❔ FAQ and Publication Rules (updated: March 14th, 2024) — Sweet Publications 💚💙🧡

Please read this before submitting your story 🙏

If you are behind the Medium paywall and can’t read this article, click here.

Hello! 👋

If you opened this article there is a 99% chance that you are a writer in one of these Medium publications (or both):

• Short. Sweet. Valuable. Short and valuable stories told in less than 300 words.
• Long. Sweet. Valuable. Valuable and long (300+ words) stories.

I am Martynas Ki. (@strangecash) and I’m the founder of them both. 🧑🏻

Nice to meet you! 🤝🏻

I am surprised by how fast these publications are growing! It’s a very pleasant and unexpected surprise for me! 🖤

So thanks for joining them! 💪

Now let’s focus on the rules. 🎯

⚠️ If you have any questions that are not answered in this article, please contact us and we will try to do our best to answer them.

These rules apply to both of the pubs unless it is mentioned otherwise.

These rules will be constantly updated.

Last update: March 14th, 2024

So without further ado — let’s go! 🚀

🔗 The Best Way to Keep In Touch

It’s very important to stay in touch! Because we constantly have some news and updates, there are writing contests held here and so on. So if you don’t want to miss them out, please do these two things:

1: Save this Medium List

Go to this Medium list and click the “Save list” icon inside, just like that:

⚠️ The location of the “Save List” icon varies depending on the platform, whether it is a Desktop or Mobile App (iPhone/Android). If you have troubles finding it, check out this quick guide: https://sweet.pub/save-list

Saved the list? Great! ✅

Now you will get a notification whenever we have some important news or updates. 💪

2: Join us on Discord 👾

One more important thing to do — join our Discord community!

It’s totally optional, but by joining it, you will definitely enrich your Medium journey! 🖤

⚠️ Our Discord server link: https://discord.sweet.pub

Don’t worry if you’re absolutely new to Discord — it’s a very simple and basic chatting app. No previous experience is needed and it takes only 2 minutes to register there! And it’s totally free! ⚡

Just go to https://discord.com/register, fill in the form, then click on our Discord server link and that’s it! 😎

You will be instantly able to enjoy these benefits:

• 🔥 Priority queue. If you want your story to be reviewed as soon as possible there is a solution for that! Just send a message in the #priority-queue channel mentioning your story title and it will be reviewed urgently by our editors! You will not have to wait anymore!
• 👨‍👩‍👦‍👦 Community of Medium writers. On our Discord server, there are a lot of Medium writers of various backgrounds, so you can meet them and ask them various questions and gain valuable experience in that way!
• 📰 Get the latest news and updates from us. Just like on the Medium list, we will post all the news and updates of our pubs, so you will never miss them out!
• 🚀 Promote your stories. There is a separate channel #post-your-stories where you can post a link to your Medium article and get feedback from our awesome community!

Honestly, I can’t think of any reason why you should NOT join our Discord. It’s just 2 minutes (at the very max), and the benefits you get are simply “beyond the measure”. 😄

The Main Concept of the Pubs

💪 Your story — your rules.

I really like this. Because in the end — you’re the boss of your story. 😎

You are fully responsible for what you decide to publish. All the rights and earnings of the story belong to you. Not for the pub.

All the consciences also — it’s your responsibility to write accurate, plagiarism-free, original content, to follow Medium Rules and best practices (like using heading, subheading, appropriately describing images, etc.).

⚠️ That’s why we strongly encourage you NOT to submit drafts here but self-publish the story first, and only then submit it to one of our pubs.

In general, by submitting a draft you give more power to the publication because now they can decide when to publish the story, what type of edits to make, etc. And before the story becomes publicly available you have to wait. And sometimes wait a lot. ⏰

We don’t want to be this way! So the preferred way of submitting a story here is self-publishing. What does that mean?

1. 🚫 First, publish the story by selecting the “No publication” option.
2. ✏️ Click Edit the story and only then submit it to “Short. Sweet. Valuable” or “Long. Sweet. Valuable”.
3. ✔️ Then we will review the story and add it to the publication, or leave a note with suggested improvements.

If you choose to do it like that, it’s a win-win situation for everyone. 😊

So, your story — your rules, but…

Our pubs — our rules. 😐

But it’s not as bad or strict as it might sound from the first time! 🤦🏻‍♂️

Believe me, the editors really try to be as tolerant, and as open-minded as possible when reviewing submitted stories.

About ~95% of the time we publish the stories without any problem. 👌

Those ~5% of rejection contains some really bad stuff:

• Pure spam. Letters from Nigerian princes who promise to give you millions are not welcome here. Believe me, we received some of those and no millions have reached us (up until now, of course). 😂
• AI-generated articles. Medium as a platform is quite strict on purely AI-generated content. So our publications follow this principle also. More about it later. Keep on reading! ⬇️
• Controversial topics. This includes stories with opinions about abortions, wars, political events, etc. Most of the time we publish these stories without any problem. But sometimes the text, in our opinion, contains insults, elements of hate speech, fake news, etc. In that case, we will reject your story and leave a private note with the reason. Sometimes we propose to edit the story to include a clear disclaimer to emphasize that it’s the author’s opinion and not the opinion of the whole publication. Every situation in this category is unique so is the solution.

We reserve the right to reject any submitted story if, in our opinion, it violates Medium Rules or common sense.

And if you follow the best practices of self-publishing first, then after this unlikely rejection, you can say with confidence: “Screw you, Martynas and all the editors! I knew you are a “gang” of terrible persons right from the start! Fuc…“. You probably guessed the ending right. 🤬😂

And that’s perfectly fine! ✅

Because, in the end, you’re the boss of the story. Not us. 😎

So to conclude ~95% of the time we publish stories without any problems. In those other ~5% we leave private notes with the reason of the rejection.

⚠️ If your story was rejected, you can always make edits and submit it again.

We are always open to discussion! If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

Goals, Notes and the Future 🔮

We created our Sweet Publications with these primary goals:

• Easy to join. We knew that many Medium publications had a quite difficult joining process, so here it is as simple as it can be — you just have to leave a comment on the “Write for Us” article. Our goal is to approve writers as fast as possible, so usually they are added in a few hours (if not in a few minutes). 🕓
• To be as open as possible. We don’t want to discriminate anybody (unless spammers, of course 😅). Anyone is welcome to join our community as long as they follow some simple and basic rules. Currently, we also accept writers who do not have paid Medium membership. 💳
• Beginner-friendly. For some of the writers, these pubs will be the first ones that they publish to. So one of the initial goals was to make the whole process super easy and not “painful”. 🥇
• To be clean, clear and valuable. Mainly we don’t care about the topic of the story; it’s more about the value or “time well spent” experience that it brings to the reader. Additionally, we want these pubs to be as free as possible from AI-generated content because Medium is a platform for human writers and readers. 👨‍👨‍👦‍👦
• The future. In the upcoming years, we really think that these pubs can grow significantly and become one of the biggest on Medium. The growth that we saw in the first few months only confirms that! 🚀

And one more note: our weekends are reserved for our families, hobbies and having “time well spent” away from the Medium world. We can’t promise you that we will review your submitted stories or add new writers on the weekend. Although, sometimes we will try! 🤪

❔ FAQ — Frequently Asked Questions

If you have any questions about the pubs, please read this section first. Thank you! 🙏

If you didn’t find the answer then please contact us OR (even better option 🌞) join our Discord server and ask your question there. 💬

Who the hell are you? 🤹

Currently, Sweet Publications have 3 editors:

• Martynas Ki. (@strangecash) — the founder, the father, the One. 😂 Nah!~ Just kidding — I’m just a regular everyday normal guy (😎) who tries his best to write about Medium and life itself. Want to know more? Here is the intro to my Medium journey:

• Justina Ki. — The wife of the One. But in a real life busy mum of three, who is passionate about reading and creating life more beautiful, more friendly around. Joined Medium quite recently here is a short story about me:

• Martynas Justina SWEET.pub — superpowers of both joined together! 🦸‍♀️🦸‍♂️ We created this joint account mainly for managing the pubs. More about it:

And our team will inevitably expand in 2024 — if you want to join us, please leave a message on our Discord server. Thanks! 👍

How to know if I was added as a writer? ✍

This question is a bit tricky because to our knowledge Medium does not inform you when you are added as a writer to the publication. No notification, no email — nada. 🤷‍♂️

Life is life, so the best way to figure out if you are on the list of writers — do a manual check:

1. Go to your Medium settings or simply click here;
2. Click on the “Publishing” tab;
3. Click on “Manage publications”;
4. Here you will see all the publications (and their roles) available to you.

If you don’t see our pubs in this list please contact us or leave a comment on these stories:

• Write for Us! — Short. Sweet. Valuable.
• Write for Us! — Long. Sweet. Valuable.

We will try to solve everything as fast as possible. Thank you! 🙏

How to contact you? ☎️

Have some questions? Some doubts? Just want to meet us and chat? 🗯️

Find our contacts in this article:

I want my story to be reviewed NOW! What should I do? 🔥

There is a feature called priority queue on our Discord server. It works very simply — you just post a story title in #priority-queue channel and our editors will review the story as fast as possible.

What is a story? 📜

On Medium story means any article written on the platform. In other words, story and article are just interchangeable synonyms.

Do you allow AI-generated content? ❌⛔

❌ A strong NO! NO !NO! ⛔

And please take this one seriously. Don’t waste the time for both of us. ⌚

⚠️ Before publishing ANY story we check the text with these tools:

1. https://www.zerogpt.com/
2. https://copyleaks.com/ai-content-detector

So avoid time wasting and before submitting check it too! 🙏

If this tool shows “AI content detected” for us, we will leave you a private note and the publishing will be delayed until a proper solution is found.

⚠️ If you are 100% sure that this AI detection tools are dead wrong in your case, before submitting the story, leave a private note mentioning that. This will confirm that you did a check and we might publish a story without leaving further notes. So the publishing process might be faster!

What is more, we are not connected/sponsored/affiliated with ZeroGPT or CopyLeaks by any means, but we simply found these tools to be the best ones.

💡 Know a better AI detection tool? Let us know in the comments. 💬

Can I use AI-generated images?

Yes. ✅

You can use images generated by Midjourney, DALL·E, Adobe Firefly, Bing Image Creator, and other similar services.

⚠️ Just make sure that they have appropriate credit in the caption (the small text after the image).

Here is our guide about images:

Do you allow affiliate links?

Yes. ✅

Although we are not big fans of affiliate links but they are allowed in the submitted stories.

️️️ ⚠️⚠️ Just one important thing — as mentioned in Medium Rules these types of articles must have a clear disclaimer/disclosure/message about it. This can be a simple sentence in the footer, but it has to exist somewhere in the story.

⚠️ The disclaimer text does not count towards the 300-word limit on “Short. Sweet. Valuable”.

There is no limit on how many affiliate or self-promoting links you can include in your story.

⚠️ Just keep in mind that your story has to provide some sort of value to the reader and affiliate or self-promoting links can not overshadow the very essence.

Do you require a draft version of the article?

Again, NO! ❌⛔

And actually, we prefer to receive your self-published stories.

We talked about this process many times before, so you can follow the process described here (in “💪 Preferred (And the Best) Way to Submit Your Stories to My Pubs” section):

How do you count those 300 words in “Short. Sweet. Valuable”?

As you know “Short. Sweet. Valuable” publication is dedicated to stories that are 300 words long (or even shorter). 💯💯💯

There is no minimum length requirement — in some genres (for ex. poetry) the story can contain two lines of text. The main goal as always should be to deliver a “time well spent” experience to the reader. It’s totally up to you, dear Writer! ✍️

⚠️ Before submitting a story to “Short. Sweet. Valuable”, please check the word count. You can do it simply by selecting all the text of the story in the Medium editor. At the very top (near Medium logo) you will see the number of words selected.

⚠️ If the story is significantly longer than 300 words, please submit it to “Long. Sweet. Valuable”.

⚠️⚠️ What is very important!

• We count the words of the main article part only. Headline, subheadline, disclaimer text, footer text with “follow me” and so on, do not count towards this 300 words limit! ⚠️
• Also, we are NOT very strict — if it’s 323 words, it’s ok for us! As long as the story is Short, Sweet and Valuable. That’s the main point. 👌
• If your main part of the story is a little bit longer than 300 words, then we suggest submitting it to “Short. Sweet. Valuable”. If the editor thinks it’s too long, she or he will leave you a private note and we will discuss with you what to do next. 💬

Why 300 words?

Other short-form publications typically have a 150–200 word requirement. In our opinion, it’s way too short. 🤏

We truly believe that you can describe the essence in ~300 words (most of the time) without artificial truncating or shortening the article. ✂

And if your story is significantly longer you can always submit it to “Long. Sweet. Valuable”. Problem solved! ✅

Is there any maximum word limit in “Long. Sweet. Valuable”?

Yes. ✅

When we just launched our pubs we did not have any maximum word limit but now we have to set it — it’s 2000 words max.

⚠️ If your story is longer than that — please contact us and maybe (after discussion) we will be able to publish it.

We are setting this new limit because super long stories take a significant amount of time to review.

Also, keep in mind that very long stories usually don’t perform well on Medium and it’s better to split them into several articles. ✂️

If the story is too long for the AI content detector then we could have a problem if we suspect that the story was written by AI. So keep that in mind! 🧐

Can I submit my already self-published old stories here?

Absolutely, YES! ✅

In our opinion, it is not important when the story was written if it is valuable to the reader.

How many stories can I submit per day? Is there any limit?

⚠️ We strongly recommend you submitting one story at a time. And when this story is published then submit another one.

Here is our article about that:

⚠️ If you submit more than one story at once, we will reject all of them, and you will have to resubmit them one by one. In other words, we only allow one story per author in our submission queue. Once one is published or rejected, you can submit another one.

PLEASE don’t spam and don’t submit 100 stories at once on purpose! 😅

How much can I expect to wait for the story to be published? ⏳

The review time depends on how many stories we have received. We have no strict time-frames — we just try to review them as fast as possible.

If you want your story to be reviewed faster, please use priority queue. ☝️

We don’t want to disappoint anyone and want to provide the best possible experience to the writers in both waiting times — in adding a new writer, and in reviewing a story. ⏱️

There is one more thing — if you follow the best practice and self-publish the story first, it doesn’t really matter that much when the story is approved. This is because the story is already publicly available, and you can share it with the world right away. 👍

My story was rejected without any notes. Why? 🤔

Even when we reject a story straightaway, we leave a note with a comment. 📝

If there are no notes, probably you have disabled them on purpose (because by default they are enabled). To enable them follow these steps:

1. Click here or go to “Settings > Publishing”;
2. Find “Allow readers to leave private notes on your stories” and make sure that the checkbox is checked. Just like this:

Now you can try to re-submit the story and find out why it was rejected. 🧐

Most popular reasons for rejection:

• Way too long for “Short. Sweet. Valuable”. We are talking about stories that are 1000+ words long and in reasonable measure it’s not possible to shorten them to 300 words. ⚠️ If the story does not have any other problems, we usually leave a note with a suggestion to add it to “Long. Sweet. Valuable”.
• Purely AI-generated content.
• You are using affiliate links but there is no disclaimer about that.

Sometimes writers (or, to be more precise, spammers) submit a 2500+ word article to “Short. Sweet. Valuable”, clearly generated by AI and full of affiliate links without a disclaimer. It’s a perfect recipe for disaster. 🌩️😂

In that case, there is no other choice for us but to reject the story right away. 🤷‍♂️

Do you allow other languages than English?

