Self-Published Stories
Why I like flying solo with fiction
My innate, slothful tendencies brought me to Medium.
I used to submit short stories to various literary, science fiction, fantasy, and horror publications, and in those rare cases where the publication said, “yes,” I reveled in delight. But submitting to different magazines is a slog: It can take months and months to hear back. Even more tiring is that each publication has its own submission-formatting requirements: single space versus double space, Times New Roman or Courier, submit the story in the blind (without your name included) or not. If a story was rejected by one publication, I’d often have to reformat it for the next.
Medium makes publishing stories physically much easier. I still fret over choosing the right picture, and crafting a subtitle is sometimes stressful, but the Medium process is far less time-consuming than the traditional story-publishing route.
I’m exploring Substack. It’s similar to Medium in that you are the writer, editor, and publisher, but also different: Writers on Substack deliver their stories in newsletter format. I like both places. I’d be delighted if you gave my Substack short story newsletter a test drive: https://billadler.substack.com.
Both Medium and Substack let you write and publish on your own time.
