the innate creativity to continue making good work.
Thus, when a conservative "creates", their viewpoint is that such a successful product MUST be milked out for all it's worth, and every last dime must be wrung from it. And further, if they can someone get influential people to "lock in" any kind of future success for them, all the better! That's why monopolies are run by conservatives: they don't have the talent or intelligence to innovate and win over the market, so they view forcing people to do things as a vital necessity.
A creative liberal, however, doesn't need to worry about things they have already created... because once it's done, it's boring. We move on to the next thing, the next creation, the next problem waiting to be solved. Liberals are always moving forward and looking forward, while conservatives mire themselves in the past, and always seeking strategic advantages in order to scam people.
Liberals add worth, while conservatives add waste. That's why conservative leaders will always have to say "mistakes were made", and "no one could have forseen". No vision, no intelligence, and no ability to lead.
Now it's not necessarily a bad thing... that's how the world works. Just quit trying to fool people into believing you guys are geniuses or visionaries... since every time you guys get put into a position requiring a genius or visionary, the entire system goes to hell (like, for example, control of the US government).
So don't cry for us liberals: we will always innovate, always adapt, always overcome. And all you conservatives will still wind up traveling in the trails we blaze.
Of course, it was never just a simple transaction of "money for writing." Nobody would write on spec otherwise. It was about getting published, in an expanding mass market, so there's always been a bit of business sense involved. This is simply a change in paradigm, not a disaster.
Writing is now much more like mass media. You (the writer) write something good, and then you get an audience, and you're going to have to take additional steps to make money from that. If you can't do that, then instead of going to a publisher, the writer will need to find some marketers to help with merchandising.
This new economy doesn't translate well for florid, Victorian era writing because you can't fit that crap on a coffee mug or a T-shirt. No one's being paid by the word any more. Many don't have the time to read all that verbiage.
But when something is available to everyone, as publication now is, it becomes essentially worthless. QED.
Publication, the ability to physically publish or produce media, is rapidly becoming worthless, because everyone can do it for negligible costs. I sense that the publication/distribution industry is running on inertia at this point, or, if you prefer, it's in free fall and has just about hit terminal velocity. Mind you, it doesn't necessarily have to hit the ground, but it's not going any faster.
The workers now own the means of production in this industry. Creative Commons is one seminal, if somewhat inchoate, way to "profit" from it. Money is not the only form of compensation. It's a tool amongst many, not an end. Some of the authors in this article lack the imagination to realize that.
They should take note of Bulwer-Lytton's old saw that "The pen is mightier than the sword." That would sell some serious T-shirts. The only writers who are worried about these developments are the ones who never figured out what "Step 3. Profit" actually means. You have to do something with all that money for it to be a meaningful profit.
--
Toro
You missed the sales opportunity in the NSFW hosted ad.
Buggy Whips!!!
This guy doesn't seem to be having any problems.
...in the headline, I'd give an emphatic 'Yes!'
'He who has to break a thing to find out what it is, has left the path of wisdom.' -- Gandalf to Saruman
I'm really sick of opinions and of most of what passes for online debate. Even the more artful rhetorical elements of argument and debate are rarely seen amidst the food fights, the generic argumentative "moves," the poor syntax, and the often lame attempts to bring a "fresh take" to a topic
--Erik Davis
Sounds like this guy reads slashdot...
The Cult of the Amateur: How Today's Internet is Killing Our Culture
Al Gore did.
Seriously, not only did msft not invent the internet, msft still doesn't even "get" the internet. Bill Gates once predicted that the internet would be rejected in favor of services like AOL.
What, no solution?
Okay, okay, okay.
I saved the damned thing to the hard-drive, and looked at the code, and there it is, right there in the META tag:
So the reason it didn't instantaneously move on to the presidential candidates article is because my Javascript debugger threw up a couple of errors, which held it back briefly.
So no, there is no solution, unless your browser supports turning off the META refresh [or else someone at 10zenmonkeys.com gets a clue, and removes that line from the file].
Idiots.
God in heaven, I hate bad code.
I have met old professional writers who literally hate the Internet and wish it never existed. They seem particularly worried about amateurs writing stuff. But that's their opinion and you know what they say about opinions. They aren't amateurs, they don't love writing, they just profit from it. I would very much prefer a novel or scientific paper written by amateurs rather than professionals. Why? Because, even if the amateurs's creation contains a few mistakes or omissions here and there, I know that it was nurtured with love, while the professionals's creation is as cold as money (not that money is necessarily bad, but it IS cold). It works with software, it works with encyclopedias, it works with news, it works with hardware, it works with fabbers, it works with science, and certainly it also works with writing. Professional writers can yell as much as they want, but Internet writing is here to stay. They are the old generation and together with all centralised models of production (RIAA, MPAA, Microsoft...) will have to either evolve or die, while the Internet enables communities of amateurs, the cooperative generation, to produce high-quality content in an open fashion for the love of it.
"Is the Internet Bad for Professional Writers"
:)
I am not sure -- did the professional writers get so mad at the Internet that they stole all the closing punctuation marks
If so, will they sell them back once the market conditions are right
I sure hope so
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
I read as far as where Erik Davis wrote "I got paid pretty good for a youngster" and I couldn't take any more. I thought this was a serious article about and by writers. I guess we can all call ourselves writers (typers), couldn't we?
My son would correct me and tell me I was "paid pretty well". My teacher would tell me "pretty" describes scenery and, um, er, members of the fairer sex. And if I were "paid pretty good" I'd invest some of my earnings in a few grammar lessons. I hate to be picky, but we are witnessing the bastardization of the English language at almost global-warming speed. Not that Slashdotters help any, relentlesly referring to organizations in the plural form, as in "Apple are going to release a flame-retardant case for the Nano..." Yikes!
