Over the past couple of days, I’ve watched a bunch of writing videos on YouTube and I’ve started to realize something. It’s probably nothing new and I should have recognized it before, but the people who put out the most videos on writing are also the people who, in general, have written the fewest books.

Seriously, why bother?

 

Granted, this isn’t really something I never saw  before, but it’s something that all people who watch YouTube videos on writing need to check out for themselves. Some of the channels with the highest subscriber counts have written very few books at all. So what makes them an expert? You tell me.

For example, I watched a couple of videos by Abbie Emmons. She’s got half a million subscribers. She has written three books, all of them since 2019 and her YouTube channel has been around longer than that. Her first writing video came out about the time that her first book did, but as far as I can tell, she’s not doing all that well. Granted, her last book was 2023, but it’s not well-ranked on Amazon, so where does she get off pretending to be a successful expert?

I’m not upset at Abbie because she’s just doing what a lot of people do. I’m not even targeting her since tons of people do the same thing. Put out a handful of books, either self-published or traditional, and then take to YouTube to sell courses and make money.

Then you compare that to someone like Brandon Sanderson, who produces a TON of books and still has time to make some videos and teach classes on writing. He’s got the demonstrable expertise behind him to prove that he knows what he’s doing.

Granted, the market that the small-time writers are targeting are not the experts. They are not the professionals. They are the beginners who know nothing and any help is probably better than no help at all. However, I’ve always thought that if you’re going to offer something of value, you need to prove that it’s valuable, not just regurgitated information that you gleaned from other videos online.

When Brandon does it, he’s really got nothing to gain. He’s made his money and he’s proven he can be successful. I can see why people might want to listen to him. For the others though, and this goes for a lot more people online than Abbie Emmons and other similar writers who have done a few mid-list books at best and then think that makes them experts, those people haven’t proven they can be successful, they’ve just proven they can crank out a book every other year and somehow, that’s an accomplishment.

Okay, whatever you say. I’m just wondering what the attraction is because I’m honestly not seeing it.