Give Your Long Stories a Second Life

After reading so many concerning stories and email messages sent to me by our writers, I can feel the pain about not being able to reach the desired level of the audience on Medium. The recent changes affected most of us. Therefore, I am committed to helping our writers whatever required for their success. Not finding readers for a writer hurts and discourages creativity.

Many of us experienced a sharp drop in our stats for both views and reading times perspectives. November was mentioned the worst month for stats. These mentions align with my status too.

There appears to be some workaround using short-form stories. It looks promising. Several writers who used short forms noticed some difference in their stats. I started experimenting and noticed a minor improvement; however, I did not post many short-form stories yet.

I introduced the short-form stories to my publications and encouraged writers to use them.

Considering the short-form stories can alleviate the metaphorical pain, I want to offer our writers to submit up to three short-form stories referencing their long-form stories and even older ones buried under the dust.

The benefit of a short story is to reach out to as many readers as possible. I hope some of the viewers of your short stories could be interested in your long stories and start reading them.

I see a short-form story like a captivating hook thrown into an ocean. The word captivating is crucial because you need to attract the attention of your readers with fewer than 150 words.

Besides the creative use of words and phrases, the format of a short-form story also matters. It needs to be pleasant and attractive to the readers. Rather than many links and convoluted statements, I suggest you articulate the compelling reasons for the readers to click on your long-form story.

Here are the key points you need to consider for short-form stories

1 — Your short-form story needs to include an opening sentence with bold font so that Medium algorithm recognizes it as a short-form story. The first sentence of your short-form story must be bold.

2 — Your short-form story needs to be maximum of 150 words describing your long-form story.

3 — Provide an embedded link to your long-form story. You may even consider adding two or three long-form stories as links if they are on the same topic.

4 — Include an attractive (captioned) photo at the end of the story so that it can look good on the publication frontpage.

Additional privilege for writers contributing to three publications

I want to give additional privilege to our contributing writers submitting to our other publications. You can to submit up to three short-form stories per publication. We have three publications.

If you are contributing to ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curated, and Technology Hits, you can submit nine short-form stories in a day. Of course the type of story need to comply with the guidelines of each publication.

One critical request from my end is the quality of short-form stories.

Please ensure that you meet quality requirements as you did for your long-form stories. Yes, you must caption your photos in short-form stories too.

It is a good idea to use the attached checklist before submitting your stories.

As there can be a large volume of stories considering the number of our contributors, we want to spend the minimum possible time to edit your short stories.

Upfront, if you submit more than one non-compliant story as part of this offering, we will decline your stories, and you will lose your privilege. I trust you will take personal responsibility to keep our publications useable by all contributors.

Submitting several short-form stories can help you find new readers and give your older stories a new life.

This is an opportunity for you.

By following the above rules, you can start getting the benefit of short-form stories to gain visibility of your long-form and older stories.

Who knows this workaround can alleviate your recent pain with regard to your stats. I am optimistic therefore highly recommend experimenting. We will not now without trying. And we have nothing to lose in trying.

After some trial, please share your experience, especially about the changes in your stats. You can write a story about it by referencing the number of short-form stories and type of response for each of them. Possibly you will get some results within two to three weeks time.

For your reference, here are three sample short-form stories I shared recently.

The outcome I received so far is 95%+ reading ratio for short form stories. This means almost anyone opening my story is reading it. I love this outcome. Obviously, readers enjoy the short-form stories. For example this short story I submitted earlier today received 100% reading ratio. What else could I ask?

Short stories, of course, don’t earn much income, but the purpose is not earning income from short stories.

The purpose is to increase the visibility of your longer stories and give them a second life.

I hope you enjoy this new journey. I am one message away to connect with you and answer your questions at our Slack workspace.

Thank you for reading my perspectives.

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