That angry email you got made my brain short-circuit a bit. What does she want, for the submission guide info to be beamed directly into her mind?? “Who has time for that crap” Well, uh, the writers who read submission guides and get published. That’s who. 🤦🏽♀️
I would much rather have the sites curated by human beings who have read the articles than bots that aren't paying attention at all. It's way more authentic.
Those people whom you and the WC reject are better off self-publishing. No rules to follow there. I know as a current and (possibly) future publication owner that you need to cultivate a good image for the sake of respectability. I'm guess I'm lucky that my publication topic is very specialized.
But I do know that I have started to benefit from the algorithm changes, so that gives me encouragement to stick around. I used to make between $20 and $40 a month, and this was the first month where I cracked $100.
Wow that's wonderful to hear, David! Your engagement has always been fantastic, so it's not surprising that your earnings have gone way up! :D Also, sorry I'm taking so long to get to your stories! My life has just gotten busier and busier: I'm getting many more clients for my therapy practice, and I spend so much time discussing things with fellow boost nominators. So I end up reading even more slowly than before. I WILL get there but will need more time. You might have noticed that my publishing speed has gone way down too, lol. Thank you for all your kind support, though. It is much appreciated! 🙏
I think the explosion of Substack newsletters on specific topics is a clear indicator that a general reading site like Medium may not be a working model long term. As a long time and relatively successful Medium writer I have to admit I find very little I want to read on the site. Quality is a big problem for me, and the lack of originality and thoughtful writing. It’s simply not there much of the time.
When I subscribe to a newsletter, I am buying into that writer’s personal fascination with some aspect of the world. It might be a very specific niche like esoteric bread making or it might be a consistently thought-provoking world view. As a reader I do not get that from Medium and I’m sorry to say I’m not sure I ever did.
I freely admit that I got wrapped up in my role as a writer there and paid less attention to readers. My substack newsletter has had the opposite effect, a deeper connection with readers as fellow humans. My readers curate me when they stay with me.
This came up earlier today in a writer's group I'm in. One of the guys writes in a very narrow lane, and as far as I know, he's the only one covering what he does-and he's good at it.
A platform like Substack is much more beneficial to him than Medium might be for the reasons you've mentioned.
You've got me thinking about the Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen quote from "Out of Africa" — "The world is made round so we can't see too far ahead," or words to that effect. Whether writing sites or even writers are doomed in the long run, who knows? The interwebs are like every other technical marvel mankind comes up with: we have more power at our fingertips than we know what to do with, and relatively less wisdom to use it. I say you're a brave and hardy soul to embark on another Medium publication and subject yourself to a firehose of submissions from which you have to deflect the bots, the spam, and the too-lazy-to-read-the-guidelines stuff. But I'm grateful that you do. As for the "doomed" question, I am sure humans will continue to tell stories no matter what, in whatever way they can. But we might end up doing it while roasting rats around a trash can fire if we don't get our act together.
Oh for sure, we will always tell stories. Like Margaret Atwood said, they are built in. We come with them. And there will always be people who try to game the system every way they can and the trick is to figure out how to make the good outweigh the bad.
Sep 8, 2023·edited Sep 8, 2023Liked by Linda Caroll
I get a few submissions that don't fit, but also ones that are just streams of consciousness. And I'm with you; if a writer can't be bothered to read the submission requirements, why should I be bothered to edit/publish their work?
As for Boost specifically: I have no idea if it'll work long-term, but I do know that I was a very loud critic of what Medium had devolved into previously (all Meta, all the time). Again, it's early but so far I think Boost +the other changes implemented have helped improve the reading experience for people.
I was a loud critic before, too, so I get it. I saw a comment in the old Slack before it was closed that opened my eyes a little. Someone said there's not room for more nominators because we're all fighting over the same top writers already. The official reply was that there are tens of thousands of stories published every day, there's lots of room to grow the program. That was an aha moment for me. I'm looking for voices that are strong and unseen but apparently not everyone is.
