Cacoethes Scribindi
I’m reading a lot of Virginia Woolf right now and there’s a very interesting article about Virginia and Leonard (her husband) and why they founded Hogarth Press and how it moved away from it’s original purpose and the outcome of that. I’m not much of a modernist nor am I much a fan of the style but reading about the Bloomsbury Group and this press that was founded so that writers could write FOR themselves rather than FOR someone else got me thinking: how much has the publishing world changed in the past 100 years? A LOT. Do writers today really write for themselves more than our literary ancestors or do writers today aim for pleasing a mysterious other, this publisher or agent or audience we have yet to meet? Well, that’s trickier. I think all writers start out writing for themselves and those that are truly blessed and very lucky continue doing so. You can pick up any book, I think, and know just from a chapter or two if it was written out of passion or because the author just wanted the proverbial paycheck. Maybe I’m growing cynical in my third decade, ha ha, or maybe I’m overanalyzing styles and perceived tones.
A galley slave to the pen and ink 
No, I don’t think you’re cynical. I do think a lot of established writers out there are writing for the paycheck, or because they’ve been contracted for X amount of books and therefore they continue to write X books when maybe the muse deserted them a while back. I think it does happen.
In the online realm of fiction, ebooks, and such, I think the chances of running across someone who wrote for money is a lot harder. Since it’s still such a fledgling medium, therefore, I think it is still relatively pure in that aspect. Like the Tao: “He who is in harmony with the Tao is like a newborn child,” inferring that: new things are innately in tune with the natural order of things.
Now, will the ebook medium change after it becomes well-established and as respected as the large print publishers? Possibly. Possibly not.
I think the question is, are there those of us out there who will let it?