Honestly, it would be a bit of a cop out for me to consider myself a 
small author nowadays. So if I had to pick one to label myself as, I’d say big author. But in saying that, when I was what most people consider “a small author”, I didn’t really go around calling myself a small author either. Like… I sometimes see people bring up the fact that they’re a small author in discussions or even as a means of promotion and I don’t think I ever did that when I was first starting out.
I don’t think there’s an unspoken universal one but perhaps calling them up and coming authors makes more sense than forcing them to pick out of big and small.
End of January 2019. It was when I was first on a shelf and since then, not a single day has gone by where I don’t get a fanmail… which now makes me realise that my readers must scroll through at least 400 messages to see my reply to them 
Hard to say. Because an author might have a story with 1 million reads, which in my eyes would make them a big author, but then their second story doesn’t even have 1000. So does that mean they’re a big author or just that one of their stories is very popular? And I find that instagram following doesn’t always equal readers either. There’s an author who’s stories I absolutely adore who has over 10k followers on IG and has won a couple of contests too, but when you look at all her stories individually, they don’t have as many reads as I think they deserve you would think they would based on her following count. I think if I were to say her name, everyone would nod along and agree she is a popular author but then if I were to ask which stories of her you’ve read, most people would say none - just that they have heard her name a lot in the community.
When I first joined the community, under 5k was small, 5-100k was middle and anything above 100k meant you were big.
Now… Idk. I guess for the reasons I just listed I’m more aware that it’s too complicated to give a black and white answer. Plus, the more stories that get published, the higher you would need to push the bar. At what point would you stop, you know.
My first thought when reading this was: Excuse me?
I think there are two cases of getting a pass: Getting a pass from Episode themselves and getting a pass from the community. Episode hardly reprimands people publicly. I think the only time things go public is when the author in question shares an email they got from Episode. So I can’t confidently say that I know big authors get (or don’t get) away with more since I don’t know what Episode’s communication has been with them. With the community, it’s a different story… but basically the same outcome. There are some bold people who absolutely will call bullshit everytime they see something they feel is wrong. No matter if it’s a popular author or an unknown one… But then there are also a lot of equally bold people who will then come back at these people with rebuttals too. So if you have some people who are not willing to give an author a pass, but other people who are willing to basically die on the plate to give an author a pass, where does that leave us?
What I will say is that in both cases (Episode the company and the Episode community) I’ve seen authors get away with saying dumb shit, doing dumb shit and then having their story bought by episode anyway so… 
I have friends and whether they’re on the same level as me or not doesn’t determine how well I connect to them. Most aren’t even published. Also, a lot of big authors 
have blocked me on IG so it’s hard to say I feel I connect with them when they won’t let me see their content 
But in all seriousness, I think my actions and way of thinking align more with small authors Every new fanmail, every new read, every time someone sends me a screenshot, it still means as much to me now as it did when it was all fresh and new. I also feel a lot of pressure(?) to stay active in the forum community since a couple of years ago, small authors leaving the forums once they got their big break was a bit of a stigma and I’m not sure if it’s in my head or not but I feel like because of that two year old stigma and the fact that I hang around here instead of updating my stories, it keeps me connected to both new and small authors in a way that big-“forumsaretoxic”-authors aren’t.
I am so glad you asked this 
Search “smallauthor” in the app and tell me if the six stories that show up are by people you’d consider to be small authors 
).
I get a good amount of reads every day, and one of my stories seem to have a permanent spot in its own genre, somewhere between 
… there wouldn’t be drama because I’d be shouting into the void.
I also don’t really care how others’ stories show up on the trending section, I steer clear of that, I only get new stories from shelves or word-of-mouth. Reviewers I trust are better at suggesting new stories than the mob of preteens. 
I would rather not label people/stories based on their popularity.
