absolutely. to get paid for writing fiction is like getting paid for masturbating.

I think one of the things the “don’t write for free” crowd is overlooking is that (a) everyone’s still figuring out how to make online publishing pay (and I do mean everyone, from writers to publishers); and (b) publishing is nonetheless clearly switching over from print to online. So getting in on the online publishing action can be a smart idea, even if it doesn’t pay right away. For one thing, (c), free writing often works as publicity.

Let me put it this way. Before I started blogging, I was making maybe a couple thousand a year as a writer. Since blogging, I gross in the high four/ low five figures a year. Not a full time living… but a lot more than P.B. (Pre Blogging). Blogging, and letting my blogging get reprinted for free, has been the main way I’ve gotten my work out in the world, so publishers who do pay can find it.

Besides, it’s just cool and fun. I’m a far better writer now that I’m writing publicly almost every day, and getting feedback on my work. And having a forum to publish whatever the hell I want to say, regardless of what any editor thinks about it, is more fun than a barrel of vibrators.

And you’re absolutely right about writing for literary publications. I’ve been paid once for poems in a magazine, and never for a review–every other time I’ve published I’ve gotten copies at best, so financially, there’s no impetus for me to write (or edit). And as more and more journals succumb to the financial realities of shaky funding and go online, payment for literary work will become less and less common.

I figure I get something else out of this gig. It’s not quite an alternative revenue stream, but I’ve met lots of people, read lots of new books, and been exposed to a far wider readership than I’d have gotten on my own. So maybe that’s the hippy-dippy way of looking at this thing–I’m a poet, not a capitalist.