A Complete Guide to Submitting to Medium Publications
By: Kelly Eden
Tags: Medium, Writing Tips, Writing, Self, Submission Guidelines

Trying to work out how to get your story into a big publication? They don’t make it easy, do they? I’ve got you covered — I hunted around Medium for hours to find these so that you don’t have to. Best of luck!

Finding the right Medium Publication

Medium Publications are like magazines, and just like magazines they each have their own flavour and overall voice. Before you pitch, it’s worth taking your time to read through their topics, browse stories, and get a feel for what they like to publish. If you skip this step, you’ll waste a lot of energy pitching to the wrong places.

Explore some of these articles to find a publication that suits you and your story idea.

This is written by Medium staff and covers some great tips for submitting to publications, including finding publications that align with your writing goals:

“Your goals will help inform your strategy on submitting to publications. Here are a few of those possible motivations and what to bear in mind.”

Medium has its own publications and if you get a story accepted here there is potential for it to get good exposure. Some get instantly curated. If your goal is to increase your readership, then applying to one of these may be the way to go.

Ten places to pitch

1. Forge

Forge say they are about how to get more done, invest in creativity and focus, and be happy doing it.

2. GEN

GEN want stories about politics, culture, and power.

There is a detailed list of exactly what they are looking for. There is also a list of what they don’t want to see, including:

— One line pitches, or ten ideas at once. Really take the time to tell me your one good idea. Maybe two good ideas if you have them.



— Anything that you think deserves to be long for the sake of being long. There should be shifts and beats, twists and turns in your idea that will propel the reader (me) all the way through the end. Longer is not always better (in fact, it rarely is)

I would say these apply to any Publications!

3. Modus

If you are a designer — Modus is your place.

We want to create a place where designers can read high-quality, practical, thought-provoking pieces that will help them be better at their craft.

4. Zora

Zora centers on and celebrates the hopes, dreams, aspirations, and experiences of women of colour according to their welcome page.

Is there a way to pitch to Zora? It’s not easy to find, but yes!

5. OneZero

OneZero says it is a forward-looking tech and science publication. For pitching, email onezero@medium.com

6. Elemental

Elemental is a health and wellness publication.

Every story will be aggressively researched and will include perspectives from several — not just one — leading experts in the field.

Pitch to elemental@medium.com

7. Human Parts

Human Parts publishes first person personal essays and perspectives. They are not currently taking submissions.

We’ll continue to scour Medium for great self-published stories and reach out to writers whose work fits the description below. The best way to contribute, then? Self-publish your story on Medium, and if it’s a fit for us, trust that we’ll find it.

8. Marker

Marker is focused on the world of business and the way business impacts our world.

Pitch to marker@medium.com.

9. PS I Love You

This popular publication is all about love, but in surprising ways. They also run Fiction Friday for short stories and Poetry Sunday. It’s a very supportive community with a Facebook page and I’ve found it a great publication to write for.

10. The Writing Cooperative

This publication has a large following and is also great to write for (I do). It has a Facebook page and slack group. To get a story accepted you need to check and double check that you have met their requirements. They are really tough and even an incorrectly formatted heading will have your story rejected for violating the rules.

11. The StartUp

The StartUp has a huge following and takes a wide range of stories. They say in their guidelines that if you don’t hear back in 36 hours, assume your story has not been accepted.

New Writers

If you’re a new writer and want to hone your skills before submitting to the big ones, contact us here at Inspired Writer. We aim to give new writers a boost by helping them create better stories and get them out into the world.

It’s free to work with us for a couple of weeks — no catch except that we only work with one writer at a time, so there may be a wait. Why would we do mentoring for free? Just writers helping writers, which is what Medium should be all about, right?

Understand your rights

Before you pitch to a Medium owned publication, like Forge, read through the article Everything a Medium Contributing Writer Should Know (linked in below).

Some publications buy the rights to your articles with a one off payment. It was interesting to read that the rights they are buying include exclusive digital rights (forever) and a non-exclusive license to further distribute your work.

Medium has a 1 year general exclusivity to the work starting from the day it’s published. After the 1 year period, Medium retains exclusive digital rights to the work, and a non-exclusive license to distribute the work in physical print, e-book, and audio narration. Audio versions are created by Medium or a third party we work with and distributed in context of the story on desktop and Medium’s mobile app.

Before you sign any contracts make sure you want to give exclusive rights to your article. You can never use or sell this article online again if a Medium Publication has exclusive rights to it.

If they make it into an e-book, audio, etc you will not get any additional profits from this. You receive one payment for the article and then they can use it without paying you any further royalties from sales.

Some seem to pay very well and your story will still be behind the paywall, so the added exposure of being in a Medium publication may pay off, but it’s good to understand what you are signing.

Get familiar with the editor’s tastes

If you read what stories they love, you’ll get a feel for where you might fit.

Time to get exploring those publications, be brave, and submit your best!

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