Why Should You Pay for My Writing — Or Any Other Art?

Because we should always pay for literal things of value.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

Shameless self-promotion skirts a fine line between sharing, oversharing, bragging, informing, and annoying people.

That one line covers a lot of space and detail.

It’s important that we recognize and accept this truth: things of value are things that we pay for.

Let me be clear — this is literal in this instance. Things that matter most to everyone — peace, love, contentment, kindness, compassion, caring, worth, and so forth, have no cost. They have value even without being paid for. Lots and lots of value.

But the literal things in our lives — phones, computers, clothes, cars, and so on, are paid for. We pay for them to acquire them — and often value them based on their cost.

I am not going to get into the pricing of things, market demand, and how some things should cost far less or very little for the betterment of all. But this is still something I feel I need to address in the process of explaining why I think you should pay for my writing.

It comes down to this — when it comes to literal things of value, they should be paid for. Why? Labor, creativity, energy, time. These all go into the art that we…