I had never really thought of Publishers as Professionals. Gentleman Publishers were/are clearly amateurs in the best (C17 and C18) sense of the word; Private Presses also. Do the purveyors of books as a commodity have anything much in common with 'professionals' ? -Though we might find it difficult to determine what C21st professions are! More in sympathy with with producers of any other good. It is called the Book Trade after all.....oh I am interrupted by tummy needs....definitely a professional eater.. While I am gone you can read Clay Shirky: Weblogs and The Mass Amateurisation of Publishing

OK --the more important demands of 'alimentation' having been met!!
What do you think about this writing/publishing 'debate'?

I rather incline to the muddled thinking view. When I write.. I know I am in a dialogue with myself over what I want to say, the best words to use...there are rethinks and corrections, doubts, revisions and uncertainties...and that is just for starters in the dialogue with myself...then there are that whole series of readings and allusions that I can call on because of what I have read and experienced and written previously..........there is the discourse of the subject I am writing about ...today...tomorrow....the traditions, conventions, shared assumptions and knowledge.......all those questions about purpose and audience. And I certainly have got nowhere near thinking about 'publishing' what I write. One has to decide on a meaning for this word...If my friend reads a draft or my sister my diary..that is not publishing. There has to be a dimension of making writing available to strangers...and the medium or technology one might choose to do this is critical. I do not see anything particularly amateur about Blogger or other Weblog hosts...They have simply spotted a publishing niche...similar to that of vanity publishing....BUT
at the same time the discursive and interactive aspects of weblogs are unlike other publishing forms. There is as yet no typology of logs. Most of what I read on the net is basically either of the diary/journal kind..though obviously with an immediacy not found in the end-of-the-day diary or the ponderous who I met today journal of yore or is a commentary on other sources..newspapers in particular but also TV sources.....these are Hyde Park Corner logs... there are logs that are reflective on the business of blogging and most of these are interesting, precisely because they are thoughtful..and then there are that series of 'technoblogs' all wound up with the software and hardware and what you can and cannot do........one or two of these are interesting because the writer has some 'professional' ! insight into typography or design or possibly into some protocol that has escaped one...but many of them simply drone on about industry gossip......Did you really start a weblog because you thought you might make some money? Oh come on!
Oh..more alimentation......

OK done

When I am writing this, I am writing it for a small circle of friends-the greater majority of whom have my email address-should they want to say anything about it. Of course other people read it..as I do their logs...but we sort of pass in the night...I have never propsed to anyone I did not know that they should read it.....though I am thinking of so doing!!....of course the RS and MEE logs are different...they are using the weblog as a website...
It is not the sort of writing that I write in a letter, which is specific and personal..like an email, but also it is not the kind of writing that I would hide under the carpet so that papa cannot read my confessions. Nor is it fiction. Though I have space to write fictions. So It occupies a very unusual space where the very private and the public co-exist for ..whoever..in real time..you can read this now and talk to me.......not a diary, not a journal, not a fiction nor a novel, not journalism, not reportage, not a stream of consciousness or psychologists log,,,,,,,,,,,this is what we are trying in true victorian butterfly catcher fashion to NAIL down.!