SUBMISSION GUIDELINES/ABOUT THE GRANDE
Welcome to the Daily Cuppa Grande
The Grande is a warm extra large serving of everything you love to read at The Daily Cuppa
My name is Katie Michaelson, creator of The Daily Cuppa, a publication designed to entertain, inform, delight, and encourage readers with quick bits of information on various topics. At The Cuppa, our purpose has been to provide quality stories for people who want to take a moment out of their busy lives by grabbing a cuppa and a bit of cheer while reading on their mobile devices.
Since The Daily Cuppa is short-form, our loyal readers requested I create a separate publication for longer stories by our writers, and so The Daily Cuppa Grande was born.
So, without further ado, let me welcome you to The Daily Cuppa Grande: It’s the little pub-around-the-corner where we offer our readers the very best of what they would expect in a fine literary journal.
How is The Daily Cuppa Grande Exclusive?
The mission of The Grande is to support, promote and provide a home to the long-form work of The Daily Cuppa writers.
We are also an exclusive publication for guest authors. We showcase articles that give value to readers.
There are three ways to be added as a writer
1. Be a contributor to The Daily Cuppa. If I have not invited you, leave me a note in the comments or on one of your Cuppa posts. Grande submissions must be well-written. We want to present your best work.
2. Non-Cuppa writers with special skills or content are welcome to submit when we identify their work will benefit our Cuppa writers and our readers.
3. Non-Cuppa writers who have not been invited may submit an example of their work with a request to be added as a writer.
Content We Accept
The Grande, like the Cuppa, is interested in pieces written with our readers in mind. Our audience looks forward to quality, well-written content from their favorite authors. The guiding scheme is to entertain, delight, inspire, and intrigue your reader, whether you’re writing about goldfish or outhouses on Mars.
Content accepted:
• We accept almost any non-political or non-news-oriented topic as long as it is respectful of others
• Uplifting Content
• Stories about animals and your experiences with animals. We all love to read about your family’s pets! Don’t forget bugs and pollinators
• Nature stories — trees, plants, gardening, camping, mountain climbing, etc.
- Cultural traditions, adventures, travel, and life experiences
- Poetry
- Family stories, memories
- Humor
• Fiction
• We allow binge-reads and themed collections. Such pieces must clearly state the theme in the subtitle area so readers know in advance.
Content We DON’T Accept
News events, politics, and critical negative discussions are necessary for a healthy society, and my point of view is that we need more dialogue — not less. That said, there are many publications and platforms dedicated to such discussions. We are not one of them at “The Cuppa Grande.”
Therefore, this publication will not publish articles about:
• Politics
• Trending news
- Rampant unpleasantries
- Rants
• Critical negative articles about others, even famous people
• Anything that contains hate speech, name-calling, or the bad-mouthing of any group or individual.
• The proliferation of AI-generated content, particularly in the areas of self-help, mental health, fitness, and similar topics, requires us to take a closer look at any of those topics. Follow Medium’s guidelines.
• Link stuffing is rude to readers, and appears spammy, so we reject stuffed articles immediately. Link stuffing is adding numerous links to your work that does not add to the article.
Submission Guidelines
- All submissions must follow Medium Rules.
- Submit drafts only (if you make a mistake and publish to your timeline, immediately submit and leave a note to our editor.)
- Only clean copy — free of grammar, spelling, and mind-boggling phraseology is accepted. ProWritingAid and Grammarly can help with this.
- Credit and hyperlink sources.
- See the above section on what’s not acceptable.
- Use the topic tag ‘The Daily Cuppa Grande.’ This enables us to find stories to promote and/or boost them.
- Self-promotion is allowed. Link your novels and other published work at the end of your piece. Add hyperlinks to your affiliates discreetly. Medium now adds your Medium affiliate link at the end of your article when a non-member reads. You may add your personal invitation.
- Promoting the work of other authors is encouraged but do not spam your readers. Select only related articles with exceptional content. Limit such promotions and explain what you like about the stories selected. (I surveyed twenty readers, and they reported they were more likely to open a link if there was only one.)
- Use a kicker (optional), title, subtitle, and image, in that order.
Formatting Articles
Medium’s editor has built-in features that make it easy to offer your reader professional content. To enhance our readers' experience when scrolling for articles, we require a title, subtitle, and image. A kicker is a helpful addition but not required.
Kicker
A kicker tells your reader the topic or category of your piece. It’s one or more words in caps that go above your title as shown below.
