Author Announcement: Future Changes to Community Story Gem Choices

Hello Episode Authors!

You may have seen from our previous testing, that our team is working on improving and developing new ways for your readers to support you. We wanted to take a moment and share what we’ve learned about a few changes we’ve been exploring so that we could hear your thoughts as well.

With community gem choices, we originally built a system with more limitations due to the concerns that were voiced to us at the time. However, those limitations also limit your ability to be creative with your gem choices in stories, especially since Episode controls the cost of gem choices authors include for readers based on the number of reads a story has, and restricts the maximum number of gem choices to 2 per branch.

We’ve been exploring the possibility of changing this system and giving authors the ability to set the cost of their gem choices (from a menu of prices), and so far, we’ve had positive responses to this idea. At the same time, we’d also like to introduce the option to use a higher number of gem choices per branch in each chapter of a story. For those of you who use a points system in your stories, raising this limit can let you create new moments for how your readers can earn and use their points while reading.

With that said, in order for gem choices to be a more effective way for you to receive reader support, we also need it out to all Episode readers. It’s currently only out to some players. Doing this will also set us up to give authors better information on which gem choices are popular, as we continue to look into how we could share your story’s data with you in a convenient and easily understandable way.

Lastly, in our explorations for new ways to support our Community Authors, our team has seen promising results with giving readers the option to wait a week for a new chapter, or pay early to read ahead, and we are continuing to test and develop the idea further. Expect more news about this and potentially more options in the future!

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns about this test, please feel free to comment in the thread or contact our support team. Your feedback helps shape our decisions and we appreciate hearing your thoughts!

With Love,
Episode

We want to remind you that Episode has no current plans to permanently remove free content from our readers. While we are testing additional options to support community authors, we do not plan on taking away free access to Episode content. Authors can choose to add gem choices or release their chapters on a weekly basis while allowing readers to pay gems to read ahead, or choose not to engage with these options.

50 Likes

Well, I like the idea of being able to choose your own price for gem choices…

But, unless a story has multiple branches like female/male mc, I think adding more than 2 gem choices is excessive.

I’m not saying that you should limit how many gem choices an author can add, I’m just saying if I see 2+ gem choices in an Episode, I’ll stop reading :woman_shrugging:t3:

I’d also say, that like featured stories, stories that have gem choices should give you the ability to earn a gem after finishing an Episode :thinking:

63 Likes

Not good. Every author thinks for themselves, that it’s the best and their story is the best. And they think: “MY STORY IS BETTER THAN HERS, IF SHE CAN GET 10 GEMS PER CHAPTER, SO CAN I.”

It can become competition.

30 Likes

Plz not the last idea to wait a week like fr we can read only one chapter?
Honestly who would pay to read a chapter, this would only damage the authors.

58 Likes

I don’t support this part! :point_down:t3: @Melani3

If it means what I interpret it to mean, then this could potentially be damaging to authors and their stories.
And I honestly think that quite a lot of readers would lose interest… because most readers prefer to binge read. And if they can’t do that, unless they pay gems… then they may just exit the story and never return.

97 Likes

Personally I started writing on Episodes to share my stories. I honestly couldn’t care about making money. But if these steps go ahead I feel the small authors that’s stories are locked behind a wall of trending stories, will fade into obscurity. No one will pay for a name that isn’t known.
As for waiting a week to read or support other small authors… is an idea, I as a reader and a supporter of the small author movement, am not comfortable with. It is hard enough trying to get your story noticed without adding even more challenges.
Plus how are authors supposed to do R4R if they have to pay and or wait a week?
What about competitions and trying to earn the 100 reads needed to progress to the next stage?
Does this mean reader retention will no longer exist?
It just seems that this really hasn’t been thought through/ and or small authors are not being valued as community members.
You pride yourself on being an app open to 13 years and over… where are all these children getting their money to pay for this idea?

58 Likes

I agree with what have been previously said before. Unless the story has a gender MC/LI choice, more than 2 gem choices seems too much for me.

I’d like to point out something else. Yeah, Episode has the right to oversee the number of gem choices in a branch, I’m afraid you can’t control what’s inside it, especially if authors can choose the cost of their gems choices.
This could seriously mislead the reader, if they come to face what you’d call an expensive gem choice throughout the story that actually have little to none consequences.

How could you know they won’t be paying 20+ gems for an extra scene that only lasts 30 seconds? This doesn’t sit right with me, and I’m afraid this could lead to misuses.

Personally, my tolerance to gem choices when it comes to the main storyline is very low, and I’d rather choose to use gems to purposefully support the author. I’d rather spend a gem choice on this than to feel left out or worse, unsure of what I’m paying for.

20 Likes

I’m pretty surprised that you guys are actually considering implementing the “wait a week for a chapter” thing when it was received so badly previously? Personally at least this would discourage me as a reader to continue with a story and in the end that will only damage the community authors rather than support them. I like that you’re exploring the diamond choices idea further since it’s something the author can control and it’s much more fair to the player, while the other can potentially bring more harm than good.

49 Likes

Everything that has been said above is EXACTLY what I think. If this were to be implemented then I might have to wait a long time for some chapters? NO!

14 Likes

I’d also like to add that I disagree with letting authors choose how much a choice should cost. If it’s any more than 2 per choice, then I’d certainly stop reading the story no matter how much I loved it, because we’re not made of money! We cannot keep affording to shell out crazy amounts of money for gems… just to enjoy a story by making the choices that we want to.
And honestly… why would authors do this?! They don’t really benefit from it when a reader accepts a gem choice.
And if they do it just to try and open their payments section (so that they only need the 100k reads), well let me tell you… reaching 300 gems is quicker and easier than you think. And it’s insanely easier than reaching 100k reads. I know from experience!

16 Likes

Surprised and disappointed that you are still considering implementing gem choices for reading a chapter ahead or waiting a whole week to read something that was previously free -plus, it’s already released- after the backlash it had.

24 Likes

Personally not only as a reader but also as an aspiring author I think it is crazy to expect readers to have to pay gems to access an episode or wait a week as this will lead to excessive wait times to complete stories and I feel that would do more harm than good. However, I do think it would be nice if there was a feature allowing you to earn at least one gem at the end of each episode read as it will encourage more readers.

19 Likes

Personally, I think if you did this you would be losing a lot of readers, especially those who are younger than most as its likely that they won’t have the money to pay for gems to read the next chapter

23 Likes

This! ^^

8 Likes

Ty! I wanted to add a few gem options to my next story, but I only wanted it to cost 2-3 gems lol. But I do think some authors might over do it

7 Likes

Also if I have to wait a week to read one single chapter when the story is near enough complete I would lose interest, if a story was 60+ episodes it would take us over a year to complete it when it could take us a week with our passes, I honestly think that this is a really bad idea

Not only that but I’m not going to pay a ridiculous amount of diamonds for a 5 minute long episode

23 Likes

no hate… but, im confused about the pay ahead option, and how its considered promising. isnt this what got a lot of backlash a few weeks ago? or am I thinking of the wrong thing

13 Likes

As if it wasn’t hard enough to get noticed, now with this, a big part of the community is going to be really affected by this new option.

14 Likes

I am pretty sure people where quite angry over that.

8 Likes

No hate… but honestly you would probably make more money if you let everyone have the 30 day unlimited pass😂

23 Likes