Goodreads asked Benjamin Radford:

What’s the best thing about being a writer?

Benjamin Radford Being a writer is in many ways a mixed blessing. There are many benefits and drawbacks to it (the subject for another time), but one of the best things is that your work can ideally stand on its own, and over time. Obviously some writers crank out dreck that is soon obsolete or ignored (think of "quickie" books published to capitalize on a celebrity death or scandal, for example), but for the most part if you write a solid, well-researched book then it will continue to be read and referenced years, decades, or possibly even centuries after it was published. Most my books cover topics that no one else has done before, or that are have very little credible research. My books "Tracking the Chupacabra" and "Bad Clowns" are perfect examples: I'm the first person to fully investigate and solve the mystery of the Hispanic vampire beast, and I'm the first person to write a full-length, scholarly book about the evil clown character. I'm not bragging, it's just a fact. It's not that no one else could have done it, it's that no one else did it. There may be other books in the future that discuss chupacabras and evil clowns, which may or may not be better than mine. But those books and authors, in order to demonstrate due diligence and scholarship (i.e., they didn't just cut and paste off the internet but did some research), will need to reference and quote my work. And that's kind of cool thing about being a writer: doing original research and putting your fingerprint on a subject.

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