I think that the idea of being published on the Internet may feel a bit alien to many aspiring writers. The idea has always been to get a book published ~ or a magazine article, perhaps.

I would like to write a publishable book. I did write a Mills & Boon, and was told that it was good & well written, but just not suitable. That was nearly 20 years ago!

I recently submitted a short story to a magazine ~ it was returned a couple of days later. I don't really know what is wrong with it.

I have bought books on good writing techniques and have checked our many Internet sites ~ plus there are Lisa's notes.

On the Internet, I keep seeing references to earning money by publishing online.

In this case, you don't usually sell your writing (though you can post your book and charge a membership fee for people to access the site), you post your writing and then earn money via advertising on your page.

I can't remember all the names of these sites, but I did notice that a number of them retained the copyright of items published by their members. This didn't seem to be a good idea to me. (One site that didn't do this was Hub Pages.) You would have to get a lot of traffic, and a lot of hits, to earn much, though, so I don't know whether this would be as lucrative as traditional publishing would be.

Or does that not matter?
Is it more important to just get your writing 'out there'?
Is it as good to simply post comments & responses on a forum such as this one?
Which should it be ~
~ writing for pleasure or profit?
~ publishing on the Internet or in book form?

I feel very strongly that you should NOT give away rights to any site on content that you write. BellaOnline - the content site I run - very strongly makes it clear that every author always retains full rights to their work. Our aim is to help train people to become high quality writers, so they can use their body of work in books, on their websites, and anywhere else they want. So once they're ready and they ask us to take their content down, we do. They can then go and do whatever they want with their content.

So I would NOT use any site that takes your rights. Your content and your efforts are the key result of your writing talents. You want to always be in control of that. For example, say they start to run porn ads - and now your content is promoting porn. You should always have 100% complete control over your own words.

There are plenty of sites out there that let you get known with your writing, and then it is up to you to hone your writing skills so that you garner praise for your writing, draw in an audience, and build your reputation. Over time you'll draw the attention of publishers. Many writers at BellaOnline get approached by publishers to write a book, based on their content they've posted.

If you'd like to submit to Mused, we always give feedback. So we can let you know what we felt about it, at least. You can also post items to the forum and we'd be happy to give feedback here!

Whether or not you need money is of course up to you and your budget. I'm all for writing for pleasure, and if you love writing, and the sheer joy of having your words read is enough, then by all means enjoy!

If you need money, you still need to build up a reputation and following, so you might as well post online to do that

You can always self publish a book and sell it on Amazon, and be right alongside every other book out there

Thanks for the feedback, Lisa.
Some interesting thoughts

Part of the key is to build a body of work on a given topic. So for example I have a wine site all about wine. That then draws wine related publishers to me, who talk with me about writing a wine book.

Yes, that's good advice. I'm just trying things out, at present, but I will try to sort out what I know, and what really interests me ~ and what I have actually got saved on my computer!!

PDM - have you gone through what you have saved yet? That's always a good first step!

Oh, yes, I'm all sorted now

Awesome! The Kindle is selling VERY well so if you can compile any of your notes into an ebook, now is the time to launch it!

Well, I'm just writing a few articles that I find interesting and, in effect, self-publishing on a site that allows the writer to retain copyright.

It's good practice, keeps you writing, and you get feedback ~ and even a little commission at times.

I hadn't even thought about writing for Kindle. I'm not really sure how it works, except that it is a way of reading electronic books and articles.

PDM - that's great about the site and commission! Have you thought about creating your own website, so you build your own brand and get 100% of the income you earn on it?

On the Kindle it's VERY easy. In essence you output a PDF of your content - so it can be a series of articles, or a bunch of poems, or a story, or whatever. You load it up into the Kindle library, and they sell it at whatever price you want, and you get a share!