Yeah, as you’ve seen I simply am not compelled because almost everything I read is on Kindle. My impression of most writing I see on Medium is that it’s still fraught with the virtue-signaling and ego-distorted perspectives that make most writing on the web and most newspapers unreadable to my brain. Something about the nature of network dynamics seems to incentivize that behavior, and I believe it’s less-incentivized (yet still somewhat) in the realm of books.

I see Medium as a testing bed for ideas and part of my creative process. If other people think it’s worth reading, that’s great. If I can actually earn money for that process work, also great.

Medium is a business with $132 million of investment, and no matter how noble their efforts may seem right now, they don’t have a conscience. So I don’t get any warm fuzzies over their model. If they become powerful enough to get a chance, they will strong-arm writers to get more for less, just like any other business: Uber for example, and Amazon is already doing it with Kindle.

It’s not right or wrong, it just is and I don’t fool myself over it. Kindle is my preferred platform, but I hold no allegiance to Kindle nor any platform. Another reader offered the perspective that if I were a Medium member I might earn more for my posts. I will consider it for that reason. Since I don’t read on Medium, there’s no other good reason.

My “model” is to learn from what I believe to be higher-quality information in books, then share what I learn to folks who for some reason don’t spend more time/money reading actual books. Hopefully I can get them to read more books while I’m at it.

I’m also not convinced that Medium’s membership model will work. It irks me that I know they have full knowledge of a blockchain approach to supporting media, and they choose to ignore it. That’s a whole other can of worms in terms of paid/free because such technology makes it possible for readers to read content for free, and even get paid for reading content. But, most people aren’t ready to wrap their heads around that yet.

Thanks for reading and commenting!