DHBogucki , I think you are one thousand percent correct! Right now they are merely putting up with us because they need every paying member they can get.
What we literature folk need is a billionaire. We need a billionaire who understands us and values literature and sees the desperate need for a platform that celebrates literature instead of sweeps it under the rug like Medium does. We need a billionaire who can start such a major platform.
We need a billionaire who can afford to and is willing to start such a platform. The platform needs to be a lot like Medium structurally with a partner program like Medium’s but focused exclusively on literature. (Literary fiction, short fiction, flash fiction, serialized fiction, ALL poetry, and maybe even full-length fiction novels. Fiction; no journalism or self-help articles!)
It needs to be a platform focused on and committed to literature. It is practically guaranteed to be a success because there is currently nothing like it on the internet. It needs to be a place where writers of literature can be paid for the quality of their work without having their work hidden from viewers of the platform like here on Medium. A place where literature is front and center, not something the platform administration merely puts up with as they hide it and makes it as difficult to discover as possible (like here at Medium). There are untold hundreds of thousands of lovers of literature and writers of literature who would die for such a home.
Ev Williams has proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has absolutely no interest in this whatsoever. His vision for Medium is of the world’s largest NON-FICTION popularity-driven corporate mainstream NEWS curator in the world (and largest repository of “How To Become a Billionaire By Waking Up an Hour Earlier Each Morning” articles in the world). Fiction and literature simply do not play into his vision in any way and his curating staff and broken algorithms and anti-literature posturing make this abundantly clear.
What we literature lovers desperately need is a billionaire to step up and build a platform for us, to fill this gaping internet void that Ev Williams has no interest whatsoever in filling. I think if some billionaire stepped forward and financed the creation of such a platform that thousands of literature lovers on Medium would gladly cancel their paid memberships here and go pay for a membership at this new literature-oriented platform, where they will no longer be treated as second-class citizens and where they will finally get what they pay for and get paid in a decent way for what they work so damn hard on.
Oh, billionaire, oh billionaire! Wherefore art thou, billionaire? We desperately need you! Ev Williams , with his deep disdain for fiction and other forms of literature, has forsaken us. We need you!
