A Tale of Two Writing Platforms

$41 from Medium this month (March) and $1505.00 from News Break. If only that News Break cash cow wasn’t going to be slaughtered soon.

I know I’ve written this before, but $41 is almost exactly $100 less than my highest month ever on Medium (I’ve been here since 2017, btw).

I’ve been active on News Break since late December 2020. Almost everything I’ve published there was something I had originally published on Medium (yes, NB allows previously published work for some odd reason).

Sounds great, and it has been, but NB recently decided to strongly enforce their “local US news stories only” rules and apparently human interest ones only as well since anything with violence, profanity, suggested sexuality or nudity, drugs, etc will be rejected. Judging by the recent crashes the site experienced, they did some major tweaking to their AI that decides whether articles get published.

Assuming the AI is up to the task that pretty much ends my career as a freelancer on NB. I write fiction and I live in Japan. I often write transgressive short stories full of all the stuff NB says it doesn’t want in its stories, you know, like authentic life. Also, I’m not a journalist and I haven’t lived in the Seattle area or the Bay Area since 2003, the two places that I could claim as hometowns.

I have one more month on the NB base pay money grab, so I’m going to at least attempt to squeeze my last $1500 out of them, but I feel since everyone will be on the new pay system by May that they are going to be very strict about the rules to prevent themselves from paying writers any more than they have to.

That means me. No way I can write a local US story living in Japan and like I told NB from the start, I’m not a journalist and I don’t want to be one. I’m glad I had the chance to make the money I did from NB and I’m disappointed that I more than likely won’t be able to continue doing so, but I guess that is just the way things go sometimes.

So far, nobody has created a writing platform that pays writers based on how good their writing is instead of how well they follow the rules or how well they game the system. It would be infinitely cool if some ultra-rich writers (yeah, talking to you Stephen and J K) would get together and start their own writing platform that actually gave a shit about high-quality creative writing. It would be nice to write what I’m good at (short stories, poetry, haibun) instead of having to jump through a bunch of algorithm hoops just to get my stuff noticed on these platforms.

And I know News Break is supposed to be all about local news, but I still have to ask, “WHY DID YOU INVITE ME TO WRITE FOR YOU IN THE FIRST PLACE??????” They knew I was primarily a fiction writer and they knew I lived in Japan. Or at least their fucking AI that probably cherry picked me off of Medium because of the number of followers I have knew it.

Creative writers getting screwed over by a writing platform is nothing new though (wink, wink Ev). And creative writers bitching about on said writing platforms is nothing new either. It hurts though when you feel like you are finally getting ahead to have the rug pulled out from under you. AGAIN.

I know, I know, these platforms don’t owe me anything. But damn, how they hell are writers ever supposed to get ahead? So far, crickets on that one as well.

Oh well, as John Lennon said, “I may be a dreamer, but I’m not the only one….”