The mistake too many writers make
Happy Friday
It’s hard to make it as a writer. Less so if you’re a copywriter or content creator. As long as you don’t mind the revolving door of clients dictating what you write.
But if you want to write whatever you want?
Good luck with that. The pay sucks pretty much everywhere.
Medium has been paying less and less for months. They do this clever little thing where new writers surge from 20 bucks to 40 or 100 and they’re so excited to be finally seeing “results” that they don’t do the math and see how badly they’re paid for the hours they put in. Meanwhile, established writers get their rates whacked.
Vocal is even worse for most writers. Internal distribution sucks there. I know of a couple of writers killing it. Making thousands every month. They drive their own traffic. Most people don’t know how to drive traffic, so they make pennies until they give up and quit.
I’ve never written on Newsbreak but I hear the same. They had their heyday when pay was great, just like Medium. Now people are grumbling about the pay dropping.
If you write books, Amazon is the worst of the lot. In 2021, BookScan tracked the sales of 3.2 million titles and discovered 1% sold more than 5000 copies. And 85% of books published by Amazon’s CreateSpace sell under 200 copies according to ElectricLit.
You know why writers get paid crap everywhere, right?
Because writers want to believe if they’re “good enough” and persistent enough, they’ll make it. You just have to do your time, right? Writers love to say that.
Meanwhile, that’s not how the platforms see writers.
Know how they see writers? We’re disposable. Just like McDonald’s employees. Anyone can flip a burger, right? Same idea. For every writer that quits, there’s another two to fill the spot. They don’t care. There’s no shortage of writers.
It was never about being good enough or persistent enough.
Just because we think it’s about quality, doesn’t mean it is. Best selling and best written aren’t the same. Not on Amazon, and not anywhere.
We’re all making the same mistake.
Know how I got on Medium? I used to read this guy’s newsletter. I’d been reading it for a good year and one day he sent out a newsletter the way Medium sends posts by email. He included an excerpt and a link to finish reading on Medium.
That’s how I started reading on Medium. I saw how many reads he got, and watched his following grow. So I started writing there, too.
I missed the biggest part of the equation. Went right over my head.
He had his own list. I didn’t.
When you have your own list, the platform can’t dick around with you as much. Because they’re your readers. Not the platform’s readers.
His subscribers actually wanted to read what HE had to say. Anything else they read was after the fact. So when he got sick to death of Medium and left he didn’t lose his readers. They were his readers, not Medium’s. He took them with him.
If I left Medium, I don’t get to take my readers with me.
Pretty safe to say the same thing would work on Vocal. Or newsbreak. Write the post, send it to your list. Pretty safe to say most of the authors who sell more than 200 books or 5000 books on Amazon have their own audience, too.
But most of us don’t. We find a platform and just float. You know? Take the views they’re willing to give and don’t do anything to build a following that’s ours. We do that everywhere. Amazon, Medium, Vocal, and Newsbreak.
If more writers had their own audience and didn’t depend on the platform, it might force the platforms to rethink how they look at writers. Less as disposable, and more as a traffic driving asset that they need to respect and treat accordingly.
If you’re not building your own audience, what’s holding you back?
On Medium…
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If you enjoy my women’s stories, a new story comes out every Monday on Substack. The next is about a woman who wasn’t allowed to read books, so she wrote them instead and ended up winning a Pulitzer.
Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this, scroll down to leave a heart or comment. Thanks and have a great weekend.
xo,
Linda
Hi Linda,
You asked, "If you’re not building your own audience, what’s holding you back?."
As a person with ADHD, I get overwhelmed and don't know where to start. What platform, how often, which list, Blog, etc? I know it needs to be done. -- I've set my calendar to remind me to vote for Dawn, the teacher. This is why I adore you.
I've never had an email list of my readers. That's why I failed on Medium. Why don't I have a list? I'd rather write novels.
Have I made money writing novels? Not really.
Still trying to decide whether I should publish with KDP or submit to a commercial publisher, revise to their vision for MY story, then wait 2 years for the book to be published.
Yet, here I sit, plotting another novel.