Last night, I wrote a poem called “Divine Old Dog,” and people posted messages saying the nicest things about it, which I am grateful. One very kind and generous person posted this message: “This poem should be published,” and that reminded me of a conversation I had earlier in the week with a writer who used her blog and her social media savvy to push her novel to the top of the New York Times best-seller list for several weeks. Her book had been rejected a dozen times by commercial publishers and her work on it’s behalf was a model of ingenuity, courage and creativity. And the best news, she said, was that because of this success,  a “real publisher” had offered to buy and publish her next novel.

What did I think of that, she asked? Well, I said, I think she missed the real point of the story. You, I said, are the real publisher, not them. You wrote your book, put it out there, got it to the top of the best-seller list. The “real” publisher you seek probably won’t be able or willing to do any of those things. She gulped and looked at me strangely, but I think it is so.

I have come to view the notion of “real publishing” differently. I told the good woman on Facebook that my poem was published, right here on my blog. No commercial publisher would pay me to write poems these days or buy mine, none would be able to reach a fraction of the audience that my blog reaches. I have known for some time that I am my own real publisher, my blog every bit a part of publishing as any New York based conglomerate. I can write poems if I wish, I can promote them on my blog and social media pages, and I am figuring out how to be paid for them without giving 70 per cent of the profits to corporations that don’t do half the work I do to present them to the public. And reach fewer people.

In our culture, most people tend to think of publishing narrowly – paper books in bookstores from New York based publishing companies. I am learning to think differently. I love the freedom my blog offers me – I can write poems, take photos, write essays – few commercial publishers would let me do that or want me to do it. The transition raises more financial questions than practical ones – how do I get paid? How do I make a living? This is what led me to subscriptions. That’s the path for me, and for writers like me.  My blog is becoming the book, or one form of it. A different kind of book. You don’t need a review to like it, you don’t have to go anywhere to get it, it is cheaper than a cup of coffee. More than 175,000 people read my blog every month. That is my future as a writer, the way to make a living in the new world and do my work. It took me a long time to figure it out, I am getting there.

On the same Facebook page, another poster asked if I “disdained” libraries and wondered how library users would get my blog if there were no subscriptions. This question spoke to the great transition in writing, to the common idea that writers don’t need money to live, they exist in the ether. Writers and artists seem to be the only people in our society who are asked if they think they really need to be paid for their work, or if they should give it away for free so that everyone can enjoy it? Should librarians work for free for the same reasons?,  I think not. Far from disdaining libraries, I have worked as hard as I can to support them. I do library book tours for free,  appear at libraries without charge, and argue whenever I can for librarians to be paid more and have more resources. Helping the poor was once a function of government, now unfashionable. Writers, like everyone else, need to help figure out how to make their work accessible to the poor, but they also have a right to survive, most are poor enough.

I will always find a way to offer access to my work for people without resources, but the larger point is that I have the right to be paid for my work – for my books, for the blog, for my photos, for my time and equipment. In our society, you need to earn money to live and survive, and money is, in some ways, an affirmation of good and hard work, unlike some parasites, big banks, people who work on Wall Street and play with other people’s money. That is the point of subscriptions for my blog, which almost everyone of my readers seems to understand and accept – well before I did.

Real publishing is changing. The big difference is that “real” publishers have money, few writers do. Perhaps that is beginning to change. Real publishing is us, not them. We have the most powerful tools in the history of publishing right at our fingertips, anyone reading this is using them right now. Increasingly, I am coming to see I don’t need to peddle my work to “real” publishers. Almost without realizing it, I have become one. So, perhaps, have you.

Soon, when you see a poem on my blog,  instead of saying “this ought to be published,” I think you will be saying “congratulations on publishing it.”