Can You Write a Book, Chapter by Chapter on Medium?
There’s nothing stopping you, but is it a good idea?
The short answer regarding writing an entire book in pieces on Medium is yes, you can. The Medium platform lends itself well to any form of writing.
Medium’s most fundamental function is simply as a place to write. It’s your choice what you do with that.
Having said that, there are deeper questions to examine.
Curation
If your goal is to have Medium’s curators promote your chapters to a larger audience, you have to follow their guidelines, which include the fact that they don’t typically curate serialized stories. Here’s the guideline:
Serialization: Stories that are split into multiple posts are unlikely to be curated unless each post works on its own without additional context
So unless each chapter can stand entirely on its own, you’re not getting help with the promotion of your individual book chapters. That would seem to work well for carefully-written non-fiction, but poses challenges for fiction.
Writing a non-fiction book article by article is actually an approach often used by bloggers on their own platforms, so doing it Medium also makes sense.
It would seem that chapters of a novel might be able to stand alone, but it would be a challenge because where a non-fiction book can easily be read out of order. Standalone chapters of a book, not so much. And what happens if Medium curates…
