You Can Write Fiction on Medium (And Get Paid For It)
By: Matthew Donnellon
Tags: Writing, Fiction, Productivity, Médium, Creativity

When I graduated college a few years ago, and decided to become a writer, there were only a few options a for a fiction writer.

You could try for a book deal, if you had a novel to sell. This was my original plan. Though no one wanted the book. Which upon further review, was a good idea since it was terrible.

You could self publish, again usually longer works, but it wasn’t nearly as ubiquitous as it is now, and it was mostly romance authors and college professors.

For short stories, the most common route was to send your story off to a magazine or website and wait to be rejected.

This was a rather arduous path. If you were lucky you might get published a couple times a years after constant rejection and waiting weeks and months.

Also, the money was not great. You’re lucky to get 10 cents a words. So you could spend weeks on a 5,000 word story and get 500 dollars.

It was no way to make a living. It’s more to build publishing credits for tenure or an eventual book deal.

The only people I knew doing it seriously were professors and Starbucks baristas.

There were of course other avenues, like Wattpad, and other like it, but I don’t believe writers could earn money. I could be wrong of course.

Enter Medium

I started writing on Medium last August. I was hesitant to post fiction because I didn’t see much of it, but I figured there was nothing to lose.

I started writing, and people read it.

And I started making money from it.

Gone were the days of waiting months for an email from editor.

Within a week I can how much money each story will make.

And, instead of waiting weeks to maybe sell a 500 word story for a reader’s copy and cup of coffee, Medium allows you to keep making money.

When I wrote “The Curious Case of Emma Lee” I would have had a hard time finding a place for it, as it was only a thousand words, most magazines would want something longer. And if I did sell it, I’d be lucky to get 10 bucks for it.

Now it’s made nearly 10 times that.

Some Things To Increase Chances of Success

Curation

People on Medium love to talk about curation. It’s kind of a mystical thing. No one really knows how it works.

However, if your piece isn’t distributed, it’s not the end of the world. Several of my best performing pieces aren’t curated. If you’re publishing regularly then you will do just fine.

Simple Titles

I’ve noticed that the simpler the title the better. This is great for me, since I’m terrible at picking titles. Several of my stories have one word titles. Seems to work just fine.

The title of this story was originally “Sanctification.” I think maybe seven people read it.

I changed it to “My Last Day” and now it has over 3.000 views.

Don’t Be Afraid To Go Short

I realize that’s kind of lame advice, as this is already about writing short stories, but you can go really short, like flash fiction short. My most popular story is only a thousand words long.

And one of my best performing stories is only 300 words long.

So you don’t have to extend a story any longer than it needs to be.

So

Make it interesting. Make it fun to read. Make sure you make it eligible to earn money (I’ve done that before.)

You’ll do well.

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