Medium “Fiction” tag statistics
How busy the Fiction tag is, how stories perform there and where they get published. Competition is moderate, and the tag is mixed for new writers.
Updated Oct 20, 2026 · based on 800 stories from the last 10.2 days
Busier than 49% of 73 tracked tags
24% of top stories are by writers with <100 followers
Competition and chances for new writers
With roughly 78 stories a day, Fiction is busier than 49% of the 73 tags we track. Its reader-to-story ratio (27,292 followers per daily story) is higher than 42% of tags — fewer readers per story than average.
64% of stories here come from writers with fewer than 100 followers, and they account for 24% of the best-performing quarter of stories. 37% of stories are behind the paywall (Partner Program), and the average story takes 5.9 minutes to read.
Publications that publish Fiction stories
| Publication | Followers | Fiction stories (last 10.2d) |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction Shorts | 39K | 15 |
| NEW LITERARY SOCIETY | 3.4K | 13 |
| The Quintessential Q | 4.6K | 12 |
| First Line Fiction | 1.7K | 9 |
| Agent X and the Edge of Reality | 2 | 9 |
| The Inkwell | 2K | 8 |
| Frequency Change | 392 | 8 |
| The Lark | 7.5K | 8 |
| ILLUMINATION | 327K | 7 |
| The Story Well | 552 | 7 |
Top Fiction stories right now
- Death Needs a Rebrand
- The hard tears!
- Taradiddles and Trishuls
- The hidden story of them!
- Getting Trapped in Walmart
- The Frog Who Hired a Bear as His Bodyguard
- Hail, Hail, The Crew’s All Here
- THE PARAMOUR’S SIDE OF THE STORY
- The Things We Leave Behind — A Writing Challenge: I Tried to Run Away From Home
- The October Curiosity Club—Part One: The Pumpkin Pie Alibi: A Cozy Halloween Mystery
FAQ
- How many stories are published in the Fiction tag on Medium?
- About 78 per day (549 per week), based on 800 stories published in the 10.2-day window before our last scan. The tag has 267,552 stories in total.
- Is the Fiction tag competitive?
- Competition is moderate: it is busier than 49% of the 73 tags we track. There are about 27,292 tag followers per new daily story.
- Can new writers succeed in Fiction?
- 24% of the top-performing stories (top 25% by claps) came from writers with fewer than 100 followers, so the tag is mixed for newcomers. 64% of all stories in the tag come from such writers.