Back in the early 90s when I ran a dial-up BBS in a small town, I would have been surprised and happy if one of the many shareware files on the BBS was ever downloaded more than one or two hundred times. Today, I see how many times the high-res versions of my photos on morgueFile have been downloaded -- around 175,000 -- and feel disappointed.
When I first started writing novels in the late 70s (yeah, yeah... showing how old I am), I would have been very happy if I could have had even a couple dozen people read what I'd written, and all of them would have been local to me. Now, the first novel that I published on Amazon has been downloaded for free thousands of times by people all over the world (you can get a copy via the link in this thread) -- but I'm disappointed.
As recently as the beginning of this century, I could have reasonably reached out to a hundred people or so, maybe a little more. Now, with multiple social networks, I can reach out to thousands in my first and second degrees of separation. Yet... I'm disappointed my reach is so limited.
I was always a little fish in a big sea, and I'm still a little fish, but maybe I'm just more aware of it now. Celebrities like Emma Watson can potentially influence millions of people with a single Tweet. A popular author like Hugh Howey can post something on Wattpad and potentially have tens of thousands of people reading it in a matter of minutes or hours. I'm not even in the same ballpark... but I know people with less "reach" than what I have, so I can intellectually say that it's all a matter of scale... and still feel disappointed.
The passage of time, the advancement of technology, and the increase in a person's potential global reach can sure shift a person's perceptions.
(Just some ramblings....)
When I first started writing novels in the late 70s (yeah, yeah... showing how old I am), I would have been very happy if I could have had even a couple dozen people read what I'd written, and all of them would have been local to me. Now, the first novel that I published on Amazon has been downloaded for free thousands of times by people all over the world (you can get a copy via the link in this thread) -- but I'm disappointed.
As recently as the beginning of this century, I could have reasonably reached out to a hundred people or so, maybe a little more. Now, with multiple social networks, I can reach out to thousands in my first and second degrees of separation. Yet... I'm disappointed my reach is so limited.
I was always a little fish in a big sea, and I'm still a little fish, but maybe I'm just more aware of it now. Celebrities like Emma Watson can potentially influence millions of people with a single Tweet. A popular author like Hugh Howey can post something on Wattpad and potentially have tens of thousands of people reading it in a matter of minutes or hours. I'm not even in the same ballpark... but I know people with less "reach" than what I have, so I can intellectually say that it's all a matter of scale... and still feel disappointed.
The passage of time, the advancement of technology, and the increase in a person's potential global reach can sure shift a person's perceptions.
(Just some ramblings....)