The Route Audit · on paper

Two questions, asked in order

Every route that brings attention to your work is one of three things. Two questions tell you which — and the order they are asked in is the whole method.

Print it · free to copy, use and teach · no account, and nothing to log into

Run the interactive version → Your field, already sorted

First, list your routes. Not platforms — routes. The specific ways attention actually reaches your work: a feed, a mailing list, an agent, a venue, a marketplace, a search result, a person who keeps recommending you. Write down every one that matters, including the ones you would rather not think about.

Then ask these two questions of each, in this order.

Question one

When someone shows up here, had they already chosen you?

Did they come looking for you, or agree in advance to receive this — or did your work have to win them in the moment, against everything else competing for the same seconds?

If the answer is no, stop. The route is contested, and question two does not apply. This is the part a grid gets wrong. Coordinates you hold for people who never chose you — a purchased list, scraped contacts, a room you can shout into — are not a direct route. They are a contested one you happen to have the address for.

Question two · only if question one was yes

Could you reach them again without this intermediary choosing you again?

Two parts. Can you start the next contact yourself — and if you had to change provider tomorrow, would the route survive the move? Ordinary infrastructure you can replace does not count as a landlord.

The three positions

Direct

They arrived oriented toward you, and you control a route back that you could move to another provider without starting over. Less dependent on one intermediary — not lighter, and not a claim to own anyone.

Question one: yes · Question two: yes

Rented

They arrived oriented toward you — they chose you, or someone they trust pointed at you — but an intermediary controls the way back. Real attention, often excellent leverage. Rented names a dependency, not a mistake.

Question one: yes · Question two: no

Contested

Nobody arrived with a reason to listen to you specifically. The work has to win the hearing here, every time. That is how unfamiliar work gets discovered.

Question one: no · (question two does not apply)

No position is better than another. A career can run well on any mix, and many run mostly on rented routes by choice. The audit does not tell you to leave anything. It tells you what you are standing on, so the choice is a decision rather than a default.

The worksheet

Route	Chose you?	Reach again?	Position

Then, next to each, write roughly how much of your working attention it takes. Not time on the platform — total cost: making for it, posting, replying, reading the numbers, and thinking about it when you are not doing it. The comparison that matters is where the effort goes against which routes you could move.

Three questions for the rented routes

This instrument places a route. It does not price one. For every route that came out rented, the next questions are:

What do you have to keep paying — or pay again — to keep the access? Money, cadence, format, exclusivity, availability, data, deference to a house style, or changes to the work.
Who can change or end the delivery? And what recourse do you have — a contract, a union, a negotiation, or nothing.
If it closed tomorrow, what could you carry elsewhere? Not just a file. Whether the permission, the context and the ability to actually reach people survive the move.

A route can be worth renting after all three answers. The point is to have answered them.

Worked examples

The same two questions, in three fields. Yours will differ — these are here to show the shape of the reasoning, not to tell you where your routes land.

Acting

A self-tape into an open casting callContested

A casting director who thinks of you and asks your agent to bring you inRented

A director who has cast you twice and messages you directlyDirect

The middle row is the one worth sitting with. Being thought of is real conferral — someone chose you before the room did. The dependency is that the route back runs through people who can stop choosing you, and often without telling you they have.

Writing

An unsolicited submission into a slush pileContested

An editor who commissions you at a publication whose readers are theirsRented

A mailing list of readers who asked for it, on a provider you could leaveDirect

A staff column can be excellent, well paid and rented at the same time. The lease shows up when the section closes, the editor moves, or the outlet changes what it wants — and the readers stay with the publication.

Music

An algorithmic playlist that surfaces the track to people who were not looking for youContested

A curator, label or promoter who puts you in front of an audience that trusts themRented

People who follow the shows, buy direct, and would come if you changed genreDirect

A large streaming number and a small direct one is a common shape, and it is not a failure. It does mean the routes carrying the volume and the routes you could move are not the same routes.

What this cannot tell you

It places your routes. It does not measure your career. It cannot see the quality of your work, your income, your craft, your credits or your reputation — and rented routes build all of those, even when they build no way back to anyone.

A direct route can also still be a one-sided relationship. People can feel they know you in a way you do not reciprocate, and an audience like that carries its own weight — obligation, the expectation of availability, and the sense that changing direction is a betrayal. Direct removes the landlord. It does not remove the weight, it is not automatically healthier, and this instrument cannot tell the difference.

If it is wrong about you, that is worth more than if it is right

If you run this on a real route and it gives you the wrong answer — or no answer at all — I would genuinely like to know. Cases where the instrument fails to explain itself are more useful to me than the times it works. The contact is on the about page.

The underlying idea — that attention arrives contested, rented or direct — is free to use, adapt and teach. No permission needed, no attribution required, though it is welcome.

The Route Audit — grantedattention.com/route-audit/one-pager · Clint Miller · free to copy, use and teach