We Want to Hear Your Stories!

A guide to publishing in Shout Out Loud!

We are so excited to have you join our publication, and we cannot wait to work with you!

Before you can join our publication, we need you to follow some simple steps. Please click on every link in this article, and make sure you read them thoroughly so you understand how everything works. (This includes the links embedded that are shown underlined and the ones that are in the body of work)

The Cardinal Rules

We are so glad you’ve decided to submit a story to us! We accept all forms of stories: poetry, opinion pieces, fiction, anything, as long has obeyed the three strict rules we have. Feel free to send both drafts and pre-written pieces!

1. Nothing racist, homophobic, transphobic, misogynistic or otherwise offensive. We just don’t have time for it, take your garbage opinions elsewhere.
2. It must be your own work! We want your stories, not something plagiarised. If you use other people’s words or images, you have to give them due credit.
3. No misinformation, if you’re going to include facts in your piece, you better have the research links to back it up. And no, your aunt from Facebook is not an appropriate source, please chose them carefully.

Content Guidelines

We’re willing to publish stories about any topic, as long as they are high-quality pieces. I’d strongly encourage reading Medium’s Distribution Standards article for guidelines on what sort of content the website itself is looking for.

If you are hoping Medium to promote your content more, here are some helpful guides to getting curated. They’re worth looking over, even if you decide not to submit anything to us.

Although this isn’t a requirement to be published by us, we also recommend that you join the Medium Partner Program.

This link explains this all in detail:
https://help.medium.com/hc/en-us/articles/115011694187-Getting-started-with-the-Medium-Partner-Program

The reason we ask you to do this is that it means that you can get paid for your work! We want to help you make amazing work and gain as much exposure as possible and make sure you are able to earn money. The tax form bit is a little complex. If you are British or from the UK for your TIN in the tax info just enter your national insurance number.

Grammar and Formatting Guidelines

Yeah, it's the boring bit.

1. Although we will help you out with editing, we need you to check that your grammar and punctuation are as correct as possible. Pop it through a grammar checker before submitting it, if possible.
2. Learn the rules for capitalizing in titles and subtitles. Seriously, it helps so much. Here’s a good guide if the rules leave you confused, which, honestly? Very understandable.
3. There’s a very specific formatting system Medium likes to use; we would love it if your submissions followed this guide to maximise the attention they can get. The tl;dr is, to caption your images, don’t use overly long paragraphs and embed your links so they don’t stick out like a sore thumb.
4. Here are also some guides on some of the excellent key features of medium: quotations, custom titles, and images.

Apply Today!

The link to our google form for submissions can be found here (https://forms.gle/9FjeNGbjBMDgtJqf7)! Thank you for submitting, we’re so excited to start working with you!

We know this is a LOT of info, but hopefully, it all makes sense. If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact us!