The Post I Promised About Picking Publications
A little help to get more eyes on your writing
Do you know Umair? I mean, who doesn’t know Umair? He has 158K readers and is the top 20 most read writers here.
Last week I wrote about writers being frustrated with publications. I’d been perusing the Medium Facebook groups and saw a whole bunch of people expressing frustration.
The Goldilocks dilemma. Too small, too big and hard to find just right. Apparently, publications aren’t as easy to pick as porridge .
Big publications reject a lot of people and stories. And of course they do. Reputation and editorial discretion. But what’s worse, if you do finally get accepted to a big pub, you quickly discover they have so many submissions, yours scrolls into oblivion almost instantly and gets little or no visibility.
Doesn’t much matter if the publication has 100K followers if none of them see your writing, does it? If a tree falls in the forest…
Small publications are better, then, right? Maybe. Sometimes. But not always. As the saying goes, size isn’t all that matters.
The publications picked by popular writers
As I was pondering publications, I got curious about which publications the popular writers are submitting to. So I pulled on my investigating shoes and went to check. Boy, are you in for a surprise.
#1. GaryVee, 303K readers
Gary Vaynerchuk is the #1 most followed writer on Medium. If you click the handy-dandy link, you’ll notice that mostly, he doesn’t submit to publications. Once in a while he submits to The Startup, but most of his writing is just published into the wild. No publication at all.
#2. Tim O’Reilly, 257K readers
Tim O'Reilly is the #2 writer here and if you check his profile, you’ll notice that while his pinned story is in an external publication, most are in his own publication or no publication. His own pub has a mere 17.5K readers.
#3. Benjamin Hardy, 247K readers
Benjamin Hardy, the #3 writer on Medium tends to publish to Mind Cafe or no publication, with a few pieces featured in Forge, a Medium pub. If you’ve been reading him a while, you’ll know he’s written for other publications, but seems to focus on one or two publications at any given time.
#9. Biz Stone, 204K readers
Biz Stone is the #9 writer here. Again, click the handy link and you’ll find that he mostly publishes in the wild (ie; no publication) or to his own AskJelly publication. Want to know how many followers AskJelly has? 435.
#13. Darius Foroux, 174K readers
Darius Foroux is at #13 for readers here. He sometimes publishes to Forge, which is a Medium in-house pub — but most often, he publishes to his own publication. Know how many followers “his” pub has? 56K.
#16. Umair Haque, 158K readers
umair haque only ever publishes to his own publication. If you look at his profile, he’s got 5 of them. Dig in and you’ll see they go by year. Know how many readers his Eudaimonia pub has? 33K. Small, for a publication.
#25. Seth Godin, 122K readers
Seth Godin is also in the top 25 for follower count here. If you click the link, you’ll see that he only ever publishes into the wild. No publications. Not even his own publication.
A Caveat… because there’s always a caveat
There are a few popular writers that write for many different publications. But if you look at them one by one, most of the popular writers tend to write for [a] Medium, [b] Their own pub or [c] No publication at all.
5 things you probably didn’t think of when choosing publications to submit to…
There’s a thing we say in marketing that applies here just as well. When you do what everyone else does, you get what everyone else gets.
On Medium, only 5.7% of writers earn over $100/month. Which means “everyone else” is getting pretty weak results. It’s not just about the money, but on a site that pays by read time, it’s an indicator, you know?
So maybe it might work better to stop doing what everyone else is doing, and figure out a way that works better for you?
Here’s 3 things to think about…
1. Ever noticed how you read here?
When you arrive at Medium, do you methodically go to all the publications you follow and read from the publication home page? Do you go check on all the people you follow to see if they have stories? No. Most people don’t.
We follow publications and people, which means their content goes in our feed. Then, when we arrive, we look at what’s in our feed and pick what to read. So it doesn’t matter if you scroll off a publication home page. It matters if your story goes into the reader’s feed. With me?
