by Christopher Locke

The point of view came first.

Similarly, this article isn't intended for people who think of themselves as writers. Quite the contrary. It's for people who might never have seriously considered writing, who can hardly imagine themselves doing such a thing. After all, writing is for journalists and book authors, right?

Well, right and wrong. It used to be that, outside of the occasional letter to the editor, writing was pretty much limited to such professionals. In 1961, media critic A.J. Liebling quipped: "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one" -- the obvious implication being that if you didn't own one, you could basically go fish.

But things have changed since then. A lot. If you're reading this on the web, you do "own one." The rest of this is intended to help you figure out how best to use it, to encourage non-writers to write and non-publishers to publish, and to explain the upside of expressing that point of view you care so much about. Of course, if you don't have one of those, then you might as well stop reading right here.

But I'm willing to bet you do.

Anyone with any kind of audience -- consultants, lawyers, teachers, marketing types, small business owners, whatever -- can use the web to stay in touch with current contacts and build a larger network of engaged participants. Of course, this assumes you've got something interesting to say. But writing is funny that way. You often don't know if your point of view is interesting until you express it and get it out there in front of real readers. Some of the things I've written that I thought would surely bomb on the web have instead brought the greatest response. Go figure.

This element of immediacy lets me share my current thinking with friends around the Internet while it's still fresh in my mind. Whether the substance of the writing is analytical or expository -- or just plain out to lunch -- I get to engage with people I care about while I still care about whatever it was I had to say. Wisdom for the ages? I'd love to think so, but it's probably not. If I worried about that, I'd probably never write a damn thing.

OK, enough of prologue and preamble. On with the show...

Table of Contents

• context
• motives
• obstacles
• opportunities
• advantages

Zine! It's a red hot neologism, very much associated these days with the razzle-dazzle wonders of the Internet. If you look into where the word came from, though, you'll no doubt also encounter "fanzine," which the American Heritage Dictionary defines as follows:

An amateur-produced fan magazine distributed by mail to a subculture readership and devoted to the coverage of interests such as science fiction, rock music, or skateboarding.

Whatever you call it, writing on the Internet remains, first and foremost, writing. No matter what the theme or perspective, the motivation to communicate is still primary.

While today's web technology greatly facilitates publication -- in the broadest sense of getting your writing into the hands of potential readers -- people have been doing this sort of thing for a lot longer than we've had networks, computers, electricity, or even printing presses. Electronic publishing is only the latest wrinkle in a long and unbroken chain of cultural endeavor.

Perhaps this is all too obvious, but it seems worth remembering that people who write on the web are not just following in the footsteps of punk-rock zinesters with surly attitudes, but also of bards and balladeers, poets and troubadours, novelists, dramatists, essayists, journalists, all of whom have had one thing in common: a point of view that they were deeply driven to express.

Note the word "amateur" in the definition above. We tend to think of this as meaning greenhorn, someone who doesn't really know the ropes. A related word, slightly more pejorative, is "dilettante" -- someone who practices a craft or studies a field in which he or she is not a recognized professional. But the etymological roots of these words tell a different story. Amateurs do what they do for love (from the Latin amare), while dilettantes do it for sheer delight (from the Italian dilettare by way of the Latin delectare). Passion for the work is a quality professionals often lose -- one reason Zen Buddhism puts great stock in what it terms "beginner's mind."

The Internet is home to many such amateur writers today. Thousands of authors -- some quite gifted -- who are very largely unknown. For readers addicted to bestseller lists, this is a big problem. They want that reassuring imprimatur from The New York Review of Books, or at least the nod from Oprah or Amazon, before they'll "waste their time" checking out new stuff.

But there's also a new kind of audience online. Some of these readers are hungry for a different kind of fare than they tend to find in bookstores or magazine racks. Despite the ancient claim of The New York Times, all the news simply doesn't fit. Or perhaps they're just looking for "the free stuff." For established authors, the latter isn't much of a draw. For writers just getting started, or seeking to broaden their readership, it represents a major opportunity.

The web is a kind of proving ground for the latter class of authors. The best will go on to achieve serious recognition, both online and in more traditional media. The best aspect of this recognition is that it will be directly based on the appreciation of Internet audiences instead of being determined by a steep hierarchy of agents, publishing scouts and marketing VPs, all attempting to leverage trend projections and abstract demographic data.

In contrast to conventional publishing, the web offers something more like the broadsides that writers once used to distribute ballads and political tracts, or the Hyde Park soapbox from which anyone could express an opinion.

However, if your primary motivation is financial gain, there isn't much prospect of immediate payoff in publishing on the web. Yes, there are people making good money by writing online today. But most of these are hired guns who pen whatever pays so much per word. There's nothing wrong with freelance journalism, of course, and some of the resulting work is very good. It just isn't the main focus of this article, which is writing that matters deeply to you.

Wishful thinking aside, it's tough to get anyone to pay you for this kind of writing. Unless you already have an impressive portfolio of published work to show, there are probably better ways to get rich quick. Like selling apples on the street corner. If you're convinced you are writing the Great American Novel or the definitive investment newsletter on trading pork belly futures, you're probably not going to want to put this stuff online for nothing.

