David, that is really nice of you to say. Thank you.

If I had an article do really well it might have made between 10 and 20 dollars, and that's not enough for how long they took to write. Likewise, I think I could drive more traffic if I killed myself, tried to develop the social media side, and then tried to drive traffic here, but I'm not going to knock myself out to drive traffic to Ev Williams's pet project which could go away at any second. Last but not least, I feel Medium does not help its authors succeed outside its boundaries--it doesn't have to, of course, but I don't sense there's a lot of people writing here who can use their Medium success to sell book proposals or anything like that. I am too old school for this platform. I just want to buy people's books and support them that way.

It also of course is totally not my platform in that I think the most popular/lucrative topics are some of the ones I find most dull: vacuous self-help, vacuous financial self-help. relationship advice that scares the shit out of me with how conventional it is (I see a ton of "what men want" stuff here that seems to be seriously advocating that women give a shit "what men want," which makes me feel like Medium is stuck in the 1950s), sex, tech bullshit, and articles fawning all over Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk.

I know. I just gave you a lot more than you asked for, didn't I? Didn't mean to. And so sorry I forgot to list you. I have been reading and enjoying your stuff for a long time and I thank you for every minute I spent reading you--you offer something different on Medium and for that I am endlessly grateful.