Future ways to make a living

**S* A* H* <S*@meredith.com>**

You hit the nail on the head, Doreen. Your comment about new models of Web
publishing did too, Lois.

That¹s exactly the point I was trying to bring up when I linked a message to
that article about writers in The Futurist last month.
Authors/thinkers/publishers have been copied for centuries. The existence of
the Internet has made publishing simpler for more and more people,
including, perhaps, many people whose work we would rather not see
published. But the existence of the Internet also makes it far easier to
find out when your work has been stolen than it was when we only had
ink-on-paper publishing. I was trying to get a conversation going about what
new paradigm may develop for communicating about gardens (or any other topic
in print) and how that paradigm might translate into a living for those who
want it to. 

When Seth Godin called the book an artifact (in The Futurist article), he
wasn¹t making fun of it. He was taking it off of its pedestal and suggesting
that it¹s really just one way we communicate and create salable products?he
was trying to suggest that it can be complementary to the other ways we can
inspire and inform others. Blogs are just another one of the products we
create. Speaking is another. Creating visual media is another.

We can keep trying to police our work on the Internet?I¹m not saying we
shouldn¹t?but I suspect that we¹ll need to devote a greater and greater
amount of energy to it as long as we assume that using the Web is the most
important/newest/best way. Shouldn¹t we also look ahead and figure out other
ways to connect with an audience that will compensate us? A new paradigm?if
that¹s what we need to talk about?requires us to take a huge step back and
look at the big picture.

So, as Doreen asks?what are other ways we can make a living? Certainly we¹re
not the only professional communicators wondering about that.

I¹d also like to ask - from a few steps back - Why would anyone compensate
another person for sharing ideas or technical information, and how might
that exchange look in the future? OK, maybe that¹s too big a question for
the listserve, but I think it¹s worth rolling around in our heads for a bit.

Susan Appleget Hurst

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