My user name was a mistake. Input wasn't restricted, my bad.
As a published writer, I can tell you that the Internet is nothing but joy for aspiring and professional writers alike for two reasons. The first reason is really childish, but true. The second is totally a matter of practicality.
The first is that you get to see just how bad a lot of writers really are, and it gives you a kind of perspective that writers in previous generations never had, given that they were working in a bubble back then (relatively speaking.) There's nothing quite like the ego-boost a writer can get by perusing blogs and various writer sites and seeing the kind of grammar-challenged twaddle that 90% of the so-called writers out there produce. And it's sort of sad that most are neither educated nor experienced enough to know they should be embarrassed by it. It's amazing how often you see some unpublished writer on a writing forum float a query letter for public review that has some glaring grammar or spelling errors.
The second reason is that, with the Internet, you can dig up tons of information about agents, publishers and other writers. On top of that, you can make contact with many of them in various forums to gather information that would have taken a lifetime of writing and publishing to gain in the past. There's a wealth of information and resources for aspiring writers out there that should be explored and absorbed. The Internet has allowed working writers to consolidate information about agents and publishers and start separating the bad from the good. A lot of shady agents and underhanded business practices have been exposed on the Internet, and every writer should avail himself to that information.
Anyone who thinks the Internet is bad for professional writers has their head in the wrong place.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E7D91230F936A35756C0A961958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=print
''We really have to watch out for that,'' Mr. Campbell said. ''Last year he came back and whupped us.''
So, it actually turns out to be a direct quote: at which point, that's perfectly legit for the New York Times to report it.
Whether the IBM researcher should have used the word when talking to the press is another matter.
Tell you what, lets all go back to using the printing press and stop wasting time maintaining our applications, because the printing press requires no maintenance and we could all afford one!
Hmm!
America, Home of the Brave.
...More people writing means more people learning to communicate...
Sadly you are assuming that people are writing content that is of value and people comprehend what they read. Reading Mad Magazine, Maxim, and Playboy really are not providing the world with any intellectual growth. The Internet is about 99.9% nonsense in what is written. It is the world's largest editorial newspaper with an overdeveloped "Letters to the Editor" section that is attempting to pass itself off as truth, fact, and lacking any signficant bias. One AOL brought every yahoo (yes that pun was intentional) to the Internet they brought with them most of the BS that the original folks that help built the Internet were trying to get away from. We tried to flee into cyberspace to get away from the commericials, away from the Jerry Springer culture, away from the uneducated masses, and try to colaborate and communicate. MySpace, Facebook, and the "Social Networking Revolution" is nothing more the millions of attention starved people dragging their insecurities and frustrations with their adult-children problems. They'er writing on the Internet is uninspired, intellectually vacant, and largely self-absorbed with no formal understanding of how to even present a discussion in written form. 99% of the time they degenerate into name calling. It's as if an entire generation have lost any shred of Critical Thinking Skills and have lost the ability to communicate.
The most damning of all evidence are letters written by soldiers home. Look as letters from the American Revolution to modern day. You can write far faster now then back in the days of a quill and ink well yet look at the complete loss of quality, thoughtfulness, and sadly intelligence. It makes me ill.
The Internet has done nothing but lower the bar of what good quality of writing consists of by simply skewing the average.
Out of 10,000 blogs perhaps 100 are of significant worth to society. That means that blogs in general are worthless. That 9,900 blogs drown out the 100 by sheer volume. Humans are not stupid but they are gullable. Ideally the 100 good blogs should thrive and eclipse the 9,900 other blogs as those crappy blogs die off. But they don't.
Case in point, Jerry Spinger, Baywatch, Knight Rider, Wonderwoman, The Dukes of Hazard, Heart to Heart, Buck Rogers, Melrose Place, 90210, and so forth were some of the crappiest programs ever launched on TV. The writing was terrible, the shows were empty of anything remotely intelligent and yet thrived in their time and still do to this day. Somwehere the idea of Smart Entertainment died. Something couldn't be both intelligent AND entertaining. That mentality slit the written craft's throat. I see glimmers of hope out there, usually from the Sci-Fi crowds where the writers have chosen to look at thought-provoking writing that is entertaining rather then cheap thrills and transparent titilations.
There never will be the great writer or poets of old. They have been replaced by sub-standard nonsense and the Internet has given the a grand stage to dumb down the next generation just a little bit more.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
Bloody luddites. The stupid thing about the knob claiming to have to forego reading time to update applications is that's his CHOICE! How often do we need to update our word processors? Can't have read much before computers, I roll my eyes at them all.
"I hope you like Guinness, Sir. I find it a refreshing substitute for, er... food." Col. Jack O'Neil, SG-1
Professional writers showing their true colors: instead of engaging in debate, mod down what they don't like. Another indication that the profession is both obsolete and harmful to democracy.
Many local papers don't have original comment and will end up dying. But I believe that there is a need for quality local news sources (maybe a blog and a wiki could combine as a news source for a locality with volunteer journalists, a paid editor and Internet advertising).
There is a real need for local news. What do you want to know about, the horror crash in another city that killed 20 people or what the police were doing when they blocked off the street behind your house?
If I could syndicate a RSS feeds of significant international news (about wars etc), moderately significant news for my country (including changes to tax laws and other things that affect me), interesting and useful news about my state (changes to public transport, information about local celebrities), and trivial stuff related to my locality (like the car that caught on fire at the end of my street) then my news requirements would be met. Put Adsense for feeds on all of that and there should be enough money to be made to pay for it.
See http://etbe.coker.com.au/ for my blog.