Distribution (aka Curation) Explained
Dissecting the facts and dispelling the myths
Want to know more about Distribution? Look no further. This page contains everything you need to know (and everything I think I know about it). Don’t expect a light read, though. This page is intended for you to look up specific information, so feel free to skip ahead to a section you like.
What is Distribution?
∘ 1. Distribution
∘ 2. Further Distribution
∘ Summary & Process Infographic
Why does Distribution matter?
∘ Topics
How does the Distribution process work?
∘ Is 100% Distribution rate possible?
∘ Distribution Standards
∘ What increases the chance for stories to become distributed?
∘ Can a story be removed from Distribution?
How to find out if your story is Chosen for Further Distribution?
Distribution Myths
Questions about DistributionWhat is Distribution?
Distribution is the process of finding readers for your content. Better distribution means more views for your stories.
Chosen for further Distribution is the new name Medium came up with for the status known earlier as Curated. Let’s dive into these topics first:
Distribution is actually a two-step process. You’re probably here because you’re interested in the second part; but if you are reading Medium’s documentation, this knowledge helps you understand their texts a bit better.
1. Distribution
When you publish your story, it is distributed to these places:
- your profile
- if you submitted to a publication, it’s very likely it appears somewhere in one of their submenu’s
And there is chance it appears on
- your follower’s homepages
- readers’ recommendation pages
Lastly, the SEO (Search Engine Optimatization) by Medium makes your published stories generally rank high in search results. Chances are that readers find you via their search engine of choice.
2. Further Distribution
If you meet the Distribution Guidelines, Medium goes a step further. If you become Chosen for Further Distribution, there’s a chance your story appears for topics that are associated with it:
- in emails
and there is a higher chance your story appears on follower homepages or recommendation pages.
In addition to become Chosen for Further Distribution, your story now has a chance to become Featured as well.
Summary & Process infographic
So, basically, Distribution and specifically Further Distribution get your story more exposure. They are included in emails and more likely to show up in a reader’s feed, for example.
This is what I understand from Medium’s own explanation. Use these links below to read them yourself:
From this point onwards I refer to Further Distribution simply as Distribution to improve readibility.
The infographic is really just a rough outline. More information about the process can be found below in How does the Distribution process work?
Why does Distribution matter?
There are two major reasons why you should care about Distribution:
- get more views on your stories
- get an ego boost. Your post has been recognized as having high quality content.
But does Medium deliver on its promise? What kind of increase can you expect? Reports of this differ wildly, but most seem to gear towards that it doesn’t improve your stats dramatically. I’d say you can expect about a 10% increase of your regular number of views.
I must stress that this is more feeling than fact-based. Reports about the results of the Distribution-system are not exactly unanimous with their findings. This has most likely to do with for which Topic the story was Distributed. There does seem to be a consensus that Distributed stories do better over an extended period of time.
Also, I feel that I should note one of the platform’s most popular writers, Tim Denning, gets most of his stories Distributed. What that means? Theorycraft away and let me know in the comments.
Topics
When a story becomes distributed, Medium attaches one or more topics to it.
Roughly mid October 2021 Medium started applying topics automatically to most stories. If the story becomes distributed, a human reviewer might use these topics to distribute your story.
These topics are used to determine where to distribute your story. If your story is tagged with the Topic ‘writing’, chances are your story is delivered to a reader who has expressed an interest in writing.
This is just a factoid. It would make sense if this were the case. How does Medium determine whether a reader has interest? I can think of two ways: the topics you have chosen yourself in your preferences and your reading history. I am not sure Medium uses the latter to distribute stories. Looking at my feed, that does make a lot of sense, though.
How does the Distribution process work?
Medium does not answer any questions regarding the Distribution Process. Anything in here are hypotheses about observations. If you disagree with them, or if you have other findings, please let us know in the comments.
There are two ways to get Distributed. One involves getting every single story Distributed. We’ll save that one for the next paragraph.
For most stories the process looks like this
- Publish a story
- Medium automatically attaches Topics to your story (this can take a while)
- a) One of Medium’s human reviewer reads your story and select it for Distribution, b) the human reviewer rejects it for Distribution c) Medium’s algorithm selects your story for Distribution d) you don’t reviewed. Then the story gets the status Undistributed
Step 1 is self-explanatory, step 2 is explained in the paragraph Topics above. It gets interesting at step 3:
If you look at the code, you can see all kinds of interesting things regarding distribution. One is the Distribution Status. A story starts out at Pending for review or Disabled (unlisted stories cannot be Distributed, for example).
If a story is pending for review, the story switches Status automatically after 10 days. It goes from Pending right into Not Distributed. Note that it is still possible that your story becomes Distributed after this. It is probably less likely, though. Some have reported that their story was Distributed a month over the publication date.
Note: I have noticed that a lot of stories stay in this status for over 10 days. A small minority get the actual status of ‘Not Distributed’
- My current hypothesis is that human reviewers check all stories that are less than 10 days old and decide whether to distribute them further. With 170 million subscribers to the platform, I can’t fathom the number of stories that are published daily. It is quite impossible for these mere humans to review them all.