At the moment — no! 😑 Stories only written in English are accepted.

Later, when our team expands, we are pretty sure that more languages will be supported. So stay tuned! 🚀

Do you accept new writers?

Yes ✅, and new writers will be accepted as long as these publications will be alive. Because that’s the main principle — easy to use and open to everyone! 👍

Who can join the pubs? 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

At the moment any Medium user can join the pubs. Paid Medium membership is NOT required.

Do you allow controversial topics?

Definitely maybe. 🤔

Sometimes it’s a very thin line between what is controversial and what is not.

In general, your story must follow Medium Rules, so to cite them:

We do not allow content or accounts that engage in on-platform, off-platform, or cross-platform campaigns of targeting, harassment, hate speech, violence, or disinformation. We may consider off-platform actions in assessing a Medium account, and restrict access or availability to that account.

We do not allow posting, linking to, or otherwise promoting pornographic images or videos. We do allow erotic writing and non-graphic erotic images.

Our best advice in this case — submit the story and after a review, we will find the best solution possible. 👍

What topics are accepted?

Any topic is welcome until the story itself provides at least some value to the reader and, of course, follows the same Medium rules.

This includes poetry, sci-fi stories, and even some erotica writings (until a certain level of course 😅; if there are no NSFW images, or similar things).

We DO NOT accept controversial political articles because sometimes they contain elements of hate speech or fake news, and we don’t have time to do a proper fact-checking.

Do you pay money for submitting the stories?

Sadly but NO. ❌

In general, Medium publications don’t work that way, because all the rights and earnings of the story belong to the author, not to the pub. Read more about it here:

From time to time we organize writing contests where the best stories are awarded with prizes.

Also if you know any Medium publication that pays for the writers, please leave a comment, and I will include it in this answer. 👍

What benefits are there? Is it worth publishing here?

Like most of the time in life — the best way to find out is always to try. 💪

We can’t promise you anything in terms of views, reads and claps. We can only assure you that you will have one reader more — the publication editor. 😁

Despite both of these publications being very “young”, they have gained some popularity — as I am writing these words “Short” pub has 3815 followers, and “Long” pub has 2110 followers. 📈

And every day this number is growing! 🚀

In our opinion, the roads of success on Medium are unpredictable and you never know which story will succeed. I mean you can post your story on one of the most popular pubs on Medium and still earn $0.09 from it. You never know! 🤷‍♂️

Later when these pubs will get “older” we will definitely create an article with all the stats, insights, etc. 📊

We have many ideas on how to improve them and make them even more active, attractive, and popular. 🔥

Stay tuned for updates! 🚀

How these pubs are different from the others?

In our opinion, two things here:

1. ✅ Incredibly easy to join. They are beginner-friendly — for many writers, these will be the first ones on their Medium journey. And that’s great!
2. 📜 There is no draft requirement. We not only allow but strongly encourage you to submit stories NOT in a draft format.

Do you check the grammar and spelling of submitted stories?

Most of the time — NO. ❌

We want to leave this job for you, because as mentioned before — you are the boss of your story. Not us.

⚠️ So 99% time we leave the story “as-is”. We correct only super obvious mistakes.

How to leave these publications? 🏃🚪

If you are a writer for our publications and don’t like something — remember that you can always leave them. It’s entirely up to you! 🦸‍♂️

To leave publication follow these steps:

1. Click here or go to “Settings > Publishing”;
2. Click on “Manage publications”;
3. Find the publication that you want to leave and click three dots next to it;
4. Click the red link “Leave publication”.

That’s it! 👍

Remember you can always come back — the doors of these publications are always open! Unless you’re a spammer. Then it’s closed, locked and tangled with the heaviest chains possible. 🔒😂

🤔 Have unanswered questions? Contact us! 🤗

Stay tuned, it’s only the beginning! 🚀

Martynas Ki. (@strangecash) ↯ Pure. Brutal. Honesty.