Tell Me Again Why I Can't Self Publish?

I'd like to start off by writing this: I am a content stream. To follow that sentence, I'd like to write: So are you.

All throughout the adventurous day, the issue of Google starting knol occupied my mind - not for the same reason I expect many other commentators have written of. While I was at the bank, the attractive young woman accepting a lame excuse for me applying for a new plastic card asked what I did. It is always difficult for me to answer that question, but the best answer with the least questions is 'Writer'. She then asked me about where I wrote, and I explained the ebook with O'Reilly and the websites. 'Oh, so you publish things yourself! Is it hard?"

Somewhere I crossed a line and became a publisher. This thought, as silly as it may be to you, is completely true. If you write on your own website, you're a publisher - you're self published. Before you go running out and printing business cards to impress attractive young women at banks, hear me out. Being a publisher just isn't what it used to be. I know a guy who used to be a publisher. Well, he still is a publisher - for Nica Living. He's pretty ordinary when compared to other people I hang out and drink coffee with, though he is the only person who made vegetarian food I could palate. Still. Publisher. Phil Hughes has done a lot of that publishing stuff. He even made it look easy when I worked for him. So I started thinking about how crazy it was that I could be a publisher when I knew it was not as easy as I do things. This, of course, prompted some decisions. I could make life altogether different and miserable, but I would need to hire some staff so that there would be a publishing company. And then I could worry about loads of stuff, plus manage people, and so forth.

The idea did not appeal to me.

I'd probably grow a beard and move somewhere that they called me Santa. It would have to be somewhere warm, though. With lots of beautiful women and good food. And coffee.

That's the issue, you see. There are really two main types of publisher. There are we wee publishers, the self-publishers, and there are the companies and sites that publish other people - like Google will, like Wikipedia does. Google wouldn't do this unless there was a way to make a dollar, and Wikipedia is always looking for a dollar.

If you're still with me and haven't gone running off to print business cards, hang on a while longer. This is where it gets really interesting. There is a key question here that the title alludes to.

Why do you need someone else to publish your stuff?

For starters, editors. A real writer knows the value of a good editor. Andy Oram at O'Reilly was my editor, and he was awesome - and patient. If you pay attention, an editor can teach you things, too, so that you look like less of a schmuck when you free write. I can't tell you how many times I've fixed things on this site alone - my own writing caught minutes, days, months or years later. Someone read 'Birds of San Fernando Hill' this morning and emailed me that it was well written - I went to look and all I saw were errors jumping up and down on my monitor, screaming to be fixed. Well, to be honest a few moaned - but you get the point.

The next reason is simple: You're not popular. OK, maybe you are, but I'm not. When I was doing some writing for a company, someone said I needed a PR person and I ran away screaming, my hair having immediately caught on fire like a flashback of a Michael Jackson Pepsi commercial. The truth is that I am quite happy being who I am and do not feel the need to cast a larger shadow by moving the lights around. Still, that PR aspect is important if you want to have people read what you write. If you don't, write it in Sanskrit and bury it under a temple - like they did with the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

Why else? Well, how do you expect to make any money doing this? Well, there's the rub. You can spend all your time pimping yourself instead of thinking of original things to write (some people are great pimps but need to work on their product lines). You can spend all your time thinking of original things and fixing your writing. Or, if you really want to go nuts, you can try to figure out how to make money publishing yourself. There are a million and one ways to try to do something, but there is only one right way for you at any given time - and it doesn't exactly pull you over to the side, lay a hand over your shoulder and whisper seductively in your ear.

Back to the question: Why do you need someone else to publish your stuff?

You don't. It is a lot of work, and you're going to have imperfection - but you can do all of that yourself.

So now - let's stop and think about Google's knol competing with Wikipedia.

Nevermind that they may compete with each other. They're also competing with independent self-publishers. Every person with a weblog, website or a broken pencil. The same information is already available, or could be available, on private websites. It could. And with the widespread use of Open Content, presto magico - people can remix once the licensing permits. So why is a Search Engine company and a group of well intentioned folk in the spotlight? Wrong question.

Why is a Search Engine Company competing with the rest of the web that generates the content it indexes? Is that good or bad? If it is competing with private sites, then it would have to generate more revenue than it is getting from the Google Ads all over the internet.

And why do I need a knol? Or a Wikipedia entry?

In 1997, a fellow named Pierre Levy wrote Collective Intelligence: Mankind's Emerging World in Cyberspace. In the book, it talked about the molecularization of just about everything on the internet. A profound thought back then, and one which didn't gain Levy as much credit as the gurus of yesteryear and today (I wonder how many of them have this book hidden somewhere). Who do you think the molecules are? Us. And while its nice to aggregate molecules in different ways, what if that aggregation causes them to be unavailable for other aggregations? If you spend all your time writing knoll articles or fighting Wikipediacracy, how much of that time could have been spent writing your own stuff on your own site?

You are a content stream. And a revenue stream. Where is the incentive for people to simply hand over their writing to anyone? Sure, you can do it for the good of mankind. Ms. Universe wants world peace, too.