What does “Our curators were not able to review this story for distribution in topics due to high volume” mean?

You have probably seen this message on the “details” page of one of your Medium stories.

If so, it’s not exactly the greatest message you want to receive. It sort of means you’re in curation jail. Yikes.

What’s Curation Jail?

Curation jail means that Medium curators are not even reviewing your article at the moment. You typically get a “Our curators were not able to review this story for distribution in topics due to high volume” message if you’re in jail.

Who Are The Medium Curators?

The Medium curators are a global team of dozens who choose which stories to promote more on the platform.

How Does Medium Curation Work?

Medium curation is like the Fast and the Furious series. Hear me out. Remember how they use Nas all the time? Or nitrous? To boost their cars?

Well, when Medium curates your story, your views skyrocket. You can get “curated” in certain tags like “travel,” “productivity,” and many more.

This one above was curated in “Culture” and it got a boost in views because of it. I go over this in other blog posts.

Why Is Curation Jail Bad?

Well, one of the only ways you can get views as a writer is by getting curated on Medium. You sort of need to get curated if you ever want to see substantial views on the platform. And when you’re getting the “Our curators were not able to review this story for distribution in topics due to high volume” message, it means you’re saying goodbye to views. Big time.

How Can I Get Out Of Curation Jail?

I also talk about this in other blog posts, but the short answer? Get into publications on Medium. If you can do that, you’ll stop seeing the “Our curators were not able to review this story for distribution in topics due to high volume” message.