Display Your Writing – Publish Before Publishing or In Spite Of?

This has been bothering me more and more.

Artists have many place to put up portfolios of work, galleries, and sketches. Musicians can upload songs and snippets and then keep going. Done right, this can generate a career.

And writers have?

Okay yes, we can publish to Amazon or B&N or whatever, but these are not communities and once we done so we relinquish value. Communities where you can publish work either take sweeping rights or are not serious at all. Professional writing relies on rights purchasing…and once you post it you lose rights publisher’s want. Oh, sure, one in a million people get stuff published after they have published themselves, footed all the marketing, captured a few leprechauns. However that’s not the norm.

I’m not talking about critiquing. There are a few closed off pieces of the web for that. I’m talking about things like Deviant Art, where you can gain a following, turn that into commissions, turn that into a portfolio.

Oh wait, you can post writing on DA? Yeah, I knew that. Want to know the difference? You post your latest painting on DA, you can still sell it. You post your writing on DA, you’ve lost First Rights. It’s published. Maybe someone will want a hard copy but that’s getting more and more unlikely. Suddenly, unless you make a ton of sales BY YOURSELF, it becomes untouchable.

One could argue that this is what blogs are for but with the death of Google Reader, other readers have suddenly begun to charge to be able to afford bandwidth. Without readers, it gets harder and harder to follow blogs. I’m still trying to parse how follow all the blogs I follow without having to pay more to do so.

I’m not sure where I’m going with this. I’ll never stop writing. I’m revising two short stories to start sending out soon and I’m still submitting Dreamer’s War. I’ve just sent out to agent #31. I won’t stop until I cannot find anywhere else to send it. And then? If then?

I’ll post it..probably here. Then perhaps offer it on Kindle and other e-book formats. I want people to see my writing. Then it will out there for good or ill. Don’t worry, it’s been revised, edited and revised again. And if it came to that, I’d hire an editor to go over again. I may not have any money to market my book but I can put it out there, right? It would be serial. Then collected in e-book.

If it comes to that, I should have my second book, Fallen Kingdom finished by that time. I will submit that one. And the next. And the next. I will keep going.

That’s all one could do really.