You can't be an ink-strained wretch at a computer keyboard

 

For 25 years I made a good living as a freelance writer. Some years I made more from writing than I did from my day job.

Then came the Internet. Here's Felix Salmon on a writer whose work was devalued when the magazine that ran it wanted to rework it for its website:

The exchange has particular added poignancy because it’s not so many years since the Atlantic offered Thayer $125,000 to write six articles a year for the magazine. How can the Atlantic have fallen so far, so fast — to go from offering Thayer $21,000 per article a few years ago, to offering precisely zero now? 

And that's why the last article I published came out five years ago. Websites peddle the idea that "lots of people read us" so your free content will somehow get you fame or notoriety or something, somewhere else, that will pay.

It doesn't.