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.