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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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
I personally have subscriptions to a few of the websites that I frequent. If a website is worth reading, I'll drop them a few dollars every month for the privledge. The fact that most people won't is nothing new. It has always been like this. It's like the music industry's charge that music downloads are cutting into their profits. As far as I can see, most people are still paying for the music they love. Yes, I've downloaded some records, but generally it's stuff I don't know very well, or something I want to gauge the quality of prior to purchasing. If I decide it's not worth my money, the artist/label don't lose any money, because had I not downloaded the CD, I still would never have purchased it. And most people don't run adblocks. While yes, most /.ers do, the average email-solitaire-googler out there (aka 98% of the internet population) have no idea what an adblocker even is.
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.
Well, with so many venues where your can write, for each you have to decide what level of quality you're going to shoot for beyond merely communicating. Slashdot postings for the most part don't demand high polish.
Regardless, these many venues certainly encourage you to write, and that's by far the most important thing for everyone concerned. Think about it, in a period in which there were fears that the written word would die (TV and all that), instead we've got more people writing than I'm sure in any period of history.
His point about independent editors is well taken. One of the things I've done for a decade to improve my language skills is free editing (fiction and technical non-fiction) for people or efforts on the net who can't afford to pay money. In addition to the practice/experience, it pays off handsomely pure enjoyment, and I have absolutely no trouble spending all the time I want doing it.
I don't do that much of it, but "an army of Davids" doing this sort of thing in such a low friction system can make a big difference.
...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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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!
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
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.
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."