I'm going to have to re-evaluate some things.
In one swoop I just lost well over half my income. It's no one's fault; it's just the economy. I was already not making ends meet-- this has been a discouraging trend that began before 2020.
Maybe writing just isn't valuable. Maybe it's just my writing.
It's not your writing, Kent. Your writing is superb.
ReplyDelete"Valuable" is subjective. In the present collectivist environment, it's a hard sell. Tell me about it. Without granting any credence to a divine origin of the Bible, it is replete with prophets who were right, yet despised in their time.
See Luke 13:34: 13:34 "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets, and stonest them that are sent unto thee; how often would I have gathered thy children together, as a hen doth gather her brood under her wings, and ye would not!"
Take heart, friend.
I don't think it's your writing. I value that (at more than I can afford to pay for it, but I do pay you a little for it).
ReplyDeleteI think others value it too, but the "freely offer it and trust the reader to return value for perceived value received" model makes it easy for people to not necessarily pay, when they might if it was "pay or don't get it."
For nearly 20 years, much, even most, of my income has come from the "freely offer it and trust the reader to return value for perceived value received" way of doing things, and I'm certainly not getting rich on it (I don't make anything near as much now as I did as a factory worker in 2000, let alone adjusting for inflation).
I wouldn't call myself the expert on making libertarian political writing pay, but if you ever want to talk over ideas, shoot me an email. Maybe we can get a little more money coming your way.
Sorry to hear that! I'm a big fan of your writing, but the problem is that society in general just isn't. With such a small target demographic, you're going to have a hard time selling your work.
ReplyDeleteYour skills are extremely valuable, they're just undervalued by society at the moment. If civil unrest gets really bad, perhaps your other skills (survival / prep) will be in high demand?
I do know the Tuttle Twins is doing a new TV series and Larken Rose is producing a full movie (The Jones Plantation). Perhaps one of those could use a good writer?
Alternatively, what about writing a book? I personally enjoy sci-fi and would love to have a good sci-fi book to share with a libertarian / anarchist message to it!
As several commentators have noted, it isn’t your writing that’s at fault but as you yourself noted, perhaps writing isn’t valued and there I think you may be entirely and regrettably correct. I fear this is not a literate society anymore. And telling the truth to people who haven’t the slightest interest in hearing anything but ego-satisfying lies was never a path to success or riches even in a literate society, at least since the days of Cassandra (and probably since this species climbed down from the trees). When you first mentioned starting to home-school your daughter I was tempted to write you that this was a far more important task than trying to convince strangers of the value of freedom and right behavior when those strangers, with rare exception, don’t share those values. Perhaps it is time to stand back and reevaluate your priorities. I offer the following quote to ponder in that regard.
ReplyDelete“Every man and woman in society has one big duty. That is, to take care of his or her own self. This is a social duty. For, fortunately, the matter stands so that the duty of making the best of one’s self individually is not a separate thing from the duty of filling one’s place in society, but the two are one, and the latter is accomplished when the former is done
--- William Graham Sumner from “What the Social Classes Owe Each Other”
Unfortunately, this situation may spell the end of the homeschooling. If I have to go get a job outside the home, she'll probably have to be put back in kinderprison. There are several reasons she can't really be left unattended for that many hours per day. I wish that weren't the case.
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