Paying It Forward, Paying it Back, Using Your Leverage

As the year comes to an end, I've been thinking about leverage, which I talk about in Booklife. But in Booklife, while I have a separate section on paying it forward and contributing to community, I'm not sure I fully tie the idea of leverage to the idea of paying it forward.

Your writerly "leverage," as I define it, is a kind of political capital. You can amass it based on your visibility through your online presence and your books, published short stories, etc. It consists of intangibles...