Medium “Short Story” tag statistics
How busy the Short Story 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 11.4 days
Busier than 42% of 73 tracked tags
21% of top stories are by writers with <100 followers
Competition and chances for new writers
With roughly 70 stories a day, Short Story is busier than 42% of the 73 tags we track. Its reader-to-story ratio (8,867 followers per daily story) is higher than 19% of tags — fewer readers per story than average.
68% of stories here come from writers with fewer than 100 followers, and they account for 21% of the best-performing quarter of stories. 36% of stories are behind the paywall (Partner Program), and the average story takes 5.4 minutes to read.
Publications that publish Short Story stories
| Publication | Followers | Short Story stories (last 11.4d) |
|---|---|---|
| ILLUMINATION | 327K | 15 |
| Fiction Shorts | 39K | 14 |
| Did You Know…Short Fun Facts | 1.1K | 12 |
| The Quintessential Q | 4.6K | 12 |
| Pen With Paper | 22K | 10 |
| The Daily Cuppa | 7.6K | 10 |
| No Time | 14K | 7 |
| Frequency Change | 393 | 7 |
| Alex in Japan | 2 | 7 |
| Microcosm | 2.3K | 6 |
Top Short Story stories right now
- The Shadow Narrative
- Did You Know… Coca-Cola Was First Served at a Pharmacy Counter?
- Did You Know…This Name Has 85 Letters
- The World Rewards Pretenders, Not Perfection
- Not Every Part Of Your Journey Needs To be Shared with Everyone.
- The Frog Who Hired a Bear as His Bodyguard
- The Tattoo Whisperer
- Whatever It Is, It’s Getting Closer
- Did You Know… What Was the First Video Uploaded to YouTube?
- My Husband Found a Love Letter in Our Mailbox — Sent From a Dead Man
FAQ
- How many stories are published in the Short Story tag on Medium?
- About 70 per day (490 per week), based on 800 stories published in the 11.4-day window before our last scan. The tag has 228,458 stories in total.
- Is the Short Story tag competitive?
- Competition is moderate: it is busier than 42% of the 73 tags we track. There are about 8,867 tag followers per new daily story.
- Can new writers succeed in Short Story?
- 21% of the top-performing stories (top 25% by claps) came from writers with fewer than 100 followers, so the tag is mixed for newcomers. 68% of all stories in the tag come from such writers.