Why Poetry Doesn’t Pay
Two factors. That’s all you get.
Talent night at the auditorium. The heavy velvet curtains are closed, audience packed like sardines. On folding metal chairs. Waiting.
Backstage, the M.C. hollers out the rules to the competitors.
Nice and simple, folks. You’ll be judged on 2 things , and 2 things only. Length of presentation, and audience reaction. 5 thousand in cash to the winner. Ready? Curtains!
The curtains open. A spotlight appears.
The first performer to step into the spotlight tells a salacious story about some politician. The audience is a mixed bag. Some laugh, some roll their eyes.
As the story-teller takes a bow, the scoreboard says 7 mins. 32% approval. Wow. Tough crowd.
The next performer comes out and rambles some story that sounds more like an incoherent drunk at the bar than any serious effort at storytelling. A few people clap politely. Scoreboard says 4 mins., 9% approval.
This goes on, as each performer takes a shot at winning the prize money.
Another performer steps out. Says 3 lines, turns and leaves. The audience is stunned. Wth? A few little claps. The scoreboard says 1 minute, 11% approval.
Another performer does the same. 3 lines, but the audience claps wildly. They’re on their feet! Wow. They love this one. Short but powerful. Scoreboard says 1 minute, 80% approval. Great response. But still. 1 minute.
Later, as the M.C. doles out the dollars, he hands $5,000 in cash to one beaming storyteller and drops a few pennies in each poet’s hands.
They hate me. They hate poetry Poetry doesn’t pay.
That’s the poets’ lament, it seems. Many poets are quick to agree.
First? Most 1 min reads aren’t...
I shake my head every time I see 1 min. reads. I know those writers are going to struggle. Not necessarily for claps. But most probably for pay.
Those 1 min. reads? They aren’t 1 min. reads. It does not take a full minute to read 3 lines. Or 5, or seven.
It only says “1 min. read” because Medium doesn’t show read time in seconds. If they did, those shorty 3–5 line poems wouldn’t be 1 min reads.
They’d look more like a bounce than a read.
You know what a bounce is? When a person clicks on a web page, and leaves the page in under 30 seconds, that’s called a bounce.
Generally, people “bounce” when they land on badly designed web pages. In the world of writing, people bounce when writing starts slow. Or they see a wall of text and don’t want to wade through it.
But also? Haiku. And short poetry.
The readers aren’t leaving for the same reason. They did read it. It’s just that there wasn’t 30 seconds of reading there.
On a site that pays by read time.
And then you lament that poetry doesn’t pay.
Also worth mentioning? While read time is not displayed in seconds, it does seem to be counted in seconds. So your Haiku might say 1 minute read. But when people read it, you might get credited with 20 seconds reading time.
Reading time. Reaction. Two factors. That’s all you get.
You need to figure out how to make them work for you.
Second?
The audience isn’t waiting to read your poetry. Not until you entice them to click to read it. That’s the job of your title and subtitle.
I get it. Poetry names itself. Sometimes the title is one word. Or two.
Worth keeping in mind that you get 100 characters with title and subtitle combined. Are you using them to increase your reads?
Go ahead, use that one word title. But use the rest of the 100 characters to entice the reader to click. They can’t read if they don’t click first.
One minute posts do you no favors
No one said it would be easy. Possible and easy are not the same.
I’m just not sure you’re doing yourself any favors when you post 3 lines or 5 lines on a site that pays by read time and then lament that the world hates poetry when the problem isn’t poetry but read time.
Rupi Kaur is doing fine. And Amanda Lovelace and scores of others. Every successful poet out there has found what works for them. But it’s not a blueprint. What works for one poet may not work for another.
If you’ve chosen, as your platform, a place that pays by read time? Those one minute posts do you no favors.
If I shoved you on a stage and said you have 5 minutes to entertain your readers, what would you do with those minutes? Would you simply recite a dozen unrelated poems and then skulk away muttering that people hate poets? Or would you figure out how to entertain them?
Learning to engage an audience is a skill that seldom happens by accident. If you can learn to do that, you’ll be able to sing the song of success instead of the song of sorrow.
Read time. Response. That’s all you’ve got. The real question is what you do with it.
Write, edit, re-write. The right words, so elusive. Oh! The flower blooms.