Illumination Submission Checklist. 10 Things To Check.
First 3 are mandatory!
Illumination is one of the fastest growing publications on Medium. 24K readers in 5 months. Dr Mehmet Yildiz has worked so hard to make this publication grow. He “Illuminates” his writers all day, every day.
I’m one of the newest editors at Illumination. In 3 weeks I’ve seen the same mistakes so many times I can’t imagine how many times the long timers have seen these same mistakes. Thousands of times, I’m sure.
Editors work hard, reading hundreds & thousands of submissions every week. Some of us write weekly columns to promote the writers here at Illumination.
We need writers to do their part. An editor should not need to stop to ask a writer to follow the guidelines Medium set out for all of us. Especially the simple ones.
So I’ve made a handy checklist. After a while, it will become habit and you won’t need the checklist.
10 things to check before submitting…
Many of these are optional. Do them anyway. They make a difference.
A) Not Optional.
These are mandatory according to Medium guidelines.
1. Did you use an image at the top?
You need an image. That’s what Medium will use as the thumbnail on your post and on the publication page.
2. Are your images free of copyright?
We are not permitted to use images unless they are free of copyright. That means you can’t just take any image from the internet and use it. Saying where it’s from isn’t enough. It must be free of copyright. That’s in Medium’s rules. Writers may not infringe on someone else’s copyright.
3. Did you credit the image source in the caption?
Preferably with a link. When you download an image from copyright free sites like Unsplash, Pexels, etc. — they give you a link. Just copy/paste it into the caption. That way, your editors don’t need to double check.
B) Optional, but recommended.
You don’t “have to” do these, but they’ll improve your results.
4. Did you cite factual references?
If you’re stating facts, please cite with a link to the source. This is not mandatory, but it helps with curation and is in the curation guide.
5. Did you use your 5 tags?
Don’t forget to add tags! Use all 5 if you can. That’s how people find your posts. If you use one of our featured tags, your posts will get on a tag page. Illumination tags are: business, poetry, fiction, philosophy, science, technology, self improvement.
6. Are you sure that’s the title you want to use?
Titles are how readers decide whether to click or not. You get 100 characters with title and subtitle combined. I’ve seen wonderful posts with horrible titles. It’s a shame, because they won’t get as many reads as they deserved.
7. Did you use formatting for ease of reading?
A 4–5 minute read with no paragraph breaks is dreadful to read on a desktop, and even worse on a phone. Reading on a screen is not like reading a book. Formatting well will increase your read rate. That’s a promise.
8. Is this your best writing?
There is no reason for an editor to open a post and find it’s not even finished. Or filled with uncorrected typos. Quality always beats quantity. Before you submit, always ask yourself — is this the quality you want readers to associate with you as a writer? If not, take the time to polish it up first.
9. Have you already submitted today?
We have a daily limit per person. Please respect it. It is not up to editors to “pace” your submissions for you unless you have made those arrangements in advance. If you submit 7 pieces within an hour, you will make an impression. It will not be the impression you hope for.
10. Are you submitting as a draft?
While we do accept already-published pieces, they sit at the back of the line. We give priority to drafts, so if you want priority, please submit drafts
Thanks for reading — here’s to all our writers growing together. With a little luck and a lot of hard work, we’ll continue to grow in leaps and bounds, and our writers will gain exposure along the way.