There are many reasons not to give your writing away for free, but I feel just as many reasons to do it for a budding writer.

Not long ago I began writing a story titled The Mirror (http://prolificnovelista.com/tags/the-mirror/). It was the emotional runoff of finishing Patrick Rothfuss's The Name of the Wind (and not long afterwards, The Wise Man's Fear.) I have a book publishing deal in progress, so my goal in writing this story is not to eventually sell it, but simply to show the world what I can do and try to build an online readership.

A friend of mine expressed concern over the fact I was publishing my work on my blog for anyone to read. He had heard of another author recently being denied by every major publishing house because he had published the work on his blog. When I asked another friend about this and suggested that I could take the story down should I seek to commercially publish it eventually, she said it didn't matter whether I took it down or not: once it had been read in full, online, for free, I was screwed.

No one would respect me.

Having already put 5 of the 9 or 10 parts of the story already out on the web, I shrugged my shoulders and continued on, telling myself I would limit what I published online for free to only a few stories I didn't much care about. But as I worked on my next piece, The Winter Garden, I couldn't imagine not "caring" about my story of Sullivan, the boy who had seen his mother murdered by a monster.

I loved it. I would cradle it to my chest and coo to it at night if I could. My words and stories are my children. I suffer through giving birth to them, I suffer through raising them, I suffer through watching them grow up and leave to be consumed and hopefully loved by the world.

So is there a happy medium?

I attended a seminar at Portland's awesome book festival Wordstock in October about marketing yourself online as a writer. One of your primary goals when establishing and building an online presence should be to establish a strong readership. When authors who publish online get picked up by a major publishing house or an agent, it's because that author can prove they already have readers. There are dozens or hundreds or thousands of people who will buy that book before they even begin the marketing campaign.

Publishers LOVE that shit.

So I've decided to continue on my path, publishing my darlings online so anyone can read and enjoy them, with the hope they will come back and read more. I know that regardless of whether an agent or a publisher stumbles across my humble author website, someone has read my story. I can always e-book it on my own, with or without a publisher behind it.

My YA book series' publisher doesn't care, so why should I?

Would like to hear others' thoughts and experience on this topic, should it be out there.