- An additional hypothesis here: human reviewers use the Topics that the algorithm selected for them. In this way the algorithm gets trained and are they one step closer closer to full automation with each story they review.
Regarding c) Medium claims that they employ an algorithm to choose stories for further Distribution automatically. I do think that this is the future for Medium, but I am not sure their use of this algorithm is widespread. Maybe they refer to the 100%-distribution rate stories.
Is 100% Distribution rate possible?
There’s a very simple way to always have your story Chosen for Further Distribution.
If you publish to certain publications, your story will always get Chosen for Further Distribution. No exceptions. Even shortform, which is illegible for Distribution gets Distribution.
Other than it, it probably just comes down to writing great content and have a reviewer notice you at some point in time. I think they follow their own set of favourite writers and distribute them just because they are on their radar.
Distribution Standards
Medium published their Distribution Standards for you to review. Link below. Summary: write quality.
The same page also contains a list of things you should not do. This ranges from violations of Medium’s rules to various disqualifiers like having links in headlines, clickbait articles, non-english stories, and erotica.
What increases the chance for stories to become distributed?
The list below contains my personal beliefs; they are backed up by various reports. Disagree? Got something to add? Let me know in the comments!
- your article is recent
- you get a lot of traffic to your article as soon as you published it
- you already have multiple curated articles
- your story is quality and has some actual substance
Can a story be removed from Distribution?
Yes, stories that have been Chosen for Further Distribution can lose their distribution status.
- ̶T̶h̶e̶o̶r̶y̶:̶ ̶o̶n̶e̶ ̶o̶f̶ ̶m̶y̶ ̶s̶t̶o̶r̶i̶e̶s̶ ̶l̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶i̶t̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶t̶u̶s̶.̶ ̶I̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶a̶ ̶p̶o̶s̶t̶ ̶a̶b̶o̶u̶t̶ ̶M̶e̶d̶i̶u̶m̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶t̶h̶u̶s̶ ̶v̶i̶o̶l̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ ̶M̶e̶d̶i̶u̶m̶’̶s̶ ̶s̶t̶a̶n̶d̶a̶r̶d̶s̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶t̶r̶i̶b̶u̶t̶i̶o̶n̶.̶ ̶I̶ ̶t̶h̶i̶n̶k̶ ̶i̶t̶ ̶w̶a̶s̶ ̶c̶h̶o̶s̶e̶n̶ ̶f̶o̶r̶ ̶d̶i̶s̶t̶r̶i̶b̶u̶t̶i̶o̶n̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶a̶n̶ ̶a̶l̶g̶o̶r̶i̶t̶h̶m̶ ̶a̶n̶d̶ ̶r̶e̶m̶o̶v̶e̶d̶ ̶l̶a̶t̶e̶r̶ ̶b̶y̶ ̶a̶ ̶h̶u̶m̶a̶n̶ ̶r̶e̶v̶i̶e̶w̶e̶r̶.̶
- Contested factoid: edit an article after it becomes Distributed and it loses its Distribution status. Sometimes, that is. Sometimes it keeps its status.
How to find out if your story is Chosen for Further Distribution?
To know whether a story is Chosen for further Distribution, there are a couple of ways:
- You receive an email as soon as it gets distributed. (it can lose its status later, mind you)
- You can check the details of a story on your stats-page. It says so right at the top and also in the graph
- You can use my chrome extension to find out
- You can dig around in the page source and look for the information.
Obviously, I would say #3 is the easiest way to keep tabs on your Distributed stuff. Version 3.0 Popcorn also supports downloading your statistics, including the primary Topics.
The newest version of the chrome extension can be found here.
Distribution Myths
If you have been around on Medium long enough, you have probably heard of Curation Jail. Supposedly, if you’re in there, your stories can no longer become distributed. There is no way of knowing you’re locked up and only luck can get you out of there. As Medium never answers questions about Distribution, this has never been confirmed.
I would say this Curation Jail does not exist. I can’t fathom a platform that promotes writers to have something like this in place. Sometimes you’re just down on your luck, or maybe the quality of your content really is lower. No need to bring superstition in.
This other myth is way more likely, in my very humble opinion.
Maybe it’s not much of myth, but more an urban legend. I want it to be true:
I think it involves a pogo stick and every golf course in California. You might want to check with writers who just had their first story that got over a thousand views. They seem to know everything.
The wise words above are by Hogan Torah. Sadly I have been unable to get him to us more about the process. I’m sure he knows more. That makes suspect he has very reliable sources.
Questions about Distribution
As Medium tends not to answer any questions about their Distribution process, let me know in the comments and I try to answer as best as I can.
This page is updated whenever new information becomes available and serves as a ‘More information’-page for my Chrome Extension Medium Distribution Info. There is quite a bit of delay in uploading new versions to the Chrome Store, so I opted to put all the information I don’t want to cram on other screens onto a page right here.
Last updated on November 18, 2021
