Author Payment Cuts

Community Episode Fan Community
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In the last few days we have seen very a well loved author leave this community. Days that follow we see another 2. I’m afraid there are more to follow. We as a community need to band together and fight. I would really hate to see this app to disappear but it seems that way, very slowly. Today I’m asking for anyone out there to speak out and fight for this community that is worth saving. Throughout the years we have seen, so many different eras of writing, from tropes to concepts, ideas even. It’s really hard seeing and imagining what’s in store for this community if more of these strict guidelines and regulations come to follow. I believe that if episode transitions towards a more mature angle, and gives authors more free will in terms of their writing, plus better wages and benefits for the authors. Their stories will be 10000xxx better than they already are. Honestly I don’t think many popular authors enjoy the app anymore, considering the fact many of them mentioned leaving in the past. I don’t blame them either, the way this team treats their authors isn’t okay. Many of the hard working community authors deserves the same treatments, if not more, compared to the higher-up commissioned authors who’s officials are pretty messed up. Officials are the same, like community stories, and that’s the truth. Community stories help and give enjoyment to the readers compared to officials. Let’s be honest officials are solely used for gems and gems only, no one actually really reads them. (Not me anyways)

All I’m asking here is for the community to support the many authors who spend hours upon hours trying to give us the best content possible. The authors who used their time to create these stories and give us an opportunity to see what goes through their heads. The authors who APOLOGIES to us when they don’t get an episode out on time. LETS BE HONEST, episode should do more of the following things

Yes I’m about to used BIG LETTERS🤭 (ideas)

-HAVING WEEKLY/MONTHY VIDEO CALLS MESSAGES WITH AUTHORS TO GET FEEDBACK, AND HEAR THEIR IDEAS ON HOW TO MAKE THE APP BETTER.

-GIVE THE AUTHORS MORE FREEWILL TO EXPLORE THEIR CRAFT AND TO MAKE CONTENT MORE RATED-R TERRITORY OR CUT BACK THE AGGRESSIVE GUIDELINES AND I BET THAT WILL BRING IN MORE OF A CROWD

-DONT BRUSH OFF THE AUTHORS, AND LISTEN TO THEM

ADVICE:
LISTEN TO YOUR COMMUNITY, LISTEN TO THEIR NEEDS, ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY CAN DRIVE IN MORE OF A CROWD OF YOUNG ADULTS WITH THEIR IDEAS, BETTER WAGES!!! YEA YOU HAVE COMPANY WORKERS, BUT THE TRUE HEART OF THE APP RELIES ON THE AUTHORS WHO DESERVE MORE THAN YOU GIVE THEM

SIDENOTE: GIVE THE AUTHORS WHAT THEY NEED, BETTER PAY AND BENEFITS. I BET IF YOU LISTEN AND HELP THEM, EVERYTHING WILL WORK OUT FOR BOTH SIDES😑

PLEASE ADVOCATE FOR OUR AUTHORS🙏🏽

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Who are these authors?

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you can check it out on instagram. they are saying their goodbyes to episode for reasons that I think are fair.

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On main episode insta? I do not follow a lot of episode authors, to be honest.

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well most authors follow each other on episode.

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I can’t name any authors off the top of my head. I hardly use the app, lol.

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Melia left few days ago, she wrote Him and I, intoxicate me and many more

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Thank you for giving me a straight answer, lol. Was wondering if it was taboo or something.

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Lara and wincy left too

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I also saw today on Instagram a couple popular authors I follow saying they’re considering their future with episode now

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Given that Pocket Gems has a number of private equity firms for investors, as well as Tencent, I don’t think this is an aberration. Or, to quote a well known phrase, it’s not a bug, it’s a feature. They’re looking to maximize profits for their investors. The people making the decisions don’t understand creativity, they understand money. They want to make as much money as possible while doing things as cheaply as possible to maximize profits. They’ve decided the authors that keep this platform going aren’t worth as much as they used to be. They would much prefer all the authors be the equivalent of unpaid interns. But since some are already in the payment program, they need to remedy that. As I understand it, there’s no contract with the payment program. So while what they’ve done is certainly a :eggplant: move, it’s perfectly within their rights to do it.

I very much doubt they will reconsider this action. In fact, I’m expecting them to double down. I wouldn’t be surprised if they started using AI to write their originals, though they would still need someone to code them (don’t think chatgpt can do that yet :roll_eyes:). As for community stories, there’ll always be new authors with dreams of making it into the payment program creating new, free content for them. At least until they get wise to what’s going on.

I just don’t think there’s any fixing things at this point. They’ve gone too far down the wrong path. The only question I have, is how long until they pull the plug on Episode to focus on their other micro-transaction riddled game.

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This right here is why I’m considering not even completing writing/coding my first story and scraping the project. When I got this app it was fabulous there was a lot of people writing and I was enjoying these stories being put out, I had too many to read, everything was in my favorites, but now it’s slowly going downhill. I liked the features of being able to earn more gems without spending money (as a reader I have like 2500+ in a couple months it’s fantastic) but I have less stories to read that are to the previous standard (part of that being the strict guidelines for no reason, let’s be honest preteens shouldn’t be on this app and you guys just did your own census you know that 19-24+ year-olds are the biggest demographic of readers yet you don’t cater to them)
Now writers are leaving bc your taking away benefits, taking stories down with no warning even though they don’t break your guidelines, You’re not listening to any of the community!
This is the only app that I have tried that I actually like!, everything else is either too cheesy or is just smut.
(What’s really dumb is that even though the company is just trying to make money if they actually thought big picture they would make more money by catering to the people that use their service.
They want to be all about the money but they’re going to tank the company slowly because they don’t want to listen to the people using their service, giving them money. Coming from a business owner)
It’s honestly just sad because this is one of my very few hobbies that I still enjoy after years, I’ve had a fav app shut down a few years ago (fer.al) and I still miss it. I really don’t want this to be one too.

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