2. Publication home pages are kind of like a food court.
You know how most of us find publications? Through writers we follow. One day I was reading a friend’s post and I thought — wait a minute — what’s that pub you just wrote for? Bad influence? That sounds interesting. Click!
When you go to a publication page, it’s like a food court. So many other writers you’re competing with. All it takes is a couple of people with stronger titles and you’re not getting the click anyway, even if you are on the homepage and didn’t scroll off.
If at “your” publication, it’s all your writing. This article or that one?
3. The human brain is wired for familiarity
That’s the hardest part for new writers. When you submit to a publication, your story goes into the feed two different ways. It goes into the feed of people who follow you, which might still be a small number. And it goes into the feed of the people who follow the publication that published you. Make sense?
But every publication has “their” audience. The people who follow Poetry Jam aren’t the same people who follow Design Talk. I made those names up, fyi. So when you scramble around trying to publish to as many new publications as will accept you, you’re not able to develop familiarity with any one group.
The trouble is that the human brain is wired for familiarity. Ever gone to a sports event or concert and spotted someone you know in a sea of faces? That’s how we read our feeds. We click familiar faces.
4. Publication size isn’t what matters...
Do you think that Biz Stone cares that his Ask Jelly blog has 435 followers? Nope. Because he has 204K. Do you think Umair cares that his Eudaimonia pub has only 33K followers? Nope. Because he has 158K.
It’s not about how big a publication is. Of course they are proud of their growth. If you built a publication with 100K readers, wouldn’t you want to sing that to the skies? But for the writers? It doesn’t matter.
What matters is the ability to put you in front of readers. Which means size is less important, and publishing frequency is more important. A smaller publication that publishes fewer stories each day is more bang for the buck.
But a small publication that’s growing fast and publishes hundreds of stories a day — that’s not going to help much. Publishing frequency, not followers.
5. Frequency and quality matter more than you think…
If you go to the profile of any of the top writers and scroll back to when they started, you’ll see that most posted daily or several time per week. It goes back to familiarity. People click on names they recognize more often that names they do not. But it’s not “just” familiarity…
Ever hear anyone say familiarity breeds contempt? If you’re in the feed ALL the time and you write crap, they’re going to block you. Simple as that. Quality matters. When you’re a familiar face and a great read, that’s when people follow. They know your name. They like your writing.
There is no shortcut to quality. If you can’t product good writing daily, then figure out how often you can. Don’t ever sacrifice quality for quantity.
A little tip for choosing publications…
Don’t follow the “most common” advice, which is to chase big publications and as many of them as will accept you. When you do what everyone else does, you get what everyone else gets. You want better than that, don’t you?
1. Don’t flit around like a butterfly…
Pick a couple of publications. Ideally, a couple that don’t mass publish because that kills visibility for the writers. We see that with many of the top writers. They pick a couple of publications and focus on building familiarity there.
2. Consider starting your own publication…
If you have a small following, you’ll need publications to reach their audience if your own is small. But, is there some reason you can’t be building your own collection at the same time? Alternate, even. That way when you get traffic from a publication audience, they’ll see your “other” posts, too.
3. Consider publishing in the wild once in a while.
True story. A few times, I’ve forgotten to add a story to a publication and published in the wild. Imagine my delight when reputable publications messaged to ask if they could publish it. They can’t do that if all your stories are already in a publication.
4. Work on building your own following.
Easiest way is to interact. Comment on posts that reach the audience you’re hoping to reach. Many feminist writers recognize each other. Same in the self help and other genres. As your own following grows, the size of publications is less of an issue. Don’t just look for publications to be the source of growth.
5. Quality over quantity
Medium is rolling out some changes that promise to do a better job of making sure the people who follow you see your writing. That will work for some writers, and against others. For those who focus on quality, it will be a great change. But if you rush and publish weak writing, you’ll only teach people not to click. Never, never trade quality for quantity.
Hope that helps — thanks for reading! :)
“I did then what I knew how to do. Now that I know better, I do better.” — Maya Angelou