A Letter That Slept in Spam for Ten Days

The story of applying to — and getting accepted by — a Medium publication with 340K followers

July 1st, My First Post on Medium

From the very beginning, Soosooland was built with English-speaking users in mind — every game was made in English too — but somehow only 16% of my visitors came from overseas. So my daughter suggested I try posting on Medium to help spread the word. She also warned me not to post too often, so for a while I just had two posts up.

From my experience, Brunch (a Korean blogging platform) gives a post heavy exposure for about the first ten hours after publishing, then it fades. Medium works differently — exposure isn't tied to timing at all. I still haven't figured out the pattern, but apparently posts can keep getting seen long after they're published. Someone found my "Omok Devlog" and left 4 claps.

Taking a Shot at a Medium Publication

Medium sends emails every day. One day I showed one to Claude to have it translated, and in the course of chatting about it, Claude suggested I try submitting my writing to a publication to get more visibility. I had zero followers at the time, but publishing through a publication would put my work in front of all *their* followers instead.

On July 6th, I searched "startup" to find a publication to submit to. The top result had 88,800 subscribers. The first article I saw was about someone who bought a $200 AI tool and fired a $60,000 developer. That didn't feel like the right fit for what I write, so I searched "indie game devlog" instead.

I looked through several publications — usually the editor was the only writer, with a handful of posts and maybe 10 followers. I checked a few more, and they were all roughly the same size. I couldn't find the right place, and time just slipped away.

Then I found one called "Indie Game Devs." It had multiple contributors, so it looked active. The publication's about page listed the editor's contact as an X (Twitter) account, so I signed up for X just to reach them — only to come back and find the editor's account had vanished. I felt like I'd seen a ghost.

I went back and checked the publication's posts again: the most recent one was from 2014. The whole publication had been dead for years. All I'd gotten out of the day was a new X account I didn't need. I figured I'd wasted the whole day and only had one blog topic to show for it.

Applying to a Medium Publication

Later that evening, back on Medium, I happened to check the profile of someone who'd clapped for my Omok devlog. He turned out to be a developer with 15 years of experience, posting regularly to a publication called **Level Up Coding**. It had 340,000 followers, and its about page clearly stated that if you wanted to publish your coding-related writing there, you could just email an application.

I immediately sent the editor an email introducing myself with links to my Medium posts. As it turned out, the answer had been right there in the person who'd clapped for my post — I still find it fascinating how he ever came across my writing in the first place. If I could get published on Level Up Coding, so many more people would read my work. But with that many followers, I figured there'd be plenty of applicants, tough screening, and a long wait.

The Miracle

On August 26th, while cleaning out my inbox, I stumbled into my spam folder — and there it was, a reply from Level Up Coding. The send date: August 15th. It had been sitting quietly in spam for over ten days.

Hi Han,

Thank you for reaching out. We'd love to have you as a contributor to our publication. Your writing feels like a great fit for us. We've already added you as a writer — just follow this guide to start posting: [link]

Feel free to email us anytime if you need anything. We're excited to share your work with our community!

Honestly, I'd already given up hope after not hearing back for so long. I'm not a native English speaker, and every one of my posts carries a note saying "Written in Korean by Soosoo, translated into English by Claude" — I fully expected them to think "AI-written, rejected."

But when I opened the email, it was an acceptance.

I think it was Claude's polished translation of my simple, plain writing that got me in.

Publishing on Level Up Coding

Here's the updated translation for that section: ### Publishing on Level Up Coding I republished all 8 posts I'd already put up on Medium over to Level Up Coding. I went from 0 followers to suddenly having 356,000. On top of that, I could hardly believe that something I'd almost given up on had already happened. It was bedtime, but I was too excited to sleep.

So I went to check out Level Up Coding, and in the meantime its followers had grown to 356,000. I clicked on the writers list and there were a lot of writers too. I'd expected there to be many, but I gave up counting after scrolling to 200. With that many writers, there must be a huge number of posts published every day. Realizing that took a little of the shine off my excitement — but what was left behind was a quiet, steady happiness.

🪄 Written by Soosoo, translated by Claude