Amateur Publishing

Amateur Publishing: Blogging, e-Forums, WikiÐ'...

Rakesh Mohan Hallen

Seeing one's writings in print is a joyful event in any writer's life. The knowledge that the words s/he had penned are read by many along with her/his name provides immense satisfaction to a writer. But, it is not very easy to get one's writings published, an amateur writer has to face many a moments of frustration when publishers/editors reject their attempts.

Is there any way out?

Yes, indeed there is! Unlike publishing in print, which is often not very easy, publishing on the Internet is becoming easy day by day. Contrary to popular perception, the Internet is not a mode of one way communication only. Not any more! Today, people are increasingly using the Internet to publicize their thoughts. Publishing on the Net does not entail heavy investments, and there is a much wider readership, that may be interested in your thoughts, opinions, investigations or imaginations. Not very long ago, a belief was prevalent that to publish anything on the Net one has to create a website; which required registering a domain name and hiring space on a web server; something that required some special knowledge and of course some expenditure.

Not any more! Today, you can publish your creations on the Net, almost at zero cost. All you need is a facility of a PC connected to the InternetÐ'.....something that is easily accessible either at home or at a cyber cafe. There are websites, where you can blog, that is post your thoughts, stories, pictures on a web page whose name you can choose. All one needs to do is to register at such a web site and start posting.

The word blog may sound alien to many readers of this article, they may be wondering what exactly it is. In common speech, the term blog is often used to describe an online diary or journal. The blog format allows inexperienced computer users to make diary entries with ease. People blog poems, prose, illicit thoughts, complaints, daily experiences, and more, often allowing others to contribute. They are in fact online diaries, that are becoming a part of the daily lives of many teenagers and college students. Friends use blogs to communicate with each other, keeping each other up-to-date with events and thoughts in a non-intrusive manner. The appeal of this form of communication is that the recipient can read whenever it is convenient, and the writer does not need to remember who still needs to be updated with certain pieces of information - it is there, waiting, for whenever people wish to read it.

A blog is different from a standard web page. Unlike, webpages that often require elaborate designing often requiring the service of a trained person, a blog allows for easy creation of new pages. New data is entered into a simple form (usually with the title, the category, and the body of the article) and then submitted. Automated templates take care of adding the article to the home page, creating the new full article page and adding the article to the appropriate date- or category-based archive. It allows for easy filtering of content for various presentations: by date, category, author, or other attributes. It allows the administrator to invite and add other authors, whose permission and access are easily managed. A blog need not always be operated by a sole individual, there are community blogs too, in which a group of people contribute, responding to each other's ideas, while the discourse is in view to the other interested readers.

A blog is the way for showcasing writing abilities of an amateur author; often it is useful when the author wants to submit a manuscript to a publisher. The blogs are good indicator of the writing skills of a person. In addition there are in fact publishers that are looking out for fresh talent on the Internet, so if a post interest them, they do approach the author. A blog can thus be a source of some income. Another way, in which the writings of an author on a blogsite may earn him some money, is by allowing some commercial establishments to post their advertisements on a blog. Blogs that are found to interest a large number of people are paid by certain search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN etc. a certain share of money they receive from commercial establishments interested in promoting their products through the Internet.

Now, the flipside of a blog versus a website. Your blog is at the mercy of the organization/proprietor of the blogsite. If tomorrow s/he decides to close shop, or starts putting some advertisement along with your posts, you cannot ask for any compensation for the work you have posted on the site. Quite fair, isn't it? After all, you are not charged any money for the facility.

Another avenue for publishing on the Net is through e-forums. An e-forum is a website that encourages