Wait, So You’ll Sell Yourself, Your Course, and Your Book, Just Not the Platform You Write On?

You do realize that editors pay attention to that sort of thing, right?

My goodness, there’s been a bit of an uproar here lately over Medium’s newest earning option: The Partner Program Referred Membership. The complaints in the comment section of the announcement range from soul selling to MLM stench to not-my-job whining. I get that most of us want to be paid for the words we put on the page and that hawking anything else is not exactly what we signed up for.

But geez, Louise, you’d think someone told us we are going to have to post our jiggly butts on TikTok to earn money going forward. (Although I think some of us may already be doing that.)

For the record, I’m all in on the new spiffs. (Which, BTW, is sales jargon referring to small rewards, and short for Sales Program Incentive Funds.) I think spiffs are spiffy. Here’s why.

This is not 1967

In 2021, writers are expected to bring their own audience. Full stop.

I have written for pay for some of the biggest online publications in the world. I have talked to top level editors at online publications with daily page views in the multi-millions. And guess what? Every last one of them expects writers to promote the publication. They talk behind our backs about the ones who think they are too good to promote anyone’s stories on the publication besides their own.

I’ve been asked specifics about my social media following by editors looking to bring me onboard as a steady contributor. And if you think you’re getting a traditional book deal these days without a following, fuhgetaboutit.

The days when professional writers did nothing but write and submit are long gone. I’ve been a traditionally published book author since 1991. I have spoken to a publishing house PR person exactly once. I am expected to promote my own books, but even more than that, I am expected to promote the series my books are part of. I am even expected to promote the entire imprint my books fall under.

And I’m okay with all of that. It’s what working writers do.

Medium is a social media platform

There is so much confusion about what Medium is at the core. I’m not sure why. It’s pretty basic. Ev Williams wanted a platform for more in-depth discussion than Twitter allowed, so he created Medium.

There will always be deep thought on this platform. There will always be advertisements cleverly disguised as deep thought. There will always be those who come here to share what pours forth from their souls. And for less than the cost of a Big Mac Meal, you can gorge on all of that every month. The reader referral doesn’t detract from any of it because you don’t have to participate in it.

And that’s the beauty of the system. You don’t have to join the Partner Program. You don’t have to promote the platform. You don’t even have to be a freaking paying member to write here. It’s free to create an account and write whatever you want within the guidelines, just don’t expect Medium to hand their audience over to you if you aren’t shouldering some of the work.

Medium always expected some of us to be audience builders

It’s the only way this was ever going to work. They have never been shy about the fact that if you bring readers with you, you’ll earn more money. Remember the fly fishing story? Medium once explained that if you write about fly fishing and nobody else does, and if members come to Medium only to read your fly fishing stories, your share of their reading time will be larger than if you wrote about relationships where readers divide their reading time between a hundred different writers of relationship stories.

The new program simply pays a clear spiff for the fly fishing writer who brings his own audience going forward. If anyone else benefits from the odd times when the fly fishing reader breaks out and reads something different, yippee!

The hard truth

Some of the complaints about the announcement came from writers who are either not in the Medium Partner Program at all or who are at risk of falling out of it at year’s end. They don’t have enough followers. They don’t earn enough money to hit the payout threshold. They live in the wrong country. It sucks.

Medium cannot be all things to all people. From where I sit, it does a pretty dang good job at keeping the doors open for hobby writers and bloggers who don’t want to build their own websites. It provides a diverse community for writers learning their craft. It builds relationships far better than most social media channels do.

It was never intended to be a source of income for everyone who wanted it to be. And it is not alone in that. You may not even be aware of platforms that quietly pay some writers, while taking advantage of non-paid audience contributed material to flesh out the platform. I personally write for or have written for several of them — I am simply not at liberty to tell you which ones.

This my friends, is the current state of the publishing business in a nutshell

It has always been a popularity contest.

Some people will earn far more than others.

Not everyone can earn a living from it.

Not everyone even gets to participate.

Quality writing is eventually rewarded, but usually only with marketing effort from the writer.

Writers’ ranks are frequently culled.

Working writers cheer at every new opportunity to earn a bit more.

Everyone else kicks and screams about the game being sullied or unfair.