If boosters are looking for boostable stories, I’d like to recommend Brain Labs (https://medium.com/brain-labs). They have some high quality articles thanks to the editing of Andrew Rodwin.
I appreciate all that you do, Linda - with the boost program, the submissions to some of the pubs I am editor for are through the roof - many of them need a lot of work/edits even for normal publishing -
It's a lot of work for sure. And that's just checking for little errors in well written stories. Too many people hit submit without even re-reading it. I have seen sentences stop right in the middle. Once, I was trying to read a submission and the writer kept editing. Entire paragraphs disappeared and appeared. Why submit if it's not done? It's weird. lol
Sep 8, 2023·edited Sep 8, 2023Liked by Linda Caroll
I used to take the time to do a lot of that editing for people. I've now come to regard those submissions as almost disrespectful (?) and decline them.
To be clear, I'm not talking about a comma here or there or the odd typo, but rather the ones that weren't even given second glance before they hit submit.
Yup, that's the problem of which I speak when I say human intervention is the upside and the downside. You have probably been nominated several times. Our job as nominators is to get a "feel for" what gets accepted by the curators. And while the pool of nominators keeps growing to comb through all the stories, the pool of curators is relatively small.
I'm with you Elizabeth. I was curated roughly 85% of the time. With boosting?? Nada. Medium lost its appeal to me, someone who's been there for 4+ years, because they keep dicking around with algorithms and how they run things. I am now #TeamSubstack all the way.
Linda, this is a very thoughtful piece. I have to share your somewhat pessimistic view that the boost problem will not address the challenges on the macro level felt by writers wanting to be read. I had the luck to get boosted a few times, and it was on some odd topics--why Dickens speaks to me in a way that Colleen Hoover doesn't, why first impressions should be understood as first impressions, and why the empty nest is really a revolving door. The likelihood that I could land on another odd topic that interests the curators is pretty small, and of course, the problem is that once you've been boosted, you see the difference in how much you're read. You have to work hard not to let that experience cloud the writing that you want to do.
So am I bullish on Boosting and Medium? Not really, but since I don't know what the future holds, and on a good day, I like to write, I will keep on truckin'. I have relationships on Medium and editors that I like, and a goal to, at some point, introduce myself to your pub, even though you have a long queue of great pieces and a high rejection rate.
Hi Linda. Good question. The dominant paradigm ruling Medium is that of a “push” system, meaning product is being pushed out into play, with few barriers, regardless of the needs or asks of the recipients. The boost and approval program is a “pull” design, meaning the participants are trying to retrieve information only as they want and need it. This is an oversimplification, there are myriad other factors to account for in a system of this size and depth (like sorting), but let’s visualize it this way: trying to reach into a blasting firehose to retrieve a particular drop of water.
Good f’ing luck.
I think one solution may lie in increasing the size of the feed into the boost funnel, but as you note there are choke points farther down. It’s a tough one that only experimentation will solve. We hope. Thanks for making the effort, IMO it's becoming a better place.
What I think would help us boost nominators, is an advanced search function, where we can use several filters at once. I would filter for LGBTQ, and stories of at least 5 mins, for example. Few stories under 5 mins get accepted, unless they're poetry. :( And the vast majority of stories I find just by searching LGBTQ or any other queer tag, are under 5 mins!
Another writer I know (not a nommer), thought that human curation was too biased and unreliable. And if you don't get boosted, you earn next to nothing (compared to before). While the algorithm wasn't perfect, he still thought it was better. He asked why his YouTube recommendations are well tailored to his interests. Good point. I find my YouTube recommendations to be pretty good, too.
It would be great if Medium had a better way to tailor the recommendation feed to readers. I hear lots of complaints from people who see many topics they're not interested in, and not seeing much from their favorite authors. Though some other people, like myself, do get a great, tailored feed. My hunch is that you send a stronger signal to Medium's algorithm if you comment, rather than just clapping or highlighting or clicking. But many people don't have the time to comment, right? I hardly have much time nowadays either, but the few stories I read, I usually leave a comment. So maybe that's why the algorithm adapted to my interests quickly?
