The Weekend Writer: How Many Publishing Worlds Are You Familiar With?

 A few weeks ago, I saw an article on Medium that I will never find again, because of the hundreds of thousands of things published there. I think the writer was a woman, so for convenience's sake I will refer to her as she. The writer was distressed because she had to wait two days to hear back from editors when she submitted to publications on the Medium platform. She had a schedule to maintain! What was wrong with these people? It is a problem! I think she may have also expected these editors to automatically accept her work, but I may be mistaken.

All her commenters agreed with her.

I sat there in front of my laptop, stunned. 

I often see articles on Medium about writing on Medium and what is wrong with Medium and why the writers are thinking of leaving Medium or why the writers are leaving Medium. You don't have to read these things for very long to realize that most of these people have never written anything for publication before they started publishing on Medium. Because Medium is a self-publishing platform, anyone can publish there immediately, without meeting any objective writing standards, without having any expertise in subjects they write about. (Medium does require a certain format for published articles and really prefers that writers not steal the images they use for illustrations. Does anyone else think that seems reasonable? That's not a high bar, folks.)

Is Medium The Real Writing World?

When I read these kinds of things on Medium, I think those writers have no idea what's going on in the real writing world. But why isn't Medium real? Many of the writers publishing there appear to have never published anywhere else. The site encourages community, so many Medium people are reading there, following other writers, and supporting each other with applause and comments. If they can achieve what they want to achieve there, they may never go out to traditional publications for anything at all. They are in a world. What's not real about it?

Back in 2010, there was talk on the Internet about there being two publishing worlds. One was centered in New York and involved publishing as a means of generating income for writers. The other was centered around MFA programs and involved publishing as a means of supporting academic positions--a variation on publish-or-perish. If someone were writing on this subject today, I believe self-publishing would be a third publishing world and perhaps self-publishing on-line at platforms like Medium and Substack a fourth. 

The Publishing World That Is Not Medium

A couple of days ago, Jane Friedman published a piece by Amy L. Bernstein (who, by the way, is on Substack)  called Publishing Advice from a Serial Submitter to Literary Magazines. This is a description of the traditional writing and publishing world I'm familiar with, the publishing world where you are not automatically published. "Indeed," Bernstein says, "the 1% acceptance rule is fairly consistent, whether you're submitting short fiction or a novel."

Even though I wasn't aware that only 1% of submissions are accepted by literary magazines, my expectations of an acceptance are not high. And, no, I never expect to hear back from a traditional editor in two days. But the publishing world Bernstein is talking about is one that I am at least familiar with. I stick with it, because I understand that, as she says, "If you don't play, you can't win."

But I know about the traditional publishing world, because I've been writing, submitting, and sometimes being published for a long time. Most of the people coming up writing in Medium world have not. Will they ever know anything else besides sending off whatever they write with an expectation of it being published, as is, immediately? 

Does it matter if they don't?