BBC'S Giles Brandon commented today

I write because I can't. Well, somebody was going to say it, weren't they? Having got that out of the way... I write because it makes a change from my other hobby, serial killer. The number of boxes of cornflakes I've murdered, I hope the police never find them. I dissolve the boxes in acid in my bath to hide the traces. The other reason is: because I can.

I think Giles Brandon's got his figures wrong. The real figure is more like 99% and that 1% is getting smaller. That said, more than a handful of the people posting stories anonymously on ABC Tales have had their work published by mainstream publishers, either in books or magazines, which turns your question around. Why do they post here? Publishers are now virtually all unabashed commercial enterprises, full stop. They publish what they feel certain will sell, and certainly not poetry. Even Steven King has self published short stories because his publisher wouldn't - I don't mean when he started out but fairly recently as well. He's not alone among the big name authors. Publishers like to describe themselves as gatekeepers of quality writing but they have become more like bouncers, self appointed arbiters of taste, guarding the door to an exclusive club of trendy sameness. It's not their fault. They have to make a living and recycling vampires, for example, is a proven commercial formula. The unique thing about ABC Tales is that it publishers everything that's sent in, the brilliant with the rubbish. You can decide which is which and, more to the point, you can tell the author straight away. I didn't hear/read Guy Brandon's report, but I doubt he mentioned that, of all the books that are published every year an equally tiny percentage succeed commercially. A new novel has one or two months on the shelves of the major retailers and if it doesn't immediately sell in big numbers out it goes to make way for the next tsunami of new titles. Why do you think you see the same old names with the same old sequels over and over again in big piles in the bookshop? So for those among you who dream of the day of getting your first book published because you want to be rich and famous, dream on.

I write on Abc because I like the atmosphere. I like the feedback from other Abctalers and the interaction. I am not dreaming of being published- maybe in another life..

I write because I DO dream of being published. I realise that is just a dream, especially as I have very limited time to write. I also post here because as far as I can see this is the best writers community around.

Good old Gus Bandwidth. I like those jumpers I see him wearing on the radio. I seem to have stopped writing, but I imagine the lure of cherries, nice words from ABCTalers and the amazingly slim chance of fame and indecent riches will entice me back sooner or later.

Frankly I don't care what 'pundits' say about anything really and I truly hope that I am largely unaffected by it. We are corralled by irrelevance; in the press, on television and on the radio. Vast swathes of the media harbour and nurture this irrelevance which often descends into salacious rubbish. The addicts craving for this poisoned menu acts as a damning indictment. This irrelevance is consumed in vast quantities by vast numbers of people (but its consumption does not make it any less irrelevant). It impoverishes us all, all the time. So Clive, I have posted one here because the site seems to be better than the others that I have visited and I post on here because I think that what I have got to say is worthwhile. Scratch.

I wish I could write, but my writing is so bad it is unreadable. However, my typing is coming along nicely, and this allows me to post stories here on ABC that make some sort of sense sometimes some days. So why stories? Being a dreamer, I love the 'what if' question, and typing stories allows me to create worlds where I can spend hours, days or months imagining answers.

When I was young I hoped to have my Jennifer Jane stories published. All my rejection slips were very polite! At the time a colleague in the office had a friend who read MS for publishers. She was asked to give an honest opinion of my work. "Sickly sweet, makes Milly Molly Mandy look positively zappy. Definitely a no no." So I sulked for 20 years or so then rewrote the whole lot and eventually published them myself on abc. Not to everybody's taste but it's kept me happy! In the end it's that which counts.

One a month Clive, one a month. Scratch.

One a month - that's regular! En passant, and possibly foolishly/pessimistically, maybe one should think long term, maybe - what's going to serve-ive till 2031? - the vaults of the British Library or all the other National Depositories OR a Cloud Server somewhere near Tring? Famous for fifteen minutes/years or preserved on a disk somewhere deep underground long after everything has been burnt to a frazzle at way above Fahrenheit 451 and the planet has set on a trajectory towards the outer rim to a distant galaxy long long ago?

Not sure - it's been a while ... ... since I last watched Star Wars.

If anybody wants to know what happens to old dvd's etc in the future, try my "The box"

Just to clarify, 'I write because I can' is more or less the drift of this thread, it is not some outrageously hubristic claim. Now, I've cleared that up...

I write because my English teacher told me (aged 7) that I was a misfit, stood me on a chair in the middle of the class and hit me with a ruler because I could not spell. I post here because my 94 year old mother likes to hear the comments made about her son's poems and partly written book and because, when I tell her tomorrow that my poetry won a prize it will make her week. I post here because at 7.40am on a Saturday morning I have been sitting in bed, editing the next chapter of my book in my head for an hour and wondering what the reaction of this community will be to it. I write because I have stories inside me and a passion to tell them that is unremitting. Do I want to get published - of course I do but ABCtales has given me the impetus to get another book written - which is what I have been lacking for nearly a decade.

Only a fool writes, if not for money - so said Samuel Johnson. As writing is a form of communication it seems odd that some folk claim, or at least imply that they write for themselves and any readership is incidental. I think that's defensive and/or peculiarly narcissistic. But what an ideal audience! I'm sure we all write because we want to be read, and read as widely as possible. The way to do that is get published and all Meneer Brandon was doing was pointing out what a Herculean task that is. And Hercules was a lucky s.o.b. - read the fables.

I write because if I didn't I think my head would burst! If this happened my wife would then find my headless body and scream, the neighbours would come and think that she had murdered me, they would then call the police who would arrest her on the spot. This would mean that our dog would have to either go to Battersea dogs home or be put to sleep, if he was lucky enough to go to the dogs home he would probably be given to a terrible family that thought they wanted a dog but after a few months realised that it was hard work so put him out on the streets. A homeless person would find him and start begging with him on Oxford Street. He would then have very little food and eventually starve to death on a piece of cardboard underneath Charing Cross bridge! So just to make it clear, I write to save my dogs life!

Sorry Clive was going to write a response but got to go as the bloody dog has started juggling again with the chrystal wine glasses! The wifes going mad as he was supposed to be painting the lounge this evening.

I thought you were building a shed?