The reason why I don’t want to write on people’s publications anymore

I prefer writing on my own publications, even though they have fewer followers

The publication is a great system by Medium. I own my publications and I have joined other people’s publications. One of my publications has a few writers. I understand both how it is to organise a publication and it’s writers and also how it is to write as a writer for somebody else's publication.

When I first got invitations from other publications to become a writer, I was super happy. I was excited about posting my writings on other publications which might help me to expand my audience. Despite that excitement, I felt a little disappointed after I tried to publish my writings through the publications. That’s why I am not very enthusiastic about writing for other people’s publications anymore.

First of all, if you are thinking about publishing your stories through somebody’s publications, I think you should try. Publication is a great system by Medium. I strongly recommend you do to take advantage of it. You can easily reach your potential readers and get more traffic on your stories. It was just unfortunate for me that it didn’t work very well.

I want to control publishing timing of my stories

I write a few articles every day in two languages, Japanese and English. Writing in English is more difficult for me than writing in Japanese because my mother tongue is Japanese. For example, I can only write one story in English in the time that it takes me to write three articles in Japanese. Writing in English takes me more time and energy. Normally, I publish one essay or blog post in English and one or two poems in English, plus a couple of stories in Japanese every day.

Therefore, the publishing timing is critical, especially for posts in English because the number of English posts per day is limited. I prefer publishing my posts when most of my followers are free for internet surfing or simply when internet users are maximised, such as after work, after dinner, lunch break, and so on.

At least, I want to keep my frequency of posting: one story in English, one poem in English and one post in Japanese per day.

However, when I try to post my writings on somebody’s publications the timing of publishing is out of my control. I have to submit my drafts to the publications and the editor will publish them after reviewing. I don’t know when my submitted stories will be published. It sometimes takes only an hour, but at other times it can take more than 30 hours to get published after submission.

It was annoying, and I didn’t know what was going on: was there a problem with my stories or my stories were not acceptable for the publication…?

I don’t want my posts to be edited without notifications

After you submit your posts to the publication, the editors review them before publishing. They can edit them too. It is acceptable that they sometimes add their links on the bottom of my stories, but I couldn’t accept it when they edited my stories. I was shocked and disappointed. I immediately withdrew my stories from the publications.

I imagine that it is not the same for all of the publications. Still, the experience that one of my stories was edited without any notifications, discouraged me from joining other publications as a writer anymore.

As the owner of my publications

From my negative experience of publications, I am trying to make my publication’s writers feel as comfortable as I can. I try to publish as soon as I noticed somebody submits the posts. Also, I tell all of the writers and potential writers that I will never edit their drafts, excluding ‘tags.’

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