We've all met people who describe themselves as a writer but I suspect that far more people who write regularly, are reluctant to give themselves that title. Sometimes it's a self-consciousness, a nervousness, that prevents their own recognition of their most important activity, as if the moment you give yourself the title, there's an expectation, an implication that there is a physical published product. At the same time both a qualification and an ambition, that magical stage of publication confers some kind of official stamp on the activity. It seems important somehow that not only do you write, but you are published.
The title itself tends to conjure a variety of images: the tormented creative soul desperate to find words to express their inner conflict; the expansive and voluble culture vulture oozing aesthetic opinions; the hard-working columnist meeting a deadline; the relaxed hobbyist turning out the occasional short story. We value each of them differently. And being sensitive, creative types ourselves, we wouldn't want to be associated with anything that might come over as... well, pretentious.
So we think of our activity as meaningful but mundane, fulfilling but unremarkable. Our sense of modesty makes us reluctant to take on a title which seems so culturally loaded. Knowing the images evoked by the title writer, we hesitate to describe ourselves that way. We feel uncomfortable even about recognising what we do. This cultural baggage used to be supported by the selection process of getting into print. If you managed to persuade a publisher, then you must be a writer. If you failed, then you probably weren't one just yet.
But that assumed quality control by publishers has largely been replaced by marketing techniques, the selection of themes to fit a market niche, the construction of set of products to address a market. A writer accepted into this process has more likely been chosen because of the marketing interests than any necessarily inherent quality in the writing. And competition forces publishers increasingly to work this way, selecting titles that can become series, with an eye to TV and film rights. So we are probably quite wrong to think of publication as the criterion for judging whether or not we are writers. Of course, if we want to sell, then we are in the business of producing a product and either we take on the marketing and sales ourselves or we have to persuade someone else to do it. But that's different from the quality control we used to expect from publishers.
Self-publishing has broken the mould. We can now produce everything from a pdf file to an eBook using readily available software. We can use sites like Lulu and Lightning Source to publish hard copies, and we can use self-publishing companies to market our work world-wide with little or no cost to us. Becoming a published author is simply a matter of submitting files to a website. We no longer require conventional publishers to get our work read. The problem now is to get noticed. We won't get into the bookshops but then, in the grand scheme of things, very few books do.
With the increasing availability of eBooks, there is no longer a need for physical printed copies. The commercial publisher is no longer the gatekeeper to the writing profession. Given the massive quantities of freely available written material, the economic viability of the writer as an occupation is in question save for a tiny number of already established authors with contracts. For the rest of us, there is ample opportunity to write and be read. We almost certainly won't make a lot of money and we are likely to make none at all.
We need to get away from the cultural baggage associated with the term writer and the implied filter of acceptance by commercial publishers. We are writers because we write and that doesn't depend on the judgment of any marketing executive.