A friend and I actually compared feeds. Wow no wonder she complained that her feed is boring. It IS boring! (At least to us. No offense to those writers but we're not into those topics.) It looks like a lot of boosted stories get pushed to everyone, even those who don't follow the topic, the pub, or the author, from what my friend reported (they also report from their friends' experiences). In contrast, she looked at my feed, and said wow, my feed looks so much more interesting than hers. 😂
Yeah I know from talking on one of those Zoom calls, that Medium staff aren't happy with the current discovery /recommendations feed, either, and hope to change it so that people can see their favorite authors, at least. Idk when that will be, but I do think the recommendations algorithm not working well for many people, is a big part of the problem.
We all have significant questions about the future of writing platforms and how they can adapt to the evolving landscape. While there may not be easy answers, discussions like these are essential for the writing community to explore potential solutions and innovations. Thank you for sharing your insights and sparking this conversation!
I'm simply being a good Buddhist and going with the flow. For now, this moment, I'm grateful for Medium. A place where poetry is read - invaluable for me. Priceless, actually.
There is some stubborn pride. For me, there's also frustration when good stories get turned down for reasons I do not understand but that's not related to writing, just to nominating.
That angry email you got made my brain short-circuit a bit. What does she want, for the submission guide info to be beamed directly into her mind?? “Who has time for that crap” Well, uh, the writers who read submission guides and get published. That’s who. 🤦🏽♀️
Right? No need to read any submission guides, just self publish. Cripes. lol
Yes!! This made me cringe so hard!!! Seriously?!?!? Why waste time submitting??
I would much rather have the sites curated by human beings who have read the articles than bots that aren't paying attention at all. It's way more authentic.
Those people whom you and the WC reject are better off self-publishing. No rules to follow there. I know as a current and (possibly) future publication owner that you need to cultivate a good image for the sake of respectability. I'm guess I'm lucky that my publication topic is very specialized.
But I do know that I have started to benefit from the algorithm changes, so that gives me encouragement to stick around. I used to make between $20 and $40 a month, and this was the first month where I cracked $100.
That's awesome David, nice to hear you had an income jump from the changes :)
Congrats David!
Wow that's wonderful to hear, David! Your engagement has always been fantastic, so it's not surprising that your earnings have gone way up! :D Also, sorry I'm taking so long to get to your stories! My life has just gotten busier and busier: I'm getting many more clients for my therapy practice, and I spend so much time discussing things with fellow boost nominators. So I end up reading even more slowly than before. I WILL get there but will need more time. You might have noticed that my publishing speed has gone way down too, lol. Thank you for all your kind support, though. It is much appreciated! 🙏
I think the explosion of Substack newsletters on specific topics is a clear indicator that a general reading site like Medium may not be a working model long term. As a long time and relatively successful Medium writer I have to admit I find very little I want to read on the site. Quality is a big problem for me, and the lack of originality and thoughtful writing. It’s simply not there much of the time.
When I subscribe to a newsletter, I am buying into that writer’s personal fascination with some aspect of the world. It might be a very specific niche like esoteric bread making or it might be a consistently thought-provoking world view. As a reader I do not get that from Medium and I’m sorry to say I’m not sure I ever did.
I freely admit that I got wrapped up in my role as a writer there and paid less attention to readers. My substack newsletter has had the opposite effect, a deeper connection with readers as fellow humans. My readers curate me when they stay with me.
It happens to a lot of people -- easy to get wrapped up in the writing and less in the reading. A lot of writers that do okay there find the same.
This came up earlier today in a writer's group I'm in. One of the guys writes in a very narrow lane, and as far as I know, he's the only one covering what he does-and he's good at it.
