Technopeasant Wretches?

[alanajoli]

I'd been seeing a lot of people posting work online as part of the Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Wretch movement, and had no idea what spurred this on. (If I had something I wasn't still planning to submit laying about, I would have posted it as well--though I don't currently have a website to call my own where it would be convenient to post it. Also, the vast majority of my short stories hover around the 7500 word mark, making them, in my mind, too long to read in one computer sitting. Of course, I've been dedicating spare moments online to reading the novel or novella Sherwood Smith [sartorias] posted, so I suppose if people love your work enough they'll sit for the duration.)

At any rate, thanks to Brandon Sanderson (mistborn), I now know where the term originated! Apparently the current/soon-to-be-former VP of the SFWA Howard V. Hendrix called authors who post their work for free online "webscabs" and coined the phrase Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch. The large number of free fiction postings was in response to this. Here's the original SFWA post, if you're further interested.

Comments

[alanajoli.livejournal.com]

I think in some ways it's very similar to used books--or libraries. Those things can be treated as marketing, in the right mind frame. The more people are reading what you write, the more likely they are to buy your books in the future.

I think it's a win-win, no-brainer (as to scores of techno-peasant wretches, apparently).