If you’re using your blog to self-publish in the truest sense, then that is what you need to do. Post polished pieces, build an audience and try to find a way to make money off the site.

If that’s not your goal, then the blog becomes a place to write AROUND ideas, while also building an audience or taking part in a community.

Two issues about this topic strike me, so it’ll be a long one.

First issue: Why we call blogs publication. My magazine, Electric Spec, buys First World Electronic Rights for four months with an option to archive. That includes blogs, per our attorney’s advice. This is because blogosphere is smaller than you might think, especially when it comes to “focus” blogs, like blogs on writing or publishing. Espec has thousands of readers who run in those same circles and they are very likely to let us know “Hey we saw that story before!” (They certainly let us know about typos and if downloads don’t work.) That makes us Look Bad.

Also, and this is a biggie, some blog programming companies actually own the content posted on blogs using their servers. You have to read the fine print, but it means that when you publish something, you are essentially selling it (for free) to the blog company. I don’t believe Blogger is one of those; at one time I heard that MSN as a host site did own the content, as well as AOL. It’s worth checking.

That said, in my early days I bought two stories off blogs. One of those writers even became a good friend of mine. But, those pieces were only up a short while (less than a week) and I knew they had a very limited viewing as far as hits went. Buying was a decision my staff made, not one the author got to make.

We don’t count excerpts, (say 200 words) as pre-published. Even I sometimes put up excerpts on my personal blog. If you feel you must post an entire work to garner opinions, the simple solution is to remove it within, say, 48 hours.

But this leads into the second issue: which is the open critique. I’ve lost faith in using personal blogs as a vehicle for critique. First of all, blogs aren’t a very user-friendly vehicle for specific, line- item critique, which is what you should be after if you’re serious about your work. Secondly, readers are the equivalent of your friends. Most of them aren’t going to be entirely honest or nearly tough enough on your work. Also, these people are not vetted critiquers. You can run the gamut of people who know what they’re talking about to people who, in a word, don’t. I’ve seen those people lead good writers astray.

In the past, I used a couple of blogs for critique. They’re good to build a circle of people you trust, but I’d advise getting with vetted critters as soon as possible. The more rapport you develop and the more you read each others’ work, the more help you’ll be to each other. In my experience, critique is much more powerful and useful when it comes from someone whose opinion you trust, as well as someone who “gets” what you are trying to do. I recommend trading emailed, detailed critiques with those you trust (you’ll get as much out of critiquing others’ work as you do as getting it on your own).

Sorry so long. Hope that helps.