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Will the digital content explosion destroy writers' livlihoods OR make their businesses better? There are two schools of thought on this topic...Some in the business, mostly from the publishing standpoint, think that the increased availability of content will drive down content costs and thereby royalities for writers of that content.

I respectfully disagree with this forecast.

I feel that the growing digital publishing industry is creating a renewed interest in reading and that coupled with the new eReaders, eTablets and eFuture-whatevers to popularize and facilitate the access to digital "written words" will actually INCREASE the demand for new, fresh content ever faster...When demand rises, so does the price for the supply. 

Anyway, published writer Nina de Gramont (pictured below), on Publishing Perspectives, relates her personal story of initial highs and then lows in her writing journey (due mainly to the crumbling traditional publishing empire) and how she has adjusted and continues to make a living writing...I know you will enjoy her revelations:

In the late nineties, when I was just a couple years out of graduate school, something happened to me that all young writers dream about: I got a two book deal from a big New York publishing house. I remember the phone call exactly, where I was standing, which windows were open, and the temperature of the late spring breeze wafting through the hall. “Are you sitting down?” my agent asked. The deal wasn’t quite six figures, but close enough that I felt I had arrived. Finally, I thought. The struggle was over.

Before that, at the creative writing program I attended in Colorado, all the writers hoped for some version of this event -– or at least, all the prose writers did. One friend was so convinced her novel-in-progress would make her a star that she changed to an unlisted telephone number. When the author Mark Leyner, a recent graduate of our program, made an appearance on Late Night, we watched with hope and longing. It was obvious David Letterman had no idea who Mark was, but who cared? One day that might be us on TV! It would all begin with New York, and a phone call, and lots of zeroes.

The poets, I noticed, operated differently. I don’t remember any of them ever mentioning Leyner’s appearance on Letterman. Their discussions revolved around grants, teaching positions, and small literary journals. It’s not that they didn’t have dreams of glory -– some of the most ambitious students were poets. But maybe because everyone knew that poets almost never became rich and famous, “glory” consisted of different rewards.

Read the rest of the story here http://publishingperspectives.com/?p=15340