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.""

Comments

The Internet is GOOD for writers

[dada21]

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.

Re:Translation

[Rei]

It's not about content length or page count. I think most people here have read long articles or other works online before. The key is that they have to be *interesting*.

While it most certainly has its faults, the most important purpose of the publishing industry today is that it acts like a filter. There are a hundred times more people who want to be published than actually will be, and this is a sad reality of the industry and anyone who wants to write. On the other hand, it's also a benefit; publishers filter out stuff that, for the most part, simply isn't that good -- derivative, written with third-grade grammar, tedious, unrealistic, unimaginative, etc. Even the "filters" sometimes need filters; that's what agents are for. While a given publisher may accept a small fraction of one percent of what is submitted to them, your average agent may end up selling perhaps half of what they acquire. This works because it's now the agent who accepts a fraction of one percent of what they get. Many big publishers don't take unagented submissions; they use agents as a "filter" to reduce the drivel that they have to sift through to find what's good out there. Often, even the agents will use their own "filters" -- say, grad students, paid slave wages to read the incoming queries . Like this person, for example.

That said, the internet does have some developing "filtering" mechanisms -- even if nothing more than an email from a friend saying, "Hey, I read this and it was great! You have to read it!" What the internet doesn't have, currently, is a particularly effective profit mechanism for writers, even those who do have some level of popular success. And translating online success to print success is not as easy as it may at first appear. If you have a relevant website that gets tens of thousands of unique hits per day, you might be able to get a little further by citing it as "platform" (esp. important in nonfiction) in your query, but beyond that, what agents and publishers want to see is some direct "filtering" mechanism on your work -- have you won presigious contests with thousands of entrants and recognized judges, have you been published in magazines or major newspapers, have you had a book published before (and how did it sell?), and so on. They want hard evidence that someone besides your friends and family thinks that you're good. Of course, even if you don't have any worthwhile credits, you can still be published based on the merits of your writing at hand.

At least, that's how it's supposed to work. ;)

My biggest gripe with the publishing industry is the "inventing" of best-sellers. At regular intervals, they'll buy what they (a relatively small number of people) consider the best sales potential work out on the market by a new author in their particular field for a huge advance (6-7 figures, compared to the usual 4-5). This starts the ball rolling; the very fact that they paid a huge advance gets the critics buzzing about the work before they even know anything about it. When it comes out, they review the heck out of it. Good or bad reviews, it gets a ton of publicity. Meanwhile, the publisher plugs the heck out of it, everywhere they can. Altogether, they create enough buzz about the work that anyone who reads books in the field feels they have to read it, if only just to know what other people are talking about. The work may, in fact, be pretty lousy, but that's not the important aspect. They could sell almost anything in this manner. The same thing applies to authors who, by virtue of their name, will get published no matter what. Someone like Tom Clancy could practically write a proposal for a diatribe against tube socks on a coffee napkin and get a deal out of it before he pens a word. Simply having the author's name on the side will ensure enough sales to be worth it.

That said, there are inherent benefits to new authors in the industry. Let's say you land a deal with