Artemis, where did you get the idea that there has to be reciprocity amongst writers? The first time I heard that, I had already been published for 40 years, and some American writer expected me to read his work because he had begged to read mine.

I suspect that this idea comes from the fact that during the past 20 years a lot of people have suddenly aspired to be writers, and in doing so, have found that nobody is interested in reading their work. So various writing coaches, teachers, professors, not to be embarrassed that they are teaching something that is going to take their students nowhere, hit on the idea of telling writers that they must read each other’s work, and that they must support each other.

I’m sorry, but that is simply true.

When a writer gives you a like on Twitter, it means thank you. It does not mean that they like their own work. You’re also not helping other writers. Unless a piece is tweeted hundreds of thousands of time in 24 hours, it goes nowhere on Twitter. Even then, you might only get 1% of people clicking on the link – if you’re lucky.

You say, “What has surprised me is that I can't help but see selfishness. I don't see any gratitude. This makes me ask myself, "Are we all stuck in our own heads? Are we incapable of instinctively going beyond our own self?”

Artemis, the entitlement and expectation in those words stuns me. Have you ever googled me? Do you expect James Patterson or some other famous writer to give you a thank you because you tweeted about their book? Why would you expect him to thank you or to tweet your work in return? That is impractical. If 1 million writers tweet the work of one writer, must that writer than write to thank each of those tweeters and then tweet a story from each of them?

You must realize that this is impractical.

The odds are that the people you are reading on Medium are professional writers. I am. I have been published for 60 years.

For interest’s sake, I looked at a piece of mine that had 40,000 views. It had 114 views (not reads) from Twitter. That is .003%. In other words, to get one view from Twitter, I would have had to have my piece posted on Twitter 350 times. Another story with 17,000 views, received 12,000 of them from Google and nothing from Twitter. Google just picked up on the story, and has sent me that traffic. There is no traffic from Twitter.

Why does Google pick up on my work (it even posts my comments in the search engines)? Because I am an author, a recognized writer, have a 4.7 star rating on Goodreads, sell books on Amazon and every other bookstore, etc.

How are professional writers who get read by hundreds of thousands of people selfish if they don’t thank someone for tweeting their work on Twitter? How are we ungrateful? I suspect you think that everybody on Medium is an amateur writer, but that’s not true.

I’m sorry to hear about your cancer. We all eventually get there. Thank you for taking time to read me. I can see that you have a talent for writing. I wish you well in your endeavor to get read.