Haven Writing School

Are You Allowed To Republish An Old Story On Medium?

The answer may surprise you.

Yes.

That’s the answer. I hate authors who make you wade through the entire damn article to get the answer, don’t you? So I just put it right there and you can quit the article right now — unless you want some more specific information. And there is some important information, by the way, because if you don’t repost correctly, you can actually get your account banned and all the fun you’ve been having in this Medium sandbox will be over. So yes, please read on.

I have been so confused about this issue for the longest time. I read a great piece, by the way, which made me worry about it again.

I guess that’s the point of these meta articles about Medium — to make us worried, afraid, nervous, jealous, angry, happy. I mean the whole gamut of emotions, right?

But when I read this article I was worried because I did repost some of my old articles and I thought I might get suspended.

There is nothing worse than being banned from Medium

It’s worse than death, I’m quite convinced of that. I’m sure my death will be over in a flash and that will be it. But when you’re suspended, like I was, the pain goes on and on and on.

One day I just went to my computer, naive and unsuspecting, called up Medium and nope. My account was suspended — due to a mistake, I found out.

Eventually.

Like after a week.

Thanks a lot, Medium.

So after I read Kristi Keller’s fine article, I got nervous again. I have been taking some old Christine Stevens pieces, deleting them, and reposting them to another publication. And making beaucoup dinero doing it, I might add.

But all of this beaucoup dinero might just blow up in my face if it gets me banned, right?

I wanted to be a good Medium citizen. So I went to the page that Kristi referenced which supposedly banned reposting. It’s linked here. But here are the relevant points.

I looked at that for about thirty minutes. It mentions some things that are verboten. But it didn’t mention the thing that I had been doing, which was DELETING an old story and pasting it into a new story and reposting it.

Is that a duplication or not?

I had read in other places that you can do that but you need to make substantial revisions to the piece.

And being very lazy, I didn’t like the idea of revising an already perfect Christine Stevens piece — how do you improve perfection, right?

How Do I Delete A Story?

Well, there are two ways. You can click on settings, and go to the bottom where you will find this pretty little thing:

You just hit that red button and voila. Make sure you have copied and pasted the story before you do that, though. Because once it’s gone, it’s gone for good.

There is an easier way, I discovered. You just click the three dot thingie that shows up on your story:

And then you get these options:

See, at the bottom, in red there is the delete story button. But again, remember to copy and paste beforehand.

Whatever you do, don’t click “Remove Story From This Publication.”

Why? Because the editors will get a notification and then they will hate you. As an editor of publications, I can vouch that in the rare cases I have received this notification, hatred has ensued.

Sometimes I get an email requesting to remove a story from the publication. That makes less hatred ensue.

But it’s not necessary. When you delete a story, it vanishes from the publication, but the editor is not informed.

What they don’t know will not hurt them.

But won’t readers notice it’s repurposed?

Won’t I be boring my audience, reposting the old crap?

That is a danger. And that’s why I do sometimes try to spice up the story a bit, make an effort, you know. Put on a new pic. Make it even funnier.

But I’ve got more than a thousand stories here now. I’m sure even my most devoted reader hasn’t read all of them. Readers just read what’s coming down the pike at the moment, right? So it’s not likely to be a retread for most people.

And for the devoted ones who recognize it as an old story, remember — they are the devoted ones. They love you and are going to forgive you for wanting to get your old stuff out there to new eyeballs.

Is this really legal?

I sure hope so. Because it has enabled me to double the earnings of certain stories.

But just to make sure I wasn’t endangering my Medium career, I inquired on the help desk of Medium. I received this reply.

Wasn’t that nice of them? You know something, I have noticed a more friendly tone in the help desk since the new CEO came in. Thanks Tony!

So, that’s the answer — as long as there is only a single version of the story on Medium at one time, you are good to go!

Do it! Don’t just let your old stories rot away in the archive drawer. You just might be wasting some money there. I’ve had the experience a couple of times of an ok performing story actually going viral after I republish it.

But remember, I delete the old post first! Don’t forget!