The Medium Writing Interface Changed; Here’s What You Need to Know
By: Nicole Akers
Tags: Health, Travel, Writing, Short Story, Food

If you write on Medium regularly you probably already know that the whole interface changed with regard to publishing a piece.

If you haven’t written in over a week hold on to your hat when you go to publish. This writing interface has changed.

It’s completely different.

Last week I enjoyed the thrilling event of watching the changes as they went live because I was publishing pieces for writers at Publishous and PublishousNOW as the changes were happening.

From one piece to the next everything was different.

At first, there were no options to share a piece. No options existed to tweet across Twitter or share on Facebook. By the time I got to the next piece, the share options were there, as though I had traveled through time and the teleportation device magically brought them.

And, it kept changing over the course of two hours.

And, the nuances continue to change.

It used to be that a piece was published or a draft sent to a publication by dropping down from the three dots. If you aren’t familiar with them, you need to be familiar. They’ll turn your Medium life around. Check out all the other new options under the three dots. There are a lot of new additions.

New full-screen options to publish

When you’re ready to publish click the green ready to publish button.

I like a lot about what happens on this screen. Many writers forget to add tags or don’t fill them all in. Now it’s hard for writers to skip this step.

There’s a preview of what your piece will look like once it’s published. When you finalize the details you click the Publish Now button at the bottom.

Just like that, you’ve published your piece.

Uh-oh, there’s a problem

But, here’s the problem.

You’ve published before you’ve sent a draft to a publication. If you aren’t publishing with a publication this isn’t a big deal. If you publish with pubs, this is not the preferred way of publishing.

Moreover, Medium’s published workflow and diagrams in its guidelines say writers should send drafts to pubs and as pubs publish stories appear on your profile.

Before you click Publish Now, close out the screen and go over to the three dots. Drop down from there to add to a publication in your list of publications, just like before. The option is still there, it’s just easy to miss if you don’t look for it.

I’ve written about it again…

And, again…

If you write with publications, it’s important to have a good relationship with them, if you want their benefits. It’s healthy food for a writer’s soul.

I’ve already registered my early feedback with the fine friendly folks at Medium who work hard to help all writers on this platform succeed. They really are some of the best informed friendly people around.

Why does it matter?

Honestly, it doesn’t make a bit of difference to some pubs. Most don’t have independent websites and this doesn’t affect them at all. Of those who do host their own websites, there are a couple that are so big they can take some published pieces without it hurting their website performance too much.

If you have a blog, a website of your own other than on Medium, you probably want your website to perform well. There are a lot of ways to foster good performance:

formatting your piece with short paragraphs for mobile users

promoting habits that rank well for SEO

obtaining Google’s favor

Here’s why it matters for others.

Many publications on Medium don’t have independent websites. Those who do have independent websites want to rank well. If you self-host a website or are an experienced blogger you want good performance of your site.

We do too.

That’s why we ask for the first publish. Using the import tool from your blog is okay, this piece hasn’t been published on Medium before. But, if you are sending your piece to a pub the pub should be publishing the piece first, and in return, you receive its benefits.

Benefits

We think 1.5 million views each month on www.publishousnow.com is good performance; don’t you?

We promote your work fiercely. We tweet the Medium piece, the website version, tweet it on Twitter, LinkedIn, and share it on Facebook. With Publishous you get up to four or more publishes, and fierce promotion of your work.

No one is doing what we’re doing.

Writers are getting noticed on the www.publishousnow.com and getting republished and their work is getting referenced as resources, with proper accreditation.

We think we’ve got a pretty good thing going for writers and writers seem to agree. To enjoy the huge website benefits on www.publishousnow.com the work needs to be previously unpublished on Medium.

Since the new interface we’ve been working doubly hard with writers behind the scenes, answering their questions, and helping them get accustomed to the new changes. We’ve given a lot of latitude and we’re happy to continue with those who are talking with us and making an effort to get accustomed to the new changes.

Now that you’re in the know; pass it on.

We continue to excel tomorrow’s best sellers today.

Write with Publishous and www.publishousnow.com.

Get started today!