By K. A. Laity
"There's nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein." -- Red Smith
At a writer's conference this past weekend, my astute pal Nancy Holzner (author of Deadtown and Hellforged) said she reckoned everything had changed once writing became "content" and writers became "content providers."
She's both a novelist and tech writer, so she's seen these changes from a lot of angles. I immediately remembered a student a few years back saying that the allure had gone out of the term "writer" because blogging had made everyone a writer. The magic—if it was ever there—has gone.
The big publishing news like the explosion of ebooks and the implosion of bookstores gets most of the headlines; less visible is the slow erosion of writers' pay. As Nancy said, we got used to the dismissal of people calling writers "a dime a dozen" but we never actually thought it might become the pay scale.
A quick look at any freelance writing market site will demonstrate just how low the pay can be; the problem is there are enough desperate people out there seeking 'legitimacy' as writers who will do anything to be published. Like outsourcing, the availability of cheap labour sidesteps the need to employ expensive professionals.
Particularly when there are a lot of people who will do it for free.
It seems especially the case when it comes to women writers. The comics community gave big props and not a few dollars to the Kickstarter project for Womanthology to showcase women writers and artists in a medium that still suffers under the weight of a heavily-male presence, but all the proceeds will go to charity, not to the creators.
There's hope that the shifts in publishing models may eventually result in more money going directly to the creators. Writers who have established names have begun dipping their toes into the direct market. But it's also true the indie publishing opportunities have been exploited by some who game the system unscrupulously and the sea of ebooks of dubious quality has made it more difficult to wade through and find the gold.
Everyone wants the 'net to be free; bands can offer free downloads and get their cash through gigging, but there's no similar scheme for writers. I really don't know where it will go from here. Maybe the best idea is to leave writing and become part of the industry. Unfortunately, writing is a drug that gives you just enough of a high that you keep crawling back through the lows to find that soaring feeling again.
K. A. Laity writes provides so much content that she had to create some pseudonyms to keep her colleagues from thoughts of murder. A tenured medievalist at a small liberal arts college, she mostly tries to find ways to avoid meetings in order to write more . Find her on Facebook or follow her on Twitter where she bemoans the stress of preparing to move to another country.
Image via rahego's Flickr