Monday, February 27, 2006

Writing in Internet from a third world country An English blog about Bangla (Bengali) literature (Part 2)

Two days ago after I wrote about Writing in Internet from a third world country, I received some good response and I thought that I should provide a second part. In the first part, I discussed about some of the problems that a Bangladeshi writer may face when he/she tries to enter into writing markets in Internet. Now in this article I like to mention some other problems that we face.

No agent
This is a very serious problem for us. In the West many people have mastered the skill of being a good literary agent and they are always on the search for finding a new literary talent. The work of an agent is to try to sell the works of a writer on his/her behalf to a publisher and then take 10%-15% commission. Working with an agent has become a standard norm for every writer in the west. Not having literary agent in our country just makes our writing career more difficult.

Low bandwidth high charge of InternetOf all the limitations I suffer, the problem of low bandwidth for a high charge makes me mostly frustrated. There is so much to read in Internet and so much to download but with a speed of 1/2 KBPS (kilo bye per second) be it dial up or cable connection.

Good library
Every writer needs a good library around his home. When I browse through the websites of American Universities I just get amazed to see that the libraries of many universities have more than one million books in their collection. Some universities even give online access to their collections to their users. To the best of my knowledge, no library in my own country has 1 million books. This matter causes a very nasty problem when we want to search on a specific topic like "Puritanism" or "New England". Thanks to my ability to search Internet effectively I can overcome this problem to some extent but for most of the writers in Bangladesh it really poses a serious threat.

Lack of knowledge about Bibliography and ReferenceLike most of the third world countries, plagiarism is not dealt very seriously in the education system. That is why writers from Bangladesh may find writing in the online market to be very puzzling as plagiarism is perhaps treated as the worst crime in the writing industry.
I just hope that my writing about the challenges faced by Bangladeshi writers will help the young writers from my own country to know about the possible challenges they may face if they wish to enter the world of freelance writing.

1 comment:

  1. My broadband speed is 100mbps - I would go crazy on anything slower. As I begin to see the enormous differences in our countries, will I ever grasp why it can't change faster? I'm naive about these things, as you know. It so unfair. I feel lucky to have met you, your blog enlarges my world. Thanks Sir.

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