I was happy to see Brown-shorts. A couple days prior Amazon sent me a little present in the form of a gift card, and I dutifully ordered two books I was looking forward to reading. One of them was The Imperfect Pastor by Zack Eswine. I really loved Eswine’s book, Sensing Jesus and so I was excited for a new book on a topic he nailed a couple years ago.
Brown-shorts gave me the package and I ripped it open and started reading Eswine’s book. It was a breath of fresh air. Encouraging. What I needed to hear that day. I couldn’t wait to feed my soul for another couple hundred pages.
Then it happened.
The paragraphs started feeling more and more familiar. I realized that I had read this book before under a different title. After a bit of research I discovered this was just a repackaging of Sensing Jesus. I felt duped. Ripped off. But more than anything saddened that there was only a bit of new material from my favorite author. I wish I had known before buying it.
I’m getting more and more uncomfortable with this thing I just call the machine. I’ve called it an echo chamber in the past. I’ve confessed my boredom with blogs that all sound the same. Books which have the same titles and the same things. That’s the machine. It’s the thing that I’m becoming increasingly wary of, and something I want to distance myself further and further from. I doubt the machine even desires to swallow me up—but I don’t want to give it a chance. I want to keep my voice.
Because of this I’ve decided to change something with my writing ministry. In the past I’ve had something of an open-door policy with my content. If somebody wants it I’ll give it to them free of charge to cut and paste on their own site. My thinking is that I want to make Jesus the only boast of this generation and if somebody wants what I’ve written and they believe it will help their audience, then I’m happy to serve. I still feel the same way and have the same goals but I’ve been mulling over whether or not this is the best policy.
Starting in January 2016 I’m not going to just cut and paste articles for various sites (or give them free reign to cut and paste my articles). I’m doing that first and foremost because reprints feel cheap. Proverbs 25:16 is a great reminder that too much of anything can make one throw up. I’ve structured my personal blog in such a way as to hopefully keep our audience here from throwing up. But I don’t have any control over this if I give open scissors to anyone to cut and paste for their site.
I don’t want anyone to have read an article on my site and then find it repackaged on another one and get that same ripped off feeling that I felt when reading The Imperfect Pastor. And I don’t want to do anything to feed the machine.
I still plan on doing outside writing but I’m becoming increasingly convinced that I need to hold my content more closely. This allows me to better serve the audiences who read my stuff. (All twelve of you). I might, on occasion, republish some articles for various sites in order to give it a bit longer shelf life. But this will be rare. For the most part I want to generate new content for outside writing. I feel like I owe that to the places I write for and their audiences.
This policy change won’t really impact you, the reader. But I wanted to share this for the sake of receiving some kickback. Perhaps I’m insane and making a critical blogging mistake. If so, I’d love to hear your thoughts. Or maybe other writers will read this and it will prove helpful and together we can stop feeding the machine.
—
Photo source: here
As someone about to relaunch a blog as an extension of a podcast, this is something I have been thinking about. How much of what I’ve done in the past should I reproduce on the blog? How much of what I post on the blog should be open to other authors and pages? And for those people who guest post, how critical should I be of the same thing regurgitated from their own blogs or books onto my site.
I’m with you on my intense dislike for the same thing regurgitated. I’m also bothered by how rarely this comes up in interviews. “So, after reading this book, I noticed it’s mostly your previous book repackaged. Why did you feel it was necessary to say basically the same thing again instead of saying something new or letting someone else say it?”
You’ve definitely given me some things to think about.