My Rejected Story Got 6,700 Views When I Self-published It

That’s my 3rd best story every

In the past, it’s been very rare that I self-publish one of my stories. I have always assumed that publishing my stories in publication will result in more views. But one of my recent articles made me question my thinking. I write most days and usually get my stories finished by early evening at the latest. A few weeks ago I was running very late but still wanted to get a story published.

This resulted in me rushing the story more than I should have, so it ended up not being one of my best.

I submitted it to a publication and thought it would get published overnight. But I noticed a private note at been left on the story just before I was about to shut my laptop. It said something about there being too many “fluff” words. I re-read the article and that was indeed the case. The article wasn’t outright rejected but needed some changes. I went through the article quickly and removed the “fluff” words and re-wrote a few sentences. I was about to re-submit it when I realized I’d missed a second part of the note. They wanted me to include a source to something I’d said.

Getting Tired

As I was now getting tired, I just couldn’t find the source I needed. I needed to get to bed. I should have left the story until the morning, but I wanted it published. So, I self-published it. I wasn’t sure I’d done the right thing, but I did it anyway. It’s still under 2 weeks since the article was published, but it’s already got 6,700 views. That makes it my 3rd best story for views ever.

Experimenting with self-publishing

That made me wonder if I need to experiment a little with self-publishing. This month I plan to self-publish quite a few of my stories and see how it works out. What I don’t know though is how the story would have done if the publication had accepted it. It’s possible that it may have received even more views. I’ll never know the answer to that.

But being the 3rd most viewed article of over 300 means that self-publishing is at least worth looking into further.

One advantage of self-publishing is that Medium will show some of my other stories at the end. If I publish in a publication, Medium will show stories from that publication. They won’t be my stories. So self-publishing should get some additional views on other stories as well.

Here’s the story…