You Don’t Deserve Reads
By: Sean Bennett
Tags: Writers On Writing, Freelancing, Audience Engagement, Writing, Reading

You Don’t Deserve Reads

When I discovered Medium, I had been writing on various platforms for years and so, based on my experience, I thought I would be able to do well. In truth, there was a small part of me that thought I would take this platform by storm in 24 hours flat.

I didn't, obviously.

Of course I didn't. Why would I? My voice is just one more in the internet chorus. My opinions have already been written about in at least 100 other places, by people with much more expertise than me.

Most of you are probably in a similar position. It’s a fact of life for many writers and content creators. We willingly work in an industry that isn't saturated, perse, but it’s pretty damn close. You can still write originally, sure, but it's not as easy as it used to be to find a new angle to write from and an audience to read it.

Views are hard to come by on any online platform, likes and comments even more so. Convincing people of your value as a writer is harder than ever, because there are thousands of other writers clamouring for attention from the same people, at the same time.

It tough. Sure it is. But here’s the thing.

You don't deserve views.

Nor do I. None of us do. Whatever we are writing about, there is someone who could write it better, or who knows more than us, or who has access to a bigger audience than we do. Even our deepest, most personal stories could probably be better articulated, or at least better distributed, by someone else. There will almost always be someone out there who can give our audience better value in one way or another.

Welcome to the writing club. We have biscuits and a crippling addiction to likes, claps, retweets, and shares.

The inconvenient truth

Nobody owes us anything. Everyone has opinions and most of us can write them down. Sure, those of us who call ourselves ‘writers’ can probably turn a phrase better than your average Joe, but that doesn't mean anyone actually has to read it. People have got busy lives to lead. Why would they spend their precious free time reading what we have to say about this and that and everything in between?

Basically, most people have more important stuff to do.

So, does that mean we should stop? Pack it all in and go work for the man? Burn our ceremonial pens in a ceremonial bonfire as part of some ritual bemoaning the pain of writing?

No. Please don't.

None of us deserves to have our writing read. We have no right to expect people to give up their limited time on this earth to read what we have to say. That goes for all writers. Stephen King and J K Rowling have no more right to views than you or me.

So when people do invest that time in you, when you do get that first view, wherever it might come from, you should be jumping for joy. Somebody, somewhere, just spent a tiny bit of their life on you. Think about that. Really think about it. They just spent minutes, actual whole minutes that they will never get back, on you and your work. Not their job, not their kids, not their hobbies, you.

The need for views, plural, misses the magnitude of what a view actually is. Every single one you earn should be a reason for celebration because it represents a genuine human investment in your work.

I know single views don't put food on the table. There isn't a platform in existence that will pay a decent wage for single views. We writers have to earn a living and being satisfied with individual fans is not a way to do that. I get that, I do. But that doesn't negate the importance of each and every one of those views.

Writers have a habit of losing sight of what view means in favour of tracking numbers and statistics. To some extent, we have to. We have to keep track of our earnings in order to keep afloat. But I wonder if we would be happier if we tried to care just that little bit more about the people behind the views and statistics. When an article underperforms and gets only 100 views, wouldn't that sting a little less if you considered what that 100 views actually meant? 100 living, breathing, thinking people who now have you words swirling about in their heads.

Let's assume that people take, on average, 3 minutes to read your article. 100 views equal 300 minutes of human life, or 5 hours. 1000 views add up to over two days. It would only take 3360 views to make a whole week of total human attention. An entire week dedicated to you and your work.

That seems pretty major to me.

This kind of approach won’t make you rich. It won't change your life overnight. It won't stop you wanting and needing to get views and interactions and leads and all the rest of it. These things are the bread and butter of our industry and they are not going away. But remembering what a view actually is, what it represents, might make those poor performing articles and unexpectedly low view counts easier to stomach.

Feel free to ignore me

I'm a new kid on the block. I don't expect you to read what I have to say and I certainly don't expect you to take my advice. What do I know, anyway? I've been writing for about 5 minutes compared to some of you. I should be taking your advice, not the other way around. Feel free to tell me how wrong I am.

I know that the volume of view matters, and I’m sure it always will. Every time I join a new platform, I publish my first few articles and then I can’t stop refreshing my stats every few minutes to see if I had suddenly made it big. It’s never happened yet, but I still get trapped in that cycle of page refreshes and stat obsessions. We chose this work because we love it, but it is still a job and we still need money.

Understanding that we do not deserve views and that each and every one is valuable will probably not change the way you write, but it might change the way you think about the response to that writing. Commanding human attention is not an easy thing to do. The theatre and film industries spend billions trying to earn people’s time, but you manage to do it with nothing but a keyboard and your imagination.

Personally, I think that's pretty impressive.