This Weekend's Internet Reading

It's been a rough weekend with little free time, and I need to prep for tomorrow when I'll have a couple of electricians in here. In here. In my office. So I only have time to pass on a couple of readings.

How Long Should You Keep Trying to Get Published? at Jane Friedman A number of self-published commenters complained that this piece was out of date, I guess relating to the section Self-publishing when no one is listening. They seemed to feel that you can self-publish even if you "haven’t yet cultivated an audience for it, or can’t market and promote it effectively through your network."

Digital Technology's Impact on the Arts; New Pew Survey at ArtstoMarket. What I found interesting about this post's account of the Pew Survey was not that arts organizations are incorporating new technologies  (What organization isn't?), but that the survey addresses the cost of doing so. "...organizations are striving hard to capitalize on opportunities and incorporate new technologies to build new relationships with supporters, their audience and the broader community. But to do that effectively, they find they need skilled staff and dedicated budget for products and services, which makes it difficult at a time of reduced arts funding."   "...organizations are turning to new tools on the internet and in mobile technologies to increase awareness, promote events and exhibits, and provide custom experiences for patrons. But there are costs involved, even when using tools that are free or affordable, with regard to staff and to training. That said, 99% have their own website; 97% have an active social media presence; 50% maintain a blog;"

With writers, we often hear of the costs of new technologies in terms of time spent, but not so much about real dollars and cents because we do a lot of our internet promotion ourselves. We don't think about the time we're spending as costing us money, though for most of us our work with digital technology comes right out of our writing (production) time. This is probably due to the fact that most of us don't make a great deal of money to begin with, so we don't see the loss of writing time as a big financial loss. Arts organizations are far more aware of the amount of money it takes to keep them afloat and can tell when real money is being spent.