International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

For those of you wondering, this day got its name from a post by Howard V. Hendrix, current VP of the SFWA. Basically he complained that authors posting free stuff on the web were scabs, undercutting the market for authors actually trying to sell their work. John Scalzi, Jo Walton, and several other authors have not only derided this view of things, they declared today as the day for posting even more free things to read. Mr. Scalzi has posted the first half of a novel he wrote way back when (and never finished) – you can read his post about this and find the link to the novel here.

In the spirit of the day, I’ll direct you to some of my poetry, which is available here.

In today’s publishing world, getting the word out to the reading public is critical to the success of a work. There are an incredible number of new works being published every year, both online and the more traditional route. Most of these will sink without a trace without some form of publicity, and posting things on the web is at least one way to generate interest. In the future, everything might be published electronically, and the dead-tree format will be no more. If that happens, I’ll cry a bit, as I really like being able to curl up with a good book and see them ranked in my bookshelves, but I think such a change will also open up the publishing world to where more writers can get people to read their musings, even more so than has already happened with the advent of the web, and that’s not a bad thing.

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