Guidance for contributing writers of ILLUMINATION publication on Medium

ILLUMINATION aims to create a novel collaborative content culture with cross-pollination among the writers. We aim to bring writers, editors, and readers to create a social circle of content development, dissemination, and consumption with joint effort.

Our aim is to empower our writers to improve their skills and connections which can enable them gain visibility to their content. Our publication aims to amplify the messages of our writers. Our focus is on success of our writers and giving excellent reading experience to our readers.

As founder of the publication, I shared my vision in this invitation story.Invitation to Illuminating WritersCreating content synergy through diversity and fusion on Medium. Welcome to ILLUMINATION!medium.com

The first rule is to put yourself in your readers’ shoes. This will help you to submit the type of content that you want to read yourself.

Keep in mind that publications are not content dumping places. They aim to bring contributors into a place and produce presentable content for readers.

Readers expect content to meet their requirements. They are interested in your knowledge, skills, experience, thoughts, and feelings. We cannot take our readers for granted. Our ultimate goal is to delight our readers.

As a contributor, always ask these two questions

Why would this audience read my content?

What is unique about my content that would delight my reader?

Please use this checklist before submitting your content to any of our publications. https://medium.com/illumination-blog/checklist-for-quality-submissions-1c54921ad2ca

The most time-consuming issue is not citing photos or adding copyrighted photos. Please check our photo handling policy before submitting your stories to any of our publications. This will save you and our editors a lot of time. Your stories can be published faster, and your readers can start reading them quicker. You can potentially begin to earn more quickly.

We regularly check for duplication and plagiarism.

We help with duplication issues as a lack of knowledge causes them. Medium does not allow duplicated content. If you are submitting duplicated content hosted in Medium we have to decline your story. However, if you are submitting a post from your blogs, this is acceptable. We call it repurposing. However, since your Medium ID and your blog account Id is not the same, you need to provide a link to the original source. This will save you and our editors time.

As a new writer, we recommend you submit one story a day until you cover basic publishing requirements. Considering contributions from thousands of new writers, it is impossible to cater to multiple submissions from each new writer that does not meet fundamental requirements.

We allow our prolific and experienced writers to submit up to three drafts within 24 hours. Since they submit high-quality materials, we don’t have to spend very much time on these quality submissions.

Until you improve your writing skills and meet the fundamentals mentioned in the checklist, please submit no more than one item in a day.

Our editors work hard to improve your stories to meet fundamental requirements. Some readers prefer raw content. However, we need to adhere to common quality standards such as no typos, clear language, and suitable formatting.

If you are a new writer but produce high-quality materials, we will support you to submit multiple stories a day. ILLUMINATION Mirror is one of the alternatives that we use to cater for your needs.

Please check the * sign in your draft story. It indicates a private message. You can find this sign usually on the upper part of your story. Editors may also leave private messages on the body of your story if they require input from you during the editing process.

When editors request you to address issues in your story, please acknowledge and address the problems timely. We are unable to hold stories for more than 24 hours in our submission queue. If we have no response within 24 hours, we return your story for re-submission. Please don’t interpret it as rejection and don’t get upset.

It has come to my attention that some writers ignore editor messages or even delete them. This is not a good practice considering these editors are making the effort to help you. I’d appreciate your cooperation with editors as they strive for your success. Most times I believe these instances of not replying and deleting are innocent mistakes, yet I have to have a clear policy in place that does not permit the bad apples, like, for example, the serial plagiarists, to take advantage of everyone else. I implore you not to deliberately ignore our editors’ private messages, delete them, and resubmit. While every case will be reviewed on its own merits, and all reasonable benefits of the doubt will be afforded to you, deliberate disregard of my editors and our policies is grounds for removal as a writer without further warning.

Medium is a large and complex platform. All writers must understand and learn the rules of the platform.

Writers also need to understand their audience and adjust writing practices accordingly.

Curation matters to new writers to gain a new audience. Please check this guide to increase your curation chance.

If you want to survive and thrive on Medium, I recommend you check this story to learn about the platform’s rules.

In terms of platform rules, many new writers benefited from this story. This story focuses on fundamentals and some advanced topics for writers.

The best investment for new writers is to join our 100 day challenge. Completion of this challenge can help you create a good writing portfolio and bring you many followers. Then you can turn these followers to your regular readers. Details are in this story.

I also recommend participating in this one time challenge which allows you to introduce yourself, your regular readers, and your stories.

You can find our conduct guidelines from this link on Medium.

Frequently asked questions including process and procedures of ILLUMINATION publication is documented in this article.

How to a writer for ILLUMINATION Integrated publications on Medium.

About Chief Editor

I am the founder and chief editor of ILLUMINATION, ILLUMINATION-Curated, ILLUMINATION’ S MIRROR, Technology Hits, and SYNERGY. I established these significant publications supporting 10,000+ writers and serving 137,000+ readers on Medium. You are welcome to subscribe to my 100K+ mailing list, collaborate, enhance your network, and receive technology and leadership newsletters reflecting my industry experience. You can show your interest to support my publications as an editor. My free content strategy and marketing newsletter can be accessed from Substack. I also write for News Break and Vocal Media.

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