A platform like Substack is much more beneficial to him than Medium might be for the reasons you've mentioned.
You've got me thinking about the Isak Dinesen/Karen Blixen quote from "Out of Africa" — "The world is made round so we can't see too far ahead," or words to that effect. Whether writing sites or even writers are doomed in the long run, who knows? The interwebs are like every other technical marvel mankind comes up with: we have more power at our fingertips than we know what to do with, and relatively less wisdom to use it. I say you're a brave and hardy soul to embark on another Medium publication and subject yourself to a firehose of submissions from which you have to deflect the bots, the spam, and the too-lazy-to-read-the-guidelines stuff. But I'm grateful that you do. As for the "doomed" question, I am sure humans will continue to tell stories no matter what, in whatever way they can. But we might end up doing it while roasting rats around a trash can fire if we don't get our act together.
Oh for sure, we will always tell stories. Like Margaret Atwood said, they are built in. We come with them. And there will always be people who try to game the system every way they can and the trick is to figure out how to make the good outweigh the bad.
I get a few submissions that don't fit, but also ones that are just streams of consciousness. And I'm with you; if a writer can't be bothered to read the submission requirements, why should I be bothered to edit/publish their work?
As for Boost specifically: I have no idea if it'll work long-term, but I do know that I was a very loud critic of what Medium had devolved into previously (all Meta, all the time). Again, it's early but so far I think Boost +the other changes implemented have helped improve the reading experience for people.
I was a loud critic before, too, so I get it. I saw a comment in the old Slack before it was closed that opened my eyes a little. Someone said there's not room for more nominators because we're all fighting over the same top writers already. The official reply was that there are tens of thousands of stories published every day, there's lots of room to grow the program. That was an aha moment for me. I'm looking for voices that are strong and unseen but apparently not everyone is.
Yes, I regularly find amazing writers to boost who have a tiny following. Some had literally zero followers. 😅 Really hidden gems!
If boosters are looking for boostable stories, I’d like to recommend Brain Labs (https://medium.com/brain-labs). They have some high quality articles thanks to the editing of Andrew Rodwin.
Thanks, I'll check them out :)
I appreciate all that you do, Linda - with the boost program, the submissions to some of the pubs I am editor for are through the roof - many of them need a lot of work/edits even for normal publishing -
It's a lot of work for sure. And that's just checking for little errors in well written stories. Too many people hit submit without even re-reading it. I have seen sentences stop right in the middle. Once, I was trying to read a submission and the writer kept editing. Entire paragraphs disappeared and appeared. Why submit if it's not done? It's weird. lol
I used to take the time to do a lot of that editing for people. I've now come to regard those submissions as almost disrespectful (?) and decline them.
To be clear, I'm not talking about a comma here or there or the odd typo, but rather the ones that weren't even given second glance before they hit submit.
Agree. There's a lot of that. It boggles my mind a little.
I’m going to have to reflect on that, Linda, and let you know. ;)
Smarty pants :)
I dunno, Linda. i used to always get "curated" and I have never been boosted.
Yup, that's the problem of which I speak when I say human intervention is the upside and the downside. You have probably been nominated several times. Our job as nominators is to get a "feel for" what gets accepted by the curators. And while the pool of nominators keeps growing to comb through all the stories, the pool of curators is relatively small.
I'm with you Elizabeth. I was curated roughly 85% of the time. With boosting?? Nada. Medium lost its appeal to me, someone who's been there for 4+ years, because they keep dicking around with algorithms and how they run things. I am now #TeamSubstack all the way.
Linda, this is a very thoughtful piece. I have to share your somewhat pessimistic view that the boost problem will not address the challenges on the macro level felt by writers wanting to be read. I had the luck to get boosted a few times, and it was on some odd topics--why Dickens speaks to me in a way that Colleen Hoover doesn't, why first impressions should be understood as first impressions, and why the empty nest is really a revolving door. The likelihood that I could land on another odd topic that interests the curators is pretty small, and of course, the problem is that once you've been boosted, you see the difference in how much you're read. You have to work hard not to let that experience cloud the writing that you want to do.
