Medium Publications: Headache That We Can’t Live Without?

Show me the way to the next whiskey bar… 🥴🥃

I like so many things about Medium, but there is one particular thing that really annoys me… And it is called PUBLICATIONS! 😡

It really p*sses me off to the level where I want to dress up like Marilyn Manson and sing Alabama Song: 😂

Put this song on and keep reading! 😆🎵🎹

What are publications on Medium?

If you are new to Medium, I will explain to you what those publications are.

Roughly a month ago, when I was just starting on the platform, I found Medium very easy to use and pretty much straightforward. You just write a story/article, add some images, some tags, click “Publish” and BOOM! 💥

Your story becomes instantly visible, and you can share it with the world, view its stats, and so on.

This way of publishing a story is pretty simple, and it is called self-publishing.

The problem with this method is that you will potentially receive not-so-many views/reads to your story. And here, Publications come into play. 🦸

Publications are like magazines, collections of articles. Some publications have thousands of followers, so if your story gets published on them, you can, again, potentially receive many more views (and earnings) compared to self-publishing. Also, it gives more chances for your story to be spotted by the Medium team, and the story might get an official “boost” (receive from 500 to 100k (!) additional views). 🚀

The thing is that publications can’t add stories by themselves. For example, if a certain publication spots an interesting story on Medium, they can’t simply add it to their feed. There is a feature called Medium Lists for that, but I will cover it in my next articles. 🤓

So only the Creator/Author of the story can add a new article to the publication by clicking on “Add to publication” in Medium editor:

And when you select a certain publication and hit “Publish”, the owner or editors of the publication can review it — either accept it or reject it. ✔️❌

Few things that are worth mentioning:

• Every story can be published only in one publication (it can’t have multiple publications).
• If you already self-published your story, theoretically, you can add it to a certain publication later, but from what I have observed, 99% of publications don’t accept already published stories. The majority of them want to get a story in draft format. 📃

So, the idea itself does not look bad. Actually, I kinda like it. But implementation by Medium is just horrible (in my opinion). And here is why…

Publications from the Author’s Perspective

So let’s imagine this scenario. You wrote a nice story and added great images and relevant topics. You are about to hit that “Publish” button, but you remember that if your story gets published in a popular publication, you will get more exposure and have a greater chance for the boost. 👍

OK, so let’s do it! 🗸 And here the nightmare begins… 😱

Finding publication is easy because, on every article, you can clearly see if it is self-published or not:

And also, you can use Medium search for that. There is no problem here!

To make everything clear, I have to stop here and mention that every publication has three user roles:

• The Owner. A user that controls the whole publication and can do whatever he wants with it. 👨‍💼
• The Editors. The owner can assign an “editor” role to someone he trusts, and editors can approve/disapprove stories as well as add/remove writers to the publication. 👷‍♂️
• The Writers. Your first goal should be to “earn” this role. Because if you are not assigned as a writer, you can’t publish your stories to a certain publication. ✍️

OK, so you found a publication you like, navigated to the publication page, and then… You have to manually find out how to apply to be accepted as a writer. 🕵️‍♂️

There is no standard form or way how to do it! Some publications may provide a Google form; some prefer that you e-mail them; some accept a comment/response on a particular story. And so on…

Some publications may not accept new writers at this time. Some publications may not accept new writers at all. It’s up to you to do manual research about that; this whole process is pretty chaotic and time-consuming. ⏳

OK, so let’s imagine that you were lucky enough to find the rules for new writers quickly.

Every publication can have different rules, and usually, they are provided in a long article format. 🥱

The most common rules that I have found:

• Draft format. As mentioned before — 99% of publications demand a story to be provided as a draft.
• Certain daily limits. Some publications have no limits at all, but some restrict writers to publish one story per day. Some have a total limit — for example, the entire publication publishes only X stories per day/week/month. So, in that case, you have no clue when your story will be actually published!
• No GIFs. Some publications do not allow using GIFs in your story.
• The number of links. Some publications limit the number of links that you can provide in a story.
• (…)
• Mention yours in the comments. 🗯️ 😂

OK, you have read and understood the rules and made appropriate steps to be accepted as a writer. The job is done! Now all you have to do is wait… ⏳

And waiting time can vary from a few minutes to… infinity. ♾️

There are some publications that I submitted writer applications more than a month ago and still got no response. I don’t even know if I have been rejected or owner/editors still did not have time to review my application.

And now — the time for the most ridiculous part. When you are finally accepted as a writer, you get no e-mail or notification from Medium! For me, it looks like some sort of bug. 🤦‍♂️

You have to randomly check from time to time on which publications you can publish your stories to:

OK, so you are in a writer role now. Now, you can finally publish your story to the publication! 🥳

And then again, all you have to do is wait, wait, and wait for your story to be accepted or rejected… ⏳

Publications Owners and Editors are not guilty

Let me be clear — I don’t blame Publication Owners or Editors in this whole situation. ⚠️

As far as I know, it is quite an altruistic job for them — they don’t get paid anything for managing publications, and I truly believe that this job is hard and time-consuming. 🕒

Actually, they are doing an amazing job just to promote your stories. And mostly for free. So we can only clap for them for doing a wonderful and meaningful job! 👏

Hey Medium, Ideas on How to Fix It

So I came up with a list of things that, in my opinion, Medium could do to improve the situation:

• Standardize everything as much as possible, at least a new writer form. The Publication Owner could set some rules in the Publication’s settings. For example, there could be a checkbox telling if a publication accepts new writers at the moment or if they allow GIFs on their stories and so on.
• Clear message. When visiting a publication, there should be a clear message if a particular publication currently accepts new writers. Also, more stats could be easily accessible to the public — like how many stories were published daily, how many writers belong to a particular publication, when the last writer was added, etc.
• Update Medium editor. When writing an article for a specific publication, there could be a sidebar with a summary/checklist of its rules. This would save time for both — writers and editors.
• Somehow motivate Publication Owners and Editors to be more active. As I mentioned before, from my point of view, now Publication Owners or Editors are doing more or less altruistic job. In my opinion, Medium could find some ways how to motivate them.
• (…)
• Mention your ideas in the comments. 🗯️ 😂

So this is it! I hope I didn’t make anyone angry with this article. I just wanted to express my honest opinion! 🙏

See you later!

Best wishes, StrangeCash 👽

😎🤩 If you liked my story, you know what to do. 👏 😂