How do we leverage the backlist?
In publishing, the backlist used to underwrite current authors. Where would Grove Press have been without its backlist of evergreen, softcore pornography? Old titles are supposed to keep you afloat so that you can take risks with new material.
But there is no backlist on the Internet. Something published on Medium last week might as well have been published last year. Once a story or post dips below the algorithm’s time horizon, it ends up in a literary Hades, blowing around like autumn leaves in an underground parking garage with the shades of other offerings.
I understand that. I don’t like to see “old” things in my feed. I get really annoyed when I am offered posts that I have already read, but I am game to read old posts that I have missed. I guess I could mine backwards on individual authors. That might be the best way to do it.
But how, mathematically, is this supposed to work? Is Medium really willing to concede that all of the writing on the site only has a shelf life of three or four days?
We all have “evergreen” posts. We have written things that are as relevant today as they were when we wrote them. Some of them never got the love they deserved.
How do we reanimate them? How do we create zombie posts?
In the Slack community, POMQA, we used to have something called, I think, “Throwback Thursday” where we posted links to old stories. I don’t think it worked too well. Even if two or three people read and recommend a four-month-old post, it isn’t going to show up on many feeds.
I missed a lot of great writing. I also have 2000 “stories” on medium. Is all of that writing digital dust now?
Is there a way to turn the compost? Can we, perhaps, spin the bin and see what value might rise, like steam, from the decay?
