How to Have Your Articles Instantly Published by Editors

The biggest problems encountered by editors on this platform.

The title is hyperbolic.

There’s no need for a long intro. You know what you’re here for. Your article that is sure to go viral is currently stuck in some queue while the editors are definitely out partying or drinking and ignoring it. I’ve been there.

That being said, some of your articles get published almost instantly. You may not know this, but some people’s articles get published almost instantly on a consistent basis. And no, I don’t mean that they self-publish. Also, I’m talking about the ILLUMINATION publication here.

Let’s get to the reasons why your article is stuck in the queue.

1. You’re breaking Medium’s terms & conditions

I understand that most people already know this, but you can’t use images without referencing them on Medium, especially if you’ve paywalled your articles. Somebody worked for that image. The least you can do is mention them.

Before becoming an editor at ILLUMINATION, I thought everyone already knew this. This is the No.1 reason articles get stuck in the queue. Images you own must also be captioned.

If you go on Unsplash or other websites like Pexels or Pixabay, you should see a little box like this. You need to copy and paste that writing (along with the links) under all your images. If you own the rights to the image, you need to state so under the image.

If for whatever reason you need an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger from Wikipedia— as we all do at some point in our lives — you also need to reference that similarly to the Unsplash images.

Click on the image. Then — when something like the above pops up after you click the little arrow at the bottom right — you need to select “You need to attribute the author.” This opens up another box with what you need to copy and paste to appropriately reference the image.

Also, the two other biggest breaches of Medium’s terms and conditions that make editors foam at the mouth and take longer to publish your article are these:

• “Member stories should not exist with the predominant purpose of driving traffic to an external website, business, or product. All included content must be relevant, substantial and informative.”
• “Do not ask for claps or include other calls to action, including gifs of clapping, requests for donations, or other links or embeds for the purpose of capturing user information or soliciting money.”

What on EARTH gives you the right to write what is clearly self-promotion filled with nothing but links to your website and then also CHARGE people to read it? The cheek of some people.

Also, we cannot ask for claps or follows on Medium. This isn’t Youtube.

2. Download Grammarly

GRAMMARLY = FREE MONEY

Grammarly is a free app. It costs nothing. It doesn’t even pester you enough to buy it! Why is it free money? Because articles with punctuation and spelling errors — even ones missed by editors — are disqualified from Medium curation.

There is a chance that right now, YOU have an article that would have been Medium-curated if the spelling and punctuation wasn’t a jumbled mess. It is also rumored — though I cannot confirm — that the algorithms that deliver articles to Medium’s curators for them to consider for curation are also automatically checked for grammar and spelling errors. This means that messy articles are never seen by the curators.

Being Medium-curated means that you get additional eyeballs on the same piece of work you might have otherwise published. THIS = MORE MONEY.

Let Grammarly help you to increase your income by fixing your punctuation or spelling errors. Download it now! This is not a paid promotion. There are no links. Go and google it yourself.

Also, editors cry when they see articles that are almost completely underlined by Grammarly in red — meaning that they’re filled with grammar issues. (Yes, most editors across Medium use Grammarly.) Editors that cry are not fast editors.

3. Profanity and crassness usually means that your draft will be debated about in our Slack workspace

“Fuckety fuck, fuck.” If you use more than just the occasional swear word throughout your article, and it may be considered by some viewers as offensive, it will be debated about in our Slack workspace.

Obviously, this means that getting your work published will take longer. Sometimes, it will not be published at all.

I once tried to write an article named, Writers Literally Only Want ONE Thing And It’s Fucking Disgusting and submitted it to ILLUMINATION. The title was based on the meme “Guys literally only want one thing and it’s fucking disgusting” and the body of the article did not contain anything controversial or any profanity. It eventually (after like 4.5 days) got published.

Only later did I discover — after becoming an ILLUMINATION editor — that it was debated in the Editor Channel of our Slack workspace. I got to see what other editors had said about it before it was published! They thought that the swear word in the title was unnecessary but it eventually got published the way it was. Thanks, Agnes Laurens.

Also, the article did not get crazy stats due to its controversial title. So just know that swear words will not get you a bigger audience or more eyeballs on your article.

As for crassness, we once got an article — which I didn’t write — that mentioned filling vaginas with stones and had a lot of disturbing blood and gore in it. That didn’t get published.

Basically, keep your articles PG if you want them to be published fast. I speak not only as an editor but someone who occasionally writes profane stuff myself. Profanity will not get you additional views. But it will take longer to be reviewed.

😇 We love almost all of our writers

As editors, we cannot help but have small orgasms when we see that people submit articles that are publishable as-is.

Basically, some writers constantly submit work that simply doesn’t require any editing. We love those writers. Editors are human, too.

So if they know that a particular writer always submits quality articles that don’t break any of the guidelines mentioned above, they will jump at the chance to publish it. We get a notification where our little bell icon is when anybody submits to ILLUMINATION.

After a while of sending in such articles, we will remember you and this is how your articles will begin to get published almost instantly. Of course, we don’t guarantee anything. This is just how I noticed things are at the moment. I do not speak on behalf of all editors when I say that your articles will get published very quickly. But I think most of them will agree that some writers get published ridiculously faster than others.

Other points to note

• No plagiarism.
• No duplicate-content (stuff already published by you or anyone else somewhere else on Medium).
• No hate speech — with or without profanity.
• No racism or other kinds of discrimination.
• Don’t break any of Medium’s other rules that I’ve forgotten to mention. See Medium Rules.