The Digital Writer |
All free people love an alternative to monstrous systems. And the print publishing system, for all its good and good people, is a monstrous system where the writer is simply another worker bee in the process. Therefore, the literary values of the writer are nugatory. It reminds me of conversations I've had with people in the medical profession who complain that they work in a terrible system that's trying to monetize the art of healing, making the healer a cog in the money-making machine. Who can trust institutions based on these values?
This is one reason alternatives arise and why they often take root. In the publishing system it's even more striking because the writers, the core of publishing, can do so much on the digital publishing system. The doctor, cut away from the system is rather helpless without all the expensive testing and equiptment.
By no means is the print publishing system dead. But the literary type looks into the soul of things and at that point pronounces it dead or, hardly alive. It's a machine that simply takes generations of writers and their written work and pushes it through the gears, robbing both the writer and reader of the great satisfactions that can be had by books, reading, literature, thought, and so forth. Writers con themselves into believing they are not "corporate employees" but the truth of the matter is that they are when they hand in their assignments to the corporate entity that is going to "pay" them something for the effort. This is not the fault of those who work for publishers or, even, manage them. It is the fault of the system and what happens when it gets too big, too successful. It's no different than car manufactuing or any other industry. It can't afford risks, the bottom-line rules, the market dictates, the PR system is set in motion to make what is bad, good. The system is fully corrupt and yet it still wants our words.
One of the greatest words a free person can hear in an aging state of affairs as the modern world is, "renovation!"
Do not destroy, do not bring down but take all the significant things and make them new.
Individuals brave enough to do that start something.
David
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