So am I bullish on Boosting and Medium? Not really, but since I don't know what the future holds, and on a good day, I like to write, I will keep on truckin'. I have relationships on Medium and editors that I like, and a goal to, at some point, introduce myself to your pub, even though you have a long queue of great pieces and a high rejection rate.
That's it exactly, Jill. Once you've been boosted you really see the difference between what is and what isn't.
Hi Linda. Good question. The dominant paradigm ruling Medium is that of a “push” system, meaning product is being pushed out into play, with few barriers, regardless of the needs or asks of the recipients. The boost and approval program is a “pull” design, meaning the participants are trying to retrieve information only as they want and need it. This is an oversimplification, there are myriad other factors to account for in a system of this size and depth (like sorting), but let’s visualize it this way: trying to reach into a blasting firehose to retrieve a particular drop of water.
Good f’ing luck.
I think one solution may lie in increasing the size of the feed into the boost funnel, but as you note there are choke points farther down. It’s a tough one that only experimentation will solve. We hope. Thanks for making the effort, IMO it's becoming a better place.
When you say "size of the feed," what specifically do you mean? I'm asking because in theory, almost every story published is eligible to be Boosted.
I'm thinking more boosters out there plucking stories to submit. That should help find more of the (worthwhile) needles in the haystacks.
Gotcha. Thanks. Not sure how much they plan to scale it, but they've been working to expand the program to include more Boosters.
Hey Linda,
What I think would help us boost nominators, is an advanced search function, where we can use several filters at once. I would filter for LGBTQ, and stories of at least 5 mins, for example. Few stories under 5 mins get accepted, unless they're poetry. :( And the vast majority of stories I find just by searching LGBTQ or any other queer tag, are under 5 mins!
Another writer I know (not a nommer), thought that human curation was too biased and unreliable. And if you don't get boosted, you earn next to nothing (compared to before). While the algorithm wasn't perfect, he still thought it was better. He asked why his YouTube recommendations are well tailored to his interests. Good point. I find my YouTube recommendations to be pretty good, too.
It would be great if Medium had a better way to tailor the recommendation feed to readers. I hear lots of complaints from people who see many topics they're not interested in, and not seeing much from their favorite authors. Though some other people, like myself, do get a great, tailored feed. My hunch is that you send a stronger signal to Medium's algorithm if you comment, rather than just clapping or highlighting or clicking. But many people don't have the time to comment, right? I hardly have much time nowadays either, but the few stories I read, I usually leave a comment. So maybe that's why the algorithm adapted to my interests quickly?
A friend and I actually compared feeds. Wow no wonder she complained that her feed is boring. It IS boring! (At least to us. No offense to those writers but we're not into those topics.) It looks like a lot of boosted stories get pushed to everyone, even those who don't follow the topic, the pub, or the author, from what my friend reported (they also report from their friends' experiences). In contrast, she looked at my feed, and said wow, my feed looks so much more interesting than hers. 😂
Yeah I know from talking on one of those Zoom calls, that Medium staff aren't happy with the current discovery /recommendations feed, either, and hope to change it so that people can see their favorite authors, at least. Idk when that will be, but I do think the recommendations algorithm not working well for many people, is a big part of the problem.
We all have significant questions about the future of writing platforms and how they can adapt to the evolving landscape. While there may not be easy answers, discussions like these are essential for the writing community to explore potential solutions and innovations. Thank you for sharing your insights and sparking this conversation!
I'm simply being a good Buddhist and going with the flow. For now, this moment, I'm grateful for Medium. A place where poetry is read - invaluable for me. Priceless, actually.
There is some stubborn pride. For me, there's also frustration when good stories get turned down for reasons I do not understand but that's not related to writing, just to nominating.