everyone wants to do those things. have some sort of book printed, or be in a collection of things and hold it in their hands so they can realize that their life is tangible, and that they actually exist.
to most people, at least in the literary world, the internet is not a real place. it is something that happens as an afterthought. something where you can experiment and not feel ‘real pressure’ because no one makes any money on the internet, and famous people do not read the internet because they are too busy writing books and shit, and so no one is really looking, and what you are doing is not real, really.
in most print literary journals, there is little or no reference to internet sites among the contributor’s bios. i rarely see an online journal try to create something that stands alone without trying to sell me shit, or propagating some stupid fucking paper copy that i will never read/buy.
html is probably one of the easiest computer languages ever. seriously. the basics can be learned in hours, by a ten year-old child. and the potential audience for any given piece of html is limited only by the number of internet connected computers that exist in the world.
books sell a few thousand copies. good books. experimental and rich books, limited to, at very very best, fifty-thousand copies. and that is where the best cap out. the unknown and contently small sell maybe a thousand, if they are talented.
writing will continue to exist in the print form for quite some time (as i’m sure people were nostalgic for stone tablets and lamb skin and papyrus), but over the next twenty years, experimental and progressive writing will abandon books and traditional print medium completely. the print medium has become, and will continue to become, increasingly obsolete for experimental writers, while the dan browns and jk rowlings continue to make millions off of an undereducated public that has little or no idea that stories can exist without concrete meaning or any degree of realism.
i’ve got no clue where i am going with this. i just really wanted to talk about how stupid people are with their obsolete ideas of success. the internet is the only thing i know anymore. it is my only tangible reality, because it is living people and shit. it is alive like me. books have become just dead paper and unchangeable words, and i can’t even read or pretend to write them anymore.
someone else do something good for me on the internet, so i can be entertained.