writing

This is a response to a forum post questioning the merits of self publishing. It was a good question, so I decided to try to tackle it. The original may be found here:
http://www.purplewildebeest.co.za/forum/viewtopic.php?showtopic=1261

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Self Publication:

If you post a poem on poetry.com, the bitch will keep nagging you to pay a small fee, for whose sum you can be published in their next 'compendium' of poems, establishing yourself as a 'published poet'.

Currency is a cheap notion. Ron Paul wants to make it based on gold, but that is probably because he is secretly a freemason and an alchemist. I mean, they are making diamonds these days, after all. Who is to say gold won't be next -- then where will your gold-based economy go? And don't tell me that gold is an 'element', Watson.

Translating these concepts, the gaslight world of 'writing publishers' also just operates on a type of currency. You make an investment by spending time and effort to research 'How to get published'. Once enough cache is gathered, you start to spend and see what the outcome may be.

For bottom feeders, yes, there is a fear of being published. It is like any other economy. You will find these pasty, weaseling little scroungers, holding their purses or wallets ever so tightly, fearfully dropping one coin (poem or writ) into the Publisher hat, and ... cringing. Hoping that this will 'be the one'. Even though it is the first.

Smile Big boys and girls, however, know the nature of the game from the start. Mark Twain understood it due to some time spent arranging letters on a press at a local newspaper, as a child. So for these prescients, the publishing world becomes kind of just like the stock market.  read more »