Rahul Misra , I most certainly agree with your comments about the extreme inconsistency of the Lit feed. There is so much wonderful short fiction on Medium only a tiny fraction of which ever shows up on the Lit feed. It’s like Medium only has one curator working on Lit and that is their secondary task; something they get around to only when they’re done with their primary tasks. Like you said, Lit is an afterthought with Medium; something they put up with but don’t consider important. I sure hope that changes some day.

As for recommending our own stories, for the longest time I didn’t even know we could do that. And consequently I never had any story appear in any feed (other than New For Your Network). Since I started recommending my own stories I’ve had four stories that the curators allowed to appear in feeds. One was a throwaway story that I wrote in like 25 minutes and the other three were stories that I spent many hours on and which I was very proud of. Of course I’ve published many, many other stories that I was equally proud of and which I also spent many, many hours on that never saw the light of day (many of which still have never been read).

By the way, that throwaway story I never recommended. I don’t recommend throwaway stories; only those that I’m proud of. But it was timely, about a major event that had just happened and that may be why it got picked up. It remains the only story of mine that has appeared in feeds that I did not recommend. And curiously it out-performed anything I had ever published on Medium in the last two and a half years.

I also agree with you that the curators probably don’t take recommendations by the author very seriously. When they see recommendations from me in their tips inbox they probably think, “Oh God, not HIM again.” But I will continue to do it because my very livelihood depends on it.