Writing lessons — Money flows toward the writer

My work blog and my writing blog collided this week:

 Can print-on-demand save publishing?

POD, or print-on-demand, gets conflated with vanity presses all the time. I address that in the blog — if mainstream publishing adopts print-on-demand, they will have to first create a rebranding campaign to make sure that everyone knows that just because something is POD doesn’t mean that it is a vanity press. (Note: yeah, Tales from the Secret City was self-published. But we knew what we were doing, and it was more like recording an album and distributing it than thinking we were “published.”)

That segues into the mantra by which all aspiring writers must live. 

Money flows toward the writer.

Vanity presses extract money from the writer. Legitimate markets — book publishers, magazines, webzines — pay the writer for their work. Don’t be fooled. If someone asks you for money, whether that is a fee-charging agent or a market that will “publish” your work, run away.

Money flows toward the writer.

Keep saying it. Believe it. Money flows toward the writer.