[Balgair]

Mostly true for most academic papers as well. Not just the humanities, but the sciences too. Since you can track how many people actually clicked on the download button for a paper, you can get a sense of how many people actually read it.

Only one of my few papers has ever been downloaded by someone not on the author's list (we can compare with each other). Granted, that one's been downloaded a lot. But still, most of that hard work and going back and forth with editors is for naught.