Posted: March 12, 2020

Ugh. No one reads anymore.

 

I’m guilty of complaining about this, too. I am quick to annoyingly declare that the biggest thing I have learned in my two decades as a professional communicator is that “PEOPLE. DON’T. READ.” And what I really mean by that is not that literary appreciation is on the decline, though that conversation could certainly be had.

 

What I usually mean is that you can print something carefully and explicitly in black and white and you’ll still get inundated with the same questions that are easily answered if you JUST READ THE EMAIL. (At least it’s usually an email…)

 

No matter how proud you are of your written words, you’re going to have to accept that most people don’t appreciate or even read them.

 

But even I sometimes don’t read the email. Information overload is real, and it’s hard out there for a well-meaning digital media consumer.

 

So, yeah: While it is in so many ways true that NO ONE READS ANYMORE, it’s also completely untrue that NO ONE READS ANYMORE. When you combine magazines, newsletters, flyers in your kid’s backpack, and books with things like websites, social media, advertisements, and emails, many people are easily exposed to more than 500,000 words every day.

 

War and Peace? 587,287 words.

 

So while the majority of those half-million words are probably not going to earn you a Goodreads challenge title, you are still taking in almost a War and Peace worth of words every day. Some of those words stick. Using the services of a professional writer who understands audience, channel, voice, and storytelling will increase your chances of putting “sticky” words out into the atmosphere.

 

Even just 10 in 500,000 might be all you need.