In my history of getting things published, I seem to have established a precedent for doing it for little or no financial compensation. The most I've made from publishing anything to date is a whopping $50 for winning an on-line short story contest. I've recently contributed a book review to a non-fiction book about Stephen King that will be read by a very large international audience (compensation: $0.00) and had a short story accepted for a CD-ROM e-anthology that is being sold as a fundraiser for the "Make a Wish" Foundation (compensation: $0.00). So, what is the significance of getting paid for publication? Does it somehow lend an air of respectability to the process?
I am of a mixed mind on this subject. Except in cases of fund-raisers, like the one I mention above, I am hesitant to submit a story to a publication, especially an on-line e-Zine, if the only compensation is publication itself. I could start my own e-Zine and publish all my stories if that was what I was looking for. Some of these start-up e-Zines claim that they hope to be able to pay for stories at some unspecified point in the future. I have serious doubts that these glorified web pages will ever end up being significant paying markets. A number of major web-zines operated by respected editors in the science fiction field have folded in the past year.
Still, there is a time-honored tradition of being paid "in copies." Many respectable small-press literary journals have thrived with stories for which the only compensation is a few copies sent gratis to each author. Being published in these forums is sufficiently prestigious that authors are willing to accept that form of payment. When it comes to an e-Zine, though, the concept of being paid in copies is pretty tenuous. If the e-Zine folds up shop in a few months or a year, there is nothing left to show that you were ever published there. Sure, you could print out the web page to your inkjet printer, but there was nothing to stop you from doing that in the first place, before you submitted the story.
Why are we doing this? Why are we writing? If it's to put food on the table and clothes on the kids, then we're probably in the wrong business. Very few authors ever attain the level of success where writing can be their sole source of income, and most of them somehow leap over that threshold of a comfortable income to being phenomenally wealthy. Unless you are at least a mid-list author, you'll probably want to hold onto that day job.
Are we in it for the prestige? The thrill of seeing our names in print? I suppose that's at least part of it for many of us. It is validation: someone has deemed our work acceptable, worthy of publication. It is also a way of ensuring that when we pass on to the next realm, something of us might remain behind to remind future generations that we existed.
But, for many of us, there is some compelling urge within us to tell stories, to recount history, to explore our feelings about something, to...to...to write! Even the ultra-successful authors will say in confidence that they would do it even if they weren't paid, something their agents typically frown upon hearing. We write because we must.
To do otherwise would be to perish.