What is the NEW WORLD of WRITERS?

(This article is Part-1 in a series; for Part-2, go here; for Part-0, go here.)

There is the short answer and the long answer.

I have both.

The short answer is: A person who can two things at once. Like juggling and shaving.

He can write compellingly AND earn a living by navigating the free market. By exchanging value for value with readers. Directly. Bang.

Substack is a model for those writers.

Now for the other answer.

A writer’s competition is fierce, because readers have been led to believe that writing should be free.

This is the con of those who devised the public Internet.

That’s right: the con.

The show runners of the Internet wanted to draw in as many people as possible to their new invention. Where they, the robed moguls, and advertisers would make all the money and writers would be slaves and martyrs and pack mules working for nothing.

So the Internet controllers launched the Collectivist lie: ALL INFORMATION SHOULD BE FREE.

It was a lie on the level of: save the planet from frying by ending oil, coal, natural gas, and replacing it with Dutch windmills and panels for sunny days.

Sounds nice until you realize the windmills and panels would replace about 2% of the traditional fuels, and worldwide economies would turn into smoking ruins and billions of people would starve to death.

ALL INFORMATION SHOULD BE FREE sounds nice until the writers supplying the free information are living on the street.

Of course, I as a writer could sell shoes or hot dogs or antacids or the latest and greatest table top roaster on the side, while I write and publish every day.

But that would be me saying my writing is worth nothing. Which is a complete lie.

In the NEW WORLD, a writer charges readers for his work. In my case, the price is $1.15 a week. One dollar and fifteen cents.

Not $6 for a bag of hot dogs.

There is another foul lie attached to ALL INFORMATION SHOULD BE FREE. It’s this: supplying information is the same thing as writing.

Which means a writer is a “content provider.” He offers a list of factoids. He tells you at the top of every article how long it will take you to ingest the factoids. “This is a three-minute read.” He even summaries the article factoids with shrunken bullet points. Because he is a frigging machine.

No. A writer WRITES. There is a galaxy of difference between a writer and a factoid dispenser.

Here’s another Internet absurdity. The people who own the infrastructure that enables the Web aren’t providing information for free. They’re making gobs of money for every chunk of free information that appears and faces the public.

They’re SAYING information should be free while they’re profiting from it.

Have you noticed big time newspapers are laying off staff? Here’s one reason: their writers can’t WRITE. Who wants to read their gargle of mouthwash, their cardboard popcorn, their refried CIA crapola talking points?

I’m a WRITER. I can WRITE. See, that’s another thing. In the NEW WORLD, actual writers have to stand up and promote themselves. Put that tired fake humility behind them.

No one else is going to promote us. We’re not hiring agents and PR flacks to put us on puppet mainstream talk shows with blown-dry hosts and deranged former secretaries of state and defense who should be in rest homes.

We’re home-grown down-home lone-riders-of-the-plains capitalists. One to one with our readers.

I write, you pay. $1.15 a week.

In one week, I can explode more salacious medical fairy tales than 5000 run of the mill medical reporters ever dreamed of exposing.

Because I don’t care. I never have. Since the early days of my career in 1987, I threw caution in the garbage. I decided no one else’s opinion would sway me. I wasn’t writing FOR readers. I was writing TO them.

I figured: high risk high reward. The reward being: the truth. Then, around 2010, after almost 25 years at the typewriter and the keyboard, the money started coming. Money I was EARNING. On my own. Directly from readers.

Newsflash: money is neutral. How you earn it isn’t. The root of all evil and stupidity and banality is evil and stupid and banal people.

If I had to choose between writing and money, I’d take writing. I have.

But you can have both. And compromise NOTHING.

In the NEW WORLD, we WRITERS blow apart the myth of shame about money. “Oh, $meansyou′rejustdoingitforthe$.” “Oh, I couldn’t ask for $$$. I’m a writer.” “Oh, as long as a single person on the face of the Earth is poor, I have to be poor.” “Oh, the only good money flows from the government or a foundation.” “Oh, money will corrupt me.”

If it will corrupt you, you’re already corruptible, and THAT’S your real problem.

In my eyes, WRITERS should be wild horses on the plains and mountains, with language, imagination, and the freedom to go anywhere and see anything.

If money comes from that, you’re all right.

-- Jon Rappoport