Medium for Authors (sell books and make money)
4 min readMay 28, 2023
- Real quick: Medium is a side-project by Twitter CEO thatās mostly unmonetized but gets a crazy amount of traffic; making it one of the biggest content sites on the internet. You *can* get paid by views under certain conditions and *some* writers are making real money ($1000~$10,000 a month) but itās not easy to do so.
- However, it can be worth it to explore Medium as a way to reach a broader audience or for the SEO boost increasing visibility to your own website. Itās easy to submit new posts; or add them to curated publications. You can also republish articles from your own blog or website onto Mediumās platform.
- Generally, posts that do well are insightful, positive and have a unique or fresh voice. But simple listicles can do well also. Like other platforms, it rewards engagement, in the form of comments or likes. Iāve heard of *some* people for example, use a list like ātop 10 empowering quotes from Buddhaā where they have one false quote that Buddha never said: sparking a torrent of comments that boost visibility (whether on purpose or not, making mistakes can drive engagement).
Nonfiction writers on Medium
- Medium is mostly a place for nonfiction (how-to) or narrative nonfiction (story-telling). If you write nonfiction, pulling some powerful or useful excerpts from your book, or even the introduction or full first chapter, could be an easy move. You can also use it to post follow-up or extra material that didnāt make it in your final manuscript.
- Ideally, your brand would concern similar themes or topics from what your nonfiction books focus on, to attract the right audience. Two of my books, for example, arenāt in KU ā because I also give them away for free from my websites ā which means I can repurpose the content. Thatās roughly 50 high quality articles that are already done, Iām just sharing the individual topics so theyāll rank better and be found easier.
- Each article would end with something like āthis is an excerpt from my book, which you can download for free hereā¦ā with a strong call to action. Like anything, it takes time and content to build up a following and a platform. Iām cheating a little, by using my main site (this one) which already has a pretty great domain authority, to link to my Medium posts and see if I can boost them into Google search results faster. But Iāll also republish some of my best articles from this site to Medium, in the hopes of getting juicy backlinks that helps the articles on this site rank higher in search results.
- Sidenote: the best marketing, is advertising, as long as your book converts. After that, itās content marketing: turning your book into a plethora of unique and nice looking content, including listicles, infographics, image quotes or even a nice powerpoint summary for SlideShare ā which you can then narrate over for a YouTube video (or better yet, pay some guy on Fiverr to distribute that video content to 50 major video hosting sites.)
- The idea is to broadcast lots of bits of content everywhere, and get a lot of links pointing back to your site, your book or your main content. Links are important for visibility: but the quality of the actual writing is necessary to get clicks, views and followers. Focus especially on pithy titles, that hook attention or are startling or surprising or funny.
Fiction writers on Medium
- Yes, they exist ā though Medium isnāt really meant for fiction, there is some, and there are even some publications you can submit your fiction writing to, in order to get more views.
Hereās a list of
- While Medium isnāt the only, or even the best, way to market or sell your books, itās a big platform thatās user-friendly and easy to get started with, so it probably is a good idea to be aware of it and start thinking about how you can use it to your advantage.
Book Reviews
- Medium allows all kinds of content, so one easy thing would be to submit a ābook reviewā or your own book, like a book summary, with links to your Amazon page. Thereās even at least one publication (Feedium) that allows authors to share and post their own book reviews. It would be a good idea to review books in your genre; or create a listicle of ātop 10 books about xxxā featuring your own book in the list.
- Takeaway: I tried posting some of my content to Medium, but never got the views or traffic, so Iām not sure this is worth it; and even those few very successful writers on Medium recently (2021) have had to move on because earnings and payouts dropped considerably. Itās not at all easy to make money writing on Medium, but it *can* be a good place to grow your audience if you have a targeted genre or field.
