In Curation Jail? Finally, Your Way Out

After 3 months inside, my parole came through. Here’s how you can do it too.

I’d written and published 67 articles over three long, hard months, before I had one that was curated.

That worked out to be a staggering success rate of 1.4% if you do the maths, well below the 20–60% oft quoted by the established writers on the platform. I’d been struggling with this, questioning my very worth of writing here, and considering myself a total failure, until I discovered the simple error I’d made on my very first day that had put me here in the first place.

That simple mistake — something that anyone could have done — was neatly covered in my first article on the subject when I was still trying to get to grips with the platform. It’s worth reading that first as context for what follows if you haven’t already. Spoiler alert: it’s to do with republishing old articles.

However you might have gotten into this predicament, the fact is that this will go on indefinitely if you don’t follow through the right actions to break the log jam.

I’d researched the issue heavily by searching both on Google and Medium itself to find ways to get out jail and have my work seen by Medium’s mysterious (and no doubt overworked) curators.

I’d read about the benefits of it, and despite the promise I’d made to myself to succeed regardless of curation levels, I still wanted to experience the high of achieving that goal. After all, I had no basis of comparison and I wanted to see what it actually did, but more on that later.

The stories I read show just how fast Medium’s ecosystem changes. Previously, the advice had been to email the support desk and ask for it because precedent had shown that this can work. And, once you have anything curated, even one single solitary story, your work will, for a time anyway, be off that list and viewed for consideration.

However, even though success had come to people through this route as recently as October 2019, a new message started to appear from the help desk after this that was as disheartening as it was definitive. The simple fact is that the help desk will no longer forward stories to the curators on your behalf— a completely separate task force from the front line staff — just because you ask them nicely.

Clearly, there has been a new edict from the powers that be to close this door of access. The people who had tried it and succeeded had got their timing right and many had succeeded. But no more.

I was able to verify this myself. Having emailed several times, a few before the change and a few more afterwards, the difference in tone and message was noticeable. My last communication left me in no doubt whatsoever:

So, if this route is now closed and Medium don’t — officially anyway — recognize the ‘curation jail’ situation, what can you do? Well, there IS an answer.

Are you even in Curation Jail?

First it’s important to check if you’re actually in jail or just not hitting the mark to start with as each outcome requires a different strategy. Fortunately, there’s a simple test.

Go to your stats dashboard and select a story that wasn’t curated. Under the title at the top, you’ll see a line that says “Not distributed in topics” with a little ‘i’ in a circle next to it. If you hover over the ‘i’ it will give you the reason for non-curation.

There’s two possible messages you can receive. If you get this one:

Congratulations, you’re not in curation jail! It means your work was looked at by curators but wasn’t selected.

It’s important to note that this is absolutely fine. Curation is saved for subjects that are currently hot and content is short on, especially well written pieces on something that’s important to large numbers of people, or new angles on subjects that are constantly devoured by large numbers of writers. The fact is you have very little control over some of these factors and even the very best writers don’t always get curated.

Don’t get all bent out of shape over it, just get better.

You’ll need to up your game, learn to write better or change niches if curation is your goal. Medium makes the rules and they own the game. If you’re going to write here, you need to play it how they intended.

Personally, I firmly believe that you should only write on subjects that you are passionate about, can add value too and can consistently create new material on. This is a leap of faith in many respects as you need to trust that as you write more you will get better and your chances of curation will naturally improve.

However, if you don’t have that message you’re likely to have this one:

This is the dreaded ‘high volume’ message and in truth, it’s only partially true.

Curators are a hard working bunch. They have thousands of new pieces being created each day that need their attention and certain goals to meet. If they receive a certain number of ‘not qualifying’ stories from one account in a row, your account will be flagged as being less likely to make the grade and your work will be ignored completely going forward until something changes.

To clarify, it means that submission you spent hours on then hit enter on with great trepidation was never looked at by anyone at Medium at all.

This is harsh in some ways, especially where you may have ended up there through error (in my case) or perhaps because you were still finding your feet.

For example, curation jail is very common among new writers these days as competition for our eyeballs has grown so much with the platform. If you don’t hit it out of the park pretty quickly, i.e. within your first few articles, you’ll be downgraded and stuck there indefinitely.

And not many new writers get it right first time. We all learn as we go.

Since we know that contacting Medium support will no longer help, what options are left?

How to get out of ‘Curation Jail’

There is still hope, but it means you need to up your game and perhaps step out of your comfort zone a little. As a new writer I found this terrifying at first and I suffered from an acute case of impostor syndrome, but I’m here to tell you it’s entirely possible. I am a living example of it.

I’d contacted many established writers on the platform and two in particular took the time to engage in conversation, something I am eternally grateful for. Those two writers were Zulie Rane and Tom Kuegler and I strongly encourage you to check out their work or subscribe to their newsletters and courses.

If you can’t get curated through conventional means, you can still get your work through the curation firewall by successfully submitting to, and being published in, some of the big publications who effectively act as curators as well as editors.

Those publications include (but are not limited to):

• Anything run by Medium itself such as Modus, Marker, Elemental, GEN, OneZero, Forge and Human Parts
• The largest and most active of publications such as Better Marketing, PS I Love You and The Post Graduate Survival Guide

If you are successfully published here, your article is very likely to be curated in at least one category. For example, my 68th piece, an article about the power of brand from my days as a Brand Manager at Microsoft made publication in ‘Better Marketing’ and was curated in three categories.

It’s worth looking at, even if this is not your area, to get an idea of what curators are looking for:

After submission, there was an editing process, and it went live approximately a week after I sent it in. Confirmation of curation took just a few hours.

However, before you go off and start applying for publications willy-nilly, first research them thoroughly, get an idea of what they’re looking for and make sure you can add value to them.

It will not help your case to just to ‘shotgun spatter’ lots of possibilities and annoy the editors. Check their style guides, check and re-check the curation guidelines, check, edit and re-check your work for errors and sloppy writing and make sure your piece is an unpublished, beautifully presented draft.

There’s plenty of articles on Medium to help with this. It’s worth investing the time.

The effect of curation

I have to say that other people’s experiences of curation held true in my own case. That is, the piece didn’t gain any immediate increase in views beyond what I’d seen, but it continued to produce views and reads beyond its initial publish date, and still does. It’s very satisfying to see it being promoted routinely in stories on various related pages.

It’s also clear that you need at least one curated article to be a ‘Top Writer’ in any subject, though less clear if the category matters. This is an area I still need to learn more on and will update this section with new information as I find it.

The final effect is that the ‘high volume’ message has disappeared — for now. Now, any piece I publish is viewed by curators, but I think it’s clear that I have to maintain certain standards or it threatens to return. Medium also never curates articles on Medium itself, so this story will not make the grade for policy reasons, and arguably I’m risking my status writing it. However, curation is an important and oft discussed issue and it seems worth the risk.

After all, I have received enormous help from the community that exists in Medium, it seems fair to collate and pass that knowledge on.

But wherever you are now, the best advice for all writers remains the same: show up and write.

Consistently.

If you’re struggling with curation, there are still many other proven ways to build readership and followers. Try these:

And, of course, once you’re earning any income at all, you’ll want to keep it! Here’s the simple — legal — steps to take to ensure you keep everything you make: