What is your strategy when it comes to promoting your story?
I think it is a wise move to do r4r of at least 3 chapters for your first 100 reads. This will also allow you to gain insightful feedback on your story and have great reader retention.
I read somewhere that stories wonāt get reviewed by the Episode crew unless you have at least 100 reads. The reviewer has a great idea on how you are retaining your audience when you meet the minimum amount of reads.
*Correction: You donāt need a 100 reads to be reviewed. Thank you @EliseC for that insight. The goal as a writer is to gain an audience to read your stories. The goal of this thread is to discuss strategies to gain an audience of readers.
What are your thoughts about ways to trend or get to 100 reads?
When you first start out, you may lack in some abilities vs big authors. This may severely impact your retention numbers until you improve your skills.
I think you need to guarantee those first three reads with another small writer first. So you need to get at least ~33 small writers to support you for your first three chapters. Your reader retention will be at 100 percent for all 3 chapters.
You donāt even have to worry about updates. You can focus your attention on improving your coding, writing, or directing skills etc.
Your focused would be on locking 3 chapters with a reliable small author.
I think after 100 reads and you learn from other small writers, then you should reach out to small story reviewers. Story reviews are risky if there are no incentives involved.
My experience has been story reviewers only review one chapter and then they dip. Most likely they are a small author and donāt have time. This hurts your retention numbers.
Popular story reviewers are more likely reviewing bigger writers. They are hoping the bigger writer credit their review by sharing their feedback with their nice size audience.
Lol, like I am a small author right now, and Iām still an advanced coder, popular authors are more of a intermidiate coders. So it is going to hard trying to get better at improving directing, writing, etc. But, hey, it takes time. do what you have to do, donāt get discourages because of others stories that looks better than yours. Iāll still be supporting small authors the best way I can. Hm, I did had a story review and it did give me good feedback to practice on my story, and it wasnāt that bad. So, yeah story reviews really help.
Some people are great at coding, but they lack in writing. Some people are great at graphics but lack in directing.
If your focus is on trending as a small author, more likely you will hurt your retention numbers. It all comes down to reader retention if you are trying to get noticed by Episode. They have the largest audience that will read your story.
Story reviews are a hit and miss. They are not as reliable as a guaranteed r4r with screenshots.
Yes. I think it is strategic to work with someone in a skill you are lacking. Focus on your strength. Have incentives for others to work with you.
For example, if you are advanced in coding but lack in graphics, letās say you do a r4r with someone strong in graphics but canāt code. Boom there is an opportunity right there to improve your story.
I agree. I think the safest route to go is improving your coding/directing/whatever beforehand then publishing when youāre content with it (meaning you have time to practice your story, instead of publishing THEN improving) so that your story is good enough to be apart of some competition. The better the story, the more likely you will succeed at reviews and people wonāt dip at R4R.
Although some story reviews arenāt 100% accurate and some people sugarcoat them as not to hurt the author, or some just plain out disrespect an authors work. Regardless, you want to work on the fact that your readers are actually getting through your episodes, not the amount of reads youāre getting in total. You could be getting one read for an episode, and sure that DOES stack up your reads as a whole but itās also hurting your reader retention because that means they didnāt make it through episode one. Thatās a problem.
Thatās pretty strong! Iād say Iām good at grammar, writing, dialogue, coding, overlays, directing but I do have some trouble finding backgrounds and I always spellcheck and proofread (especially when translating into another language) just to make sure
I think if you are first starting out, your story is not going to be the best. I wouldnāt fret over getting it perfect either. You best bet is to build relationships, so you can focus on your strength and learn from others.
It would be amazing to have 33 small writers looking out for one another.
Thatās true! Back when I first started out, I had a lot of practice stories (particularly classic) that I never published, and I eventually rewrote the story I was serious about writing, and thereās a LOT of improvement. Itās different for everyone.
