Publishing writing: A working definition

You're a published writer if: Some third party is giving you some form of compensation for making your text available to a reader.

Yeah, some forms of compensation are better than others, but the key is that whatever it is flows towards you, the writer. You're not paying them to publish you, not in currency or time or favors or work; that doesn't count. If they're paying you, then it counts. Payment in exposure barely counts.

Self-publishing is a little murkier. I can put up any old garbage on this here blog, that doesn't count. Paying a printer to make physical copies of your work counts like masturbation counts as sex. I think the key is you have to involve other people on some level. An editor. Someone who is in a position to tell you when to stop. The reader themselves can fill this function, if they're directly compensating you for your work like with let's say Patreon, as this gives them a certain amount of leverage and input.

It's a question of self-respect, really. "Published writer" is an arbitrary label. To a writer like myself it's a measure of the worth to the world at large of your skill at imagining things and then translating and presenting those things in ways that other people can appreciate and relate to. If writing is your life, and mine certainly is, it's a measure of the worth of your life. No pressure or anything. We can just pretend not to care what the world thinks.

Edited on August 30: Fixed a terrible typo in the first sentence. xD