Medium Wants Fewer Writers and More Readers

Sure, but where is the money?

Writers love to talk and write about themselves, but the problem is that most of what they say is boring. There’s a reason why “90% of self-published books sell less than 100 copies¹.”

That’s why you see so many navel-gazing memoirs and other “funny” stories that aren’t particularly interesting or funny on Medium (read my stories for some examples).

Writing good stuff is HARD.

That’s also why many writers use a read-for-read system. The untold logic goes as follows: “Your story was decent enough for me to take the time to read it IF you take the time to read mine. But if you don’t read back, let’s not kid ourselves; your story was average, and I can easily find 200 like it on Medium.”

The problem is that some writers misinterpret this transactional relationship as “I’m a fantastic writer, and I should be on the NYT bestseller list. Also, all my stories should get a boost.”

Generally, writers have a biased perspective about Medium.

They think it’s full of people like them when the majority (thankfully) are readers who never write. Readers don’t want to read low-quality stuff.

Worse, they get upset when they see too much low-quality stuff and end up not renewing their membership — which is bad for Medium (and for writers).

Medium wants to show readers high-quality stuff. Medium wants more gems and less “brain farts.” But writers want easy money, and brain farts are much easier (and faster) to write than gems.

So, writers pump out a lot of articles hoping to get the winning lottery ticket (a viral story), and Medium has to sort through them to find the gems and show them to the readers.

Before, Medium used only the algo.

Now, they also have the boost and its curators. Curators are more humans than the algo, which comes with pluses and minuses (read this by May More 💜 Tales for a perspective on potential conflicts of interest).

In the comment section of this article by James Bellerjeau, Coach Tony said, talking about “quantity writers:”

“These types of writers lose us money, fwiw. We have a quality business, not a volume business.”

Based on this comment, James wrote another article advising Medium writers to shoot for quality instead of quantity.

It was music to Coach Tony’s ears, and he commented again:

“Thank you for accepting the logic of my blunt response.”

Let’s add a bit of discordance in this concerto for a CEO

I don’t have access to Medium’s financial and user data; it makes it harder to judge their strategy. But I’m an online writer, and I’m not afraid to write about something without information to back up my claims (read this for my ethical disclaimer).

Medium is pushing for high-quality writing and fewer brain farts.

In other words, they want to be more like The New York Times and the Encyclopaedia Britannica and less like WordPress and MySpace.

The problem is that Medium doesn’t pay reliably enough for professional writers to publish with them. There’s no minimum guaranteed amount. Your article could make $3, $100, or $1,000. Statistically speaking, it’s $3 (or less).

Another reason why few professional writers are on Medium is because the pay isn’t high enough anyway.

Will the boost be sufficient to change that situation?

Maybe.

Medium presents the boost as an incentive for writers to write higher-quality articles. In the new earnings calculation, Medium even boost the boost!

These articles take time and effort.

I could be convinced to try to write one every month, but if I were good enough to write boost-worthy articles every other day, I would go to Substack and get 100 paid subscribers there.

But I’m not Jessica Wildfire, so I stay here.

Medium has an amateur vibe that is priceless, even for pro-writers.

People can write about whatever they want. This liberty has a cost that translates into less money for the writers but more pleasure from their stories.

Writers also love the community feeling and social media side of Medium. Readers don’t care about it and don’t even know it exists.

It’s a difficult balance to find. Most writers here want to have fun and make money. Most of them are ready to make less money to have more fun. Writers having fun mean they publish both gems and brain farts.

But “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” You can’t have the gems without the brain farts unless you make it a job and reliably pay more.

Medium can’t have only the gems, and its writers can’t have only $1,000 articles. Both sides need to compromise to find a satisfying and stable equilibrium.

Maybe Medium previously went too much in the easy-reading/brain-farting direction, and now the team decided to balance it toward the expert/high-quality one. I think they’re pushing too much in that direction, but again, I don’t have access to the numbers. Maybe it’s the only way for Medium to reach a profitable business model.

Even more so in a world where ChatGPT can pump out seventeen thousand articles under four minutes.

Medium is called Medium for a reason

It’s in the middle (that’s also why they get a commission). Medium is an all-you-can-read Substack, and it’s excellent value for money. But it cannot become a Michelin-star restaurant without completely changing its business model (in this latter case, it would mean paying people upfront for their stories).

Maybe there’s no space for an all-you-can-read Substack on the market.

But I hope the middle ground is also profitable because I would love for Medium to say Medium.

I find Medium a fantastic opportunity for amateur writers like me to have fun or test the waters and see if they have what it takes to become good enough to make a living out of it.

There’s no other place like it.

Smillew is a Medium artiste. As such, he shamelessly lies and begs for money on ko-fi. He also manipulates readers into subscribing to his Substack.

Notes: ¹ Link to self-published book sales statistics.