April 23: International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day

Author Jo Walton has declared April 23 to be International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day, to be celebrated by authors giving away free, professional-quality work online.

This is a reference to author Howard Hendrix’s controversial “webscabs rant“, in which he accuses authors who give their works away for free on the internet of undercutting other authors, “rotting [the SFWA] organization from within” and of “converting the noble calling of Writer into the life of Pixel-stained Technopeasant Wretch”. (Yeah, strong stuff.)

In honour of Dr Hendrix, I am declaring Monday 23rd April International Pixel-Stained Technopeasant Day. On this day, everyone who wants to should give away professional quality work online. It doesn’t matter if it’s a novel, a story or a poem, it doesn’t matter if it’s already been published or if it hasn’t, the point is it should be disseminated online to celebrate our technopeasanthood.

Whatever you’re posting should go on your own site. I’ll make a post here on the day and people can post links in comments to whatever they’re putting up on. If you are a member of SFWA, or SFWA qualified but not a member (like me) you get extra pixel-spattered points for doing this. If other people want to collect the links too, that would be really cool. Please disseminate this information widely.

Link (via BoingBoing)