One Nugget of Advice to the Newbie Writer
Exposing a dark side of Medium. Is this ethical?
As a new writer to Medium, I never imagined I’d be writing an advice article for other new Medium writers. But here I am.
Medium has a dark side I didn’t know about, and unsuspecting new writers need to hear this. This is not a clickbait article. I will give my tip right upfront and you can move on.
My one piece of advice….
If someone says they love your article and asks to repost it on an external website, just say no.
You can stop reading now, blindly trust me, and walk away with the nugget. Or you can stick around to read the full story.
The first week I joined Medium seemed great. I don’t have a lot of writing experience, and right off the bat, I got positive feedback on my first couple of articles. The feedback hooked me. People actually wanted to read what I had to say.
Knowing nothing about Medium when I started, I read one post about how to get curated and why you want to get curated, and I started typing. I self-published my first post and after a day of only my family clicking; I started doing research and found out about publications. I started devouring all the tips and how-to articles about writing on Medium. I found a lot of helpful articles. What an awesome community of writers supporting writers.
Armed with my newfound knowledge, I wrote my first piece with the direct intention of submitting it to a bigger publication. My daily feed filled up with articles with titles like “10 Tips for Being Productive” or “5 Tips to make $100 a month writing”. I read articles about how “tip” articles got the best views, so I wrote one.
I wrote an article of 4 tips and then went hunting for a publication. I stumbled upon a list of top medium publications for new writers and chose one that spoke to me. I read the submission guidelines and realized they didn’t want tip articles, so I changed my article to be a story and not tips. After all, I wanted in this specific publication.
I got accepted quickly; how thrilling! Shortly after they posted my article, someone asked if they could repost it on an external website. Sure, sounded awesome to me. As a new writer, I didn’t expect to make money on my article. More exposure would be good.
The day they posted my article on the outside site, I eagerly clicked the link and laughed when I discovered they turned it back into a “tip” article. I briefly thought about how that changes the SOE of the article and would direct traffic to the newer version of the article.
I set up my social media information on the new website so anyone who viewed it could find me. Right about then is when I started realizing saying yes might have been a mistake, but if I could salvage some exposure and chalk it up as a learning experience, everything was fine. As I said, this wasn’t an article that would go viral and make me rich.
A few days afterward, I get an email newsletter from the external website with my article prominently featured. That rankled a little, but I tried to be Zen. So I log into Medium to check on my original post on the publication’s website, and the first thing I notice on the front page of the publication website is an article that looks like my reworked article — not by me.
When I click in, it’s a link to the newsletter, and anyone wanting to read the article has to click from inside the newsletter and get directed to the page off Medium. But the link to get to the newsletter literally is my reworked story, with a blurb from my post and says nothing about it being a newsletter link.
I’m confused. How did this happen?
I scroll down on the publication’s main page and my article isn’t on the main page anymore, despite the publication showing other stories posted before mine. I go to the archives of the publication and click to the month and year; I cannot find my article. I quickly look into my personal stories to make sure it’s still listed in the publication, and it is.
This is when I realized they stole my article. Is this ethical?
Anyone who wants to read my article at this moment can only view it by clicking through my personal author link or reading their re-worked version on the external website. The link to the external website is through a post on Medium that is not giving me any money. I’d hazard a guess that the person who posted it has it behind the paywall.
I had no idea any of this was possible. I’m not even a great writer. Why would someone want to steal anything of mine? I know it’s not “stolen” but right now it sure seems that way. I am a new writer on Medium and someone took advantage of me. As soon as I gave permission to repost it, I was giving away rights to my article I didn’t even recognize I needed to protect.
During my research on all of this, I saw another new article on the external website; a “tip” article. I searched for the person inside Medium. Sure enough, the original article wasn’t “tips”. It was a new writer with 2 posts in total. Another newbie soul sucked in.
I got angry. I spewed to several friends. Incensed, my friends told me to write a letter to the editor and demand explanations. But what’s the point? This person knows exactly what they are doing, and part of me admires the evil genius of the idea. Run a sizeable publication on Medium, cherry-pick good articles from newbie writers, and turn them into an article to drive traffic to their external site that offers a membership.
The longer I sat with my outrage, a sense of powerlessness overwhelmed me. I was playing a game, I didn’t know I was playing, and I didn’t know the rules. But then I recognized only I can allow myself to feel powerless. So what was I going to do?
I did the only thing I could think of; I wrote.
I hope a new writer can learn from my mistake. Don’t give someone else control over your article without doing your research.
‘I have purposely omitted the names in this article’, and this is not my primary account. This is not a smear campaign. Just straight advice to a newcomer. Whatever tiny exposure you might get, isn’t worth losing control over your article.