Titles
When you write in Medium editor, the first line is the title. Just start typing — magic.
Titles are in title case. To make sure the title is capitalized correctly, use a title analyzer. There are several. I use Capitalize My Title, which is free.
Avoid ‘clickbait’ titles. You may get attention, but you will disappoint your readers.
At The Daily Cuppa Grande, we devote a lot of time to assure our readers have a pleasant reading experience.
Subtitles
As you can see in the above image, Medium no longer has a placeholder for subtitles. The theory about the function of subtitles has changed, and I think for the better.
Where the editor prompts ‘Tell your story…’, type a description of your piece. This can be one or two sentences and tells viewers what they will get from reading your story.
Traditionally, subtitles have no full-stop/period at the end.
Highlight that sentence or two and select the small ‘T’ icon — magic.
Add an Image
Use your own image or select from Unsplash, Pexels, Pixabay, or any other site that offers (many free) properly licensed photographs.
Remember to attribute the appropriate credit in the caption below your photo. A direct hyperlink to the photographer’s name and the site you downloaded it from is a nice “thank you” for using their work for free. It may keep you from being sued, too.
Medium requires all images to be cited. When using your photos, be sure you have permission from any individuals in the image.
When Visiting The Daily Cuppa Grande
- Be polite.
- Be kind and kind, and then be kind.
- Read and leave helpful comments.
- Pieces are put out quickly. If you notice a typo/wrong word, private message the writer, and they’ll do the same for you.
- Make friends and uplift others.
Note: Editors work hard and volunteer their own time to polish and professionalize your work prior to publication.
I don’t expect any rudeness to the editing team because you are all writers I know. Sadly, most editors have experienced rudeness and even abuse in the past. I have removed writers from publications and reported some to Medium. Katie = 98% sweet, 2% kick your butt out! I understand bad days: I have mine. Apologize, bring issues to me, and/or bitch me out, I’ll be okay. Our desire is to help you present your best work to the world.
Library of Helpful Resources
Formatting
The Best Kickers for Medium Stories
How to Place a Category or Tag at the Top of Your Medium Title Article
Avoid Clickbait: Headline Techniques Used by Six Reputable Media Sites
How to Write a Compelling Headline That Isn’t Clickbait
A Simple Framework for Capturing and Organizing Your Blog Post Ideas
Writing Alt-Text for Your Stories
Editing Apps
Language Tool — Excellent grammar checker.
Grammarly — Great if you’re dyslexic and can’t spell and like the Oxford comma. This one loves commas.
ProWritingAid — Anti oxford comma and gives prompts for politely correct word choices. Provides education about writing conventions.
Hemingway Editor — Focus is on mastering style in writing.
Medium
Medium’s Distribution Standards: What Writers and Publications Need to Know
New Boosting and Curation Got You Down?
Miscellaneous
From Keyword Stuffing to User Experience: A History of SEO’s Many Facelifts
25 Reasons Why I May Have Muted You On Medium — A Journalist's View on how to turn away your readers.
Images
These Medium Writers Ran Into Legal Problems When Using Images
People are Being Sued for Using Creative Commons Images
You Can Still Splash About in Unsplash
Thank you for your interest in The Daily Cuppa Grande and for reading this article.
The Grande and Cuppa editors edited for me and gave helpful suggestions. Any flaws or errors are my responsibility. We want this publication to be a literary journal you are proud to host your work. Rather than flooding readers' feeds with stories we plan on presenting readers with stories they look forward to.
A special thank you to, Mona S Gable/ Barb Dalton/ Gary L Ellis/ James Beaufait/ Michael Rhodes/ Adrienne Beaumont, who worked into the night smacking my words around.
The wonderful Marilyn Flower wrote this up about me to use at the bottom of my stories. Nice — yes?
Katie loves to learn and create while nurturing others. She writes non-fiction, fiction, and poetry as a retired therapist, farmer, and business owner — having fun doing stuff. This amazing lady plants hope and herbs, love and lilacs, blessings and blossoms, stories and seeds all day long. What can she do? It turns out, a lot!!!
Katie Michaelson is a mother, foster mother, adoptive mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, friend, and crazy plant lady. 13 times top writer on Medium. Creator/editor of Welcome to My Not-so-Fancy Garden, The Daily Cuppa, The Daily Cuppa Grande. Editor of Seventy and Still Dating, Woodworkers of The World Unite!! , and the enchanting Pieces From My Life.