But that's precisely what I do. And it's not because I think my stuff is junk -- though trust me, there are vast differences of opinion on that score. Instead, I publish EGR without charge because:

1. it pays off in other ways, both monetary and intangible, and
2. other means of publishing can be such a royal pain in the ass

I'll talk more about (a) in advantages below, but let's check out (b) for a moment...

Conventional Hurdles

The permission you must obtain when attempting to publish on paper takes several forms. The first is convincing an editor that your writing deserves to see daylight. Quite often, he or she will not immediately perceive your brilliance, or will react to your fevered pitch with a perplexing (to you) degree of boredom. Unless you get a green light at this level, dream on.

But even when I've managed to achieve the requisite mind-meld with an editor, and submitted what I knew was a dynamite article, I've often had to deal with copy editors who were not only massively ignorant of the subject material, but who also insisted on turning good English into bad. Being made to look like a drooling idiot in public is a high price to pay for getting your name on a byline. Of course, this doesn't always happen -- just often enough to count.

The highest level of permission involves what's called "peer review," whereby a committee of your colleagues supposedly assess your work on its inherent merits. There is no more politics involved in this process than there is in, say, a presidential election. Some depend on journals that use this procedure to advance academic careers and, ultimately they hope, attain the shining grail of tenure.

Am I ever glad I don't have to deal with that! As long as my stuff is online, and I can point someone to it, that's all I care about. Professional confirmation is nice, but it often comes accompanied by subtle, hidden costs.

Then again, sometimes these costs are not so subtle. The article called out on the left cost me my job when it appeared in print. Published in an official IEEE Computer Society journal, it made hamburger of several cows sacred to Carnegie Mellon University, where I was then employed. Some subjects are simply out-of-bounds -- especially for non-degreed grunts like myself. The amazing thing is that I got it past the editors at all. Today, I could just publish it on the web -- and lose my job without all that extra hassle!

I still write occasionally for magazines, and naturally, I love seeing something I've written appear in print -- especially when the check really is in the mail. However, when I want to stretch out and explore as a writer, with no boundaries or barriers, nothing beats writing online.

Online Hurdles

• homepages: Do you need a homepage on the Internet? My answer would be: of course. Not having one today is like not having had a business card ten years ago. This is where you list your contact coordinates, likes and dislikes, interests and accomplishments -- the latter usually in the form of a resume. But a homepage is a pretty static affair. People generally only go there when they feel the need to check you out. And that can be seldom.

• lists: I'm on all manner of email lists. They're great for keeping on top of news and views and tricks of the trade. But they're not so great for writing more than a few sentences at a time. The inspired one-liner seems to be the preferred form, and too often, the one-liners just ain't that inspired.

• newsgroups: Usenet newsgroups used to serve the same function many email lists serve today. Unfortunately, spammers have destroyed many of these once useful discussion groups. They do have the advantage of not requiring a formal subscription process, so you can turn them on and off more easily. However, the same caveat applies to longer forms of writing. Exchanges are usually brief and lengthier postings can precipitate angry flames.

• web conferencing: In 1992, I hosted a discussion on the Well, the granddaddy of all conferencing systems. Many attempts have since been made to bring this kind of functionality to the web, and some of these systems are quite good. However, the interactive form, as with lists and newsgroups, doesn't lend itself to writing more than a paragraph or two. Also, none of the above mechanisms usually provides a persistent web address for what you've written. You often can't send someone a URL and say: take a look what I just wrote. Or if you can, you often can't find it again six months later.

• chat: With respect to such persistence, chat rooms are like writing on water. They're immediate, they're fun (sometimes), they're even informative (well, it could happen). But nothing remains once you log off. Chat is to writing what Kleenex is to sneezing.

• zines: For any real composition, what we have come to call zines beat these other options hands down. In fact, I would propose the following as a decent working definition of a web zine: a persistent online location for extended writing that is posted periodically.

If you want to write the articles yourself, the answer is clearly personal publishing -- starting your own zine or whatever else you might prefer to call it. There are costs and hurdles here as well. You will have to learn HTML and FTP, or purchase software tools that will help you to format your stuff correctly and somehow get it onto a web site. Speaking of which, you'll need a web site. And possibly a domain name. You'll also need a way to collect subscriptions and some sort of list server to manage email updates, notices and interactive exchanges. Possibly, you'll need full web conferencing capability.

These requirements can quickly become too expensive for anyone who isn't able to count on an immediate and steady cashflow from their personal publishing efforts. Bummer. So anything you can do to reduce this outlay is clearly a plus. The three web sites linked at the left are examples of a new category of Internet business models that provide alternatives worth checking out in this respect. Each offers free web space as well as various tools to facilitate personal publishing and audience development.

Is this man hyperactive or just plain nuts? The answer is: neither. This herculean publishing work attracts substantial traffic to his real business, which is selling web site and CD-ROM development as well as online marketing advice. This is critically important. It's easy to fall into thinking that online publishing doesn't pay. But even if readers won't fork over a subscription fee to read what you write -- and most will not -- that doesn't mean there's no payoff.

