Leaving ManyStories Was a Big Mistake

Every writer looking to grow on Medium in 2023 needs ManyStories — whether they like it or not

Screenshot from ManyStories.com

ManyStories is a third-party platform created to help Medium writers reach a wider audience and expand their readership far beyond the pool of Medium.com users.

It’s now the sole product of Penname, created by software engineer Lincoln W Daniel.

There also used to be Smedian — a Medium publication leaderboard for editors seeking writers to grow — and Signal — an additional distribution network for writers to share content — within the fold. However, due to limitations on scalability, Lincoln shut them both down back in September 2022.

This was only a positive sign.

Here’s why.

ManyStories has been around for a few years now and its core is focused on laying foundations rather than rapid growth, which I admire.

That being said, a number of features have already been implemented in Beta mode to help improve the reading and publishing experience:

1. Each week, they feature their top writers in a sidebar.
2. The most engaged readers are featured weekly in another sidebar.
3. For easy navigation, visitors can type inquiries in a search field.
4. There’s a writer’s page where you can check out writer profiles and their stories.
5. A ‘collections’ tab shows you stories that writers have curated.
6. There are review and guide sections that feature member stories about the site.
7. A carousel widget displays the writers’ names, story titles, and followers, and you can follow them if you wish.
8. Additionally, there’s a display of the most-read articles/stories in a large carousel widget on the top banner.
9. You can log in with your Google account or with your email address to share your story.
10. Your articles can be shared by simply providing the website URL.

I appreciate all the work that’s been done so far with this iterative approach. It’s a business model that primes ManyStories to serve writers and their…