Galleycat wonders what people think about Chris Anderson’s assertion (in a Wired article and upcoming book) that, as the internet makes so many things — from video hosting to software to terrific writing — available for free, everyone’s just going to have to suck it up and start giving shit away. Including the publishing industry.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Galleycat points to the recent success of Suze Orman’s book Women & Money, even after a million e-copies were given away: it just kept selling anyway, which came as a shock to many. Of course, Suze Orman has Oprah behind her. There’s that.

Here’s what I think: there is a time for free, and a time for charging out the wazoo. The challenge is figuring out which is which.

I wouldn’t be sitting here right now waiting for my agent to call and tell me when the auction date for my book will be if I hadn’t been giving my writing away for almost a year now; I only have an agent, let alone the interest of multiple publishers, because I developed a substantial readership by blogging (as did Marianne). I am a tested quantity, if not yet a proven one (we’ll still have to see if the blog readership translates to book sales, after all).

Now, I could have gone about becoming a tested quantity by freelancing — i.e., querying my ass off, absorbing rejection after rejection, and occasionally getting paid to write something for an outlet with specific guidelines that may or may not have accommodated my natural voice (you don’t see “fuck” in print quite enough for my tastes). And since we’re speaking hypothetically here, let’s say I was even successful at it: lots of high quality publications, enough money to live on, a good reputation in the industry.

The whole “enough money to live on” thing sounds awfully appealing, but there are still a few noteworthy disadvantages to doing it that way:

1) Getting to a point where I’d published enough to become a desirable commodity to agents and book publishers would have taken a lot longer than 10 months.

2) My clips wouldn’t necessarily represent my voice accurately, because I would have been writing for specific markets, as opposed to writing for anyone who drops by and likes my work enough to stick around. The blog is me in a way magazine articles never could be. (Having said that, one assumes the book will be much better than the blog, seeing as how it’ll be revised and edited, which my blog posts are not. )

3) Even with a substantial clip file, all I’d be able to show potential agents and editors would be that some other editors thought I was worth publishing, and my work had been available to however many thousands or millions of readers. None of us would know how many of those people actually read my articles, though, or how many of those had actually liked them. With the blog, I can tell you exactly how many thousands of page views and unique hits I get every single day, which represent people seeking out my writing specifically. (Well, and my co-bloggers’ now, but at first it was just me.) I can point you to tens of thousands of comments to give you a sense of how people respond to my writing. I can say, “Hey, readers, would you buy a book by Marianne Kirby and me?” and get 100 responses in a day. That comes in handy.

4) I would have spent however many years it took to build that clip file dealing with frequent rejection, loads of uncertainty, and virtually no feedback from readers on the work I was doing. That shit can be seriously demoralizing, and like many writers, I’m a bit of a delicate flower. But with the blog, I get to publish anything I feel like publishing, and I start getting reader feedback within five minutes of posting. I can determine what works and what doesn’t by whether I get 10 comments or 400 or somewhere in between — and then try to do more of what works. I get loads of lavish praise from readers, which is a hell of a lot nicer for my psyche than the loads of rejection that even the best freelancers are subject to. And that means my confidence has grown steadily along with the blog. I know, in a way I never could have otherwise, that real people enjoy reading my work, and they will tell their friends. Which means A) I’m constantly motivated to keep writing — I never have those, “God, is this even worth it?” days anymore — and B) I’m in a much better frame of mind to advocate for myself as a businessperson.

When one agent and a couple of editors contacted me to discuss the possibility of a book, I didn’t leap to sign with that agent or, worse yet, to go agentless and sign a boilerplate contract with a publisher. I mean, don’t get me wrong — I was shitting myself over the fact that people were coming to me, instead of the other way around. But stunned gratitude is not the same as desperation. Instead of assuming that those few expressions of interest were the only shots I’d ever get at being deemed worthy by the book publishing industry, I thought, “Hmm, here’s more than one expression of interest. I’ve got something marketable here.” Which meant I queried other agents and ended up in a position to choose among them. And the agent we did choose is confident that within the next couple of weeks, we’re going to be able to choose which publishing house we’d like to go with.

I am, of course, no Suze Orman — I’m no Susie Orbach, for that matter — but I’m in a position of power over my own writing career that few first-time authors are lucky enough to be in. Furthermore, it’s all happened in a matter of weeks, instead of months or years of doing pretty much what I’d have to do as a freelance writer: querying widely, waiting, waiting, waiting, hoping, attempting to take each rejection in stride, waiting some more, and maybe, if the planets aligned just right, getting an agent interested in the proposal. Because I had both the readership and the confidence to present myself as a (potentially) valuable commodity, it was a whole different ballgame.

And that was all a direct result of giving my writing away for free. Being in a position to get paid for writing – which has been my goal since I was about 6 — is the direct result of giving it away. So, you know, I’m pretty okay with that decision.