Robert has amassed a very substantial readership and has achieved guru status among both vendors and investors. In addition to consulting, he recently began selling analytic reports for serious money -- over 1000 bucks a pop. I'm sure he'd agree, this would probably not have been possible without the substantial visibility -- and credibility -- his online newsletter and web site initially provided.

In addition to a disgustingly large free circulation -- he knows I'm jealous -- Randy offers a premium for-pay edition of the newsletter. He also self-publishes past issues collected into books, which he sells from his web site. He lives entirely off the proceeds of these revenue streams, plus speaking engagements and consulting.

EGR and JOHO trade humorous barbs at every opportunity, but there's more going on here than virtual stand-up comedy. David and I are consciously intersecting two distinct audiences and seeing what happens from their convergence. If we made any money from our publishing efforts, we'd be competitors instead, which wouldn't be any fun at all.

All of these online publications began without much hope of large returns, but in one way or another they have repaid their authors very well.

When I started publishing Entropy Gradient Reversals in May of 1994, all I knew was that I wanted to write again. I couldn't publish in the so-called legitimate press because I would have had to tout the wonders of my then-employers' fabulous products. And I would much rather have set my hair on fire.

Since then, I've reaped all kinds of benefits from writing EGR, even though I foresaw none of these perks in advance. Let me tick off a quick half dozen here before wrapping this up. These examples are obviously from my own experience, but I think they speak to the advantages of personal publishing in general.

• networking: Keeping in touch with old friends and making significant new contacts is hard work. I would have had to send hundreds of email messages and make hundreds of phone calls -- per day! -- to accomplish a fraction of what I've achieved in this department via newsletter and web site authoring.

• recognition: The Rocky Mountain News recently ran a full-page article on EGR in its Sunday print edition. The zine has been reviewed on the Gate (the homepage of The San Francisco Chronicle), as well as receiving favorable mention in publications as diverse as The Web Magazine, Salon, t@p online, Netsurfer Digest, Release 1.0, and Hotwired. Very strange. This sort of thing never used to happen when I wrote for Information Week, Network Computing, Byte or Newsweek.

• credibility: Whether they should or not, it's a fact that many people believe what I say these days because they find my writing persuasive and on target. Others of course, think I'm full of crap, but that doesn't undermine the value of the first group. People who believe you're telling the truth as you see it -- and agree, of course -- will invariably invite others to come take a look. This translates directly into a growing audience.

• invitations: EGR attracted Microsoft's attention. They said they liked its irreverent tone and humor. And they paid handsomely for the three columns I wrote for them in the past year. The editor in chief of IEEE Internet Computing asked me to join its editorial board as a result of reading my newsletter. The Industry Standard magazine recently published an article that largely dealt with the experience I've gained from writing EGR -- and has asked me back to write more. Thanks to the direct interest of its CEO, Audible Inc. created an audio edition of the zine. I could list more examples, but the point is that these connections never would have happened without a personal publishing base.

• money: EGR doesn't make a dime directly. However, all my consulting work today comes from subscribers. And this revenue isn't trivial (much to their chagrin). Two and a half years ago, I wondered long and hard how I could end up working for myself. The last thing I would have guessed back then was that a highly controversial web zine would provide the perfect solution.

• fun: Equally as important as all of the above, publishing EGR has been a total gas. Writing my peculiar brand of satire has opened up internal doors and windows I never knew existed. Also, it's been a lot cheaper than professional psychotherapy. Moreover, it's been personally gratifying at a level difficult to adequately express. When someone sends me email saying "your last piece really knocked me out" or "you've made me look at the world in whole a new way," there are few experiences that compare to the rush. For a writer, that's the ultimate reward.

While most of this article has focused on the personal advantages of online publishing, a final few words are in order on a larger set of benefits. Personal web publishing can be a powerful vector for porting -- maybe I should say sneaking -- new ideas into large organizations, which due to their size and bureaucratic structure, are often slow to change. It can be a significant source of valuable concepts, perspectives and techniques that may not yet have been accepted -- or even thought of -- by the mainstream press. Of course, critical reading is required to sort dross from gold, but when was this ever not the case?

Personal publishing also enriches the public sphere, providing a broader spectrum of opinion than would otherwise be available. This is one of the greatest gains society stands to realize from the Internet phenomenon. Everyone knows that free speech is central to democracy, but no one benefits unless that speech is exercised, or if it is exercised only by a few companies able to pay the high cost of entry into the ranks of the mass media.

Finally, the overall economy stands to benefit by the creation of valuable new products and services. At least some of the niche audiences of today will grow into substantial commercial markets tomorrow. Because it is not only the Microsofts, Netscapes and Newscorps of the world who can play this game. Online, as never before, the marketplace will judge what constitutes genuine value. And in the case we've been considering here, the emerging market consists of avid readers. Readers ready for something different, something smarter, something better than what they've been offered so far.