Thanks Shannon. A really insightful read.
I’m pleased to say that currently around 80% of my stories get curated. This is after I went through a period at the start of this year when my curation rate really dropped, so I decided to review how I was writing my pieces.
My sense was that the curation practice on Medium got tightened up at the beginning of 2019, and that the selectors began to focus on stories with some evidence of authority behind them.
My own background is in art history, culture and creativity, and I tend to fare much better in these topics, probably because there are fewer writers posting in these areas, but also because I can draw on my experience built up over the years. I occasionally try out different topics and invariably these stories don’t get curated.

So my advice would be:

• Try to talk about subjects on which you have some authority or knowledge.
• In your profile snippet, give some suggestion as to why your voice is relevant so there is a tie-in between yourself as the author and the story you’ve written.
• Think about occupying a niche area and building experience of writing in that field.

One of the great pleasures of using Medium is that you can experiment and learn with every story you publish, so your sense of what works and what doesn’t can evolve. That’s certainly been my approach.

Well done on your amazing Medium success Shannon, by the way.