Attention Memoirists: Your Treasured Memoirs and Personal Essays Can Be Boosted Here at The Memoirist

Humans are pushing back against the algorithms

It’s a great pleasure to inform you that The Memoirist has been invited to join the Medium Boost Nomination Pilot. This means that now your stories in our beloved publications are capable of receiving the coveted Medium Boost. The Boost has the ability to generate several hundred to several thousands of views or reads to your work.

When I received the email to join the program, I pulled off the road to reply. As exciting as it is for me personally, the real benefit is to the writers. KiKi Walter and I are thrilled to be able to help our writers do the best they can. We will be working in tandem to curate/edit/nominate only the best stories.

• Update* Here’s the Medium blog post for more information:

As we well know, everything on Medium can change virtually overnight. This especially goes for the Boost program they’re working on. But, just like writing, sometimes the only way to learn is to jump right in and do it.

So that is what we’re doing.

The Boost Nomination Pilot seems to represent a personal touch in the publishing world — specifically on Medium. What better way to make sure people read your stories than having actual people nominate them for more attention?

Obviously, the ability to nominate stories for a Boost can come with a potential dark side. People are always looking for an edge, or a sure thing, though this program has a “checks and balances” aspect to it. The curators had to sign a contract with Medium to do this, so rest assured we won’t be taking bribes.

The best part is that it’s transparency at its best. Instead of hiding behind numbers and stats and algorithms and AI, leaving people wondering why their stories went largely unread, Medium is giving the power to the readers and writers to find the amazing work that needs to be read by more people.

This puts the onus, dear writers, upon your shoulders. You need to put out your best work, and only the best work will be nominated for a Boost.

Medium has given us the ability to curate and nominate several stories per week, which will then be read and decided upon by staff curators. We nominate the best work, so we are not the final decision in the process. With our nominations, Medium’s curation team will provide feedback on if our nominees were selected or what we need to be looking for.

As editors, we are encouraged to work with you to polish your stories to make them even better to qualify for a potential Boost. All the editors at our publications are aware of this, and they’ll be sure to bring standout stories to our attention.

Medium has invited editors from many genres. Publishers of every background and style are present so the Boosts cover the bases. While they ask that we stick to our own areas of expertise, if we come across anything on Medium that we think meets the criteria, we are welcome to nominate it. That said, we were invited for our specific publishing roles and genres, and many of your favorite publications are already in the program.

As far as what we’re looking for, we need your stories to be top-notch. To start, we can’t nominate anything that doesn’t meet Medium Distribution Standards, which can be found here:

Ultimately, for our memoirists and personal essayists, you have the power. You must make us feel your memoir. We need to go back to that place with you, see what you see, feel what you feel, touch what you touch. We want to laugh and cry when you do. The same goes for a personal essay. Take us on a journey with you. Use original imagery. Make the story mean as much to us as it does to you. Make us think about it days later.

We have been tasked with bringing the best of the best of Medium’s memoir/personal essays to the table, and I have no doubt that you are the writers to do it.

We look forward to reading your best stories.

Love, Chris and Kristi.

P.S. A special thanks to the editorial staff of The Memoirist, Age of Empathy, Black Bear, etc. We love you. For real.

Suzanne Pisano, kasey sparks, Bob Merckel, Arpad Nagy, Becca CO 🌵, Michelle A. Cmarik, Michele Maize, Kendra Sparkles, Ilona Goanos, Bernice P., Sally Prag, Preeti Ramachandran, Marketa Zvelebil, Yana Bostongirl, George Blue Kelly.

Here’s Tony Stubblebine’s original article: