FEATURE: Help with Less Known Authors ~

Well, everyone starts somewhere right?

Please continue to share your thoughts.

I understand how you feel. I find myself getting jealous a lot when I think about how popular authors have it so easy to gain more readers. Popular author, Natasha Hills, was able to gain 10k reads in just 24 hours on her story! How is that possible? That’s when jealousy came in for me because I feel like my story should take off like that.

Agreed, totally agreed. +100000

It breaks the courage of the upcoming author who just started willingly and hopefully writing their stories and crushed into millions of pieces when all of their toils and hours, maybe days spent to write it didn’t get any attention JUST BECAUSE it doesn’t have some cliches in.

Am I the only one who thinks they do not recommend stories which don’t contain romance, bad boy sh*t, violence etc.? I for one find it ridicilous. I’ve read like thousands of stories within years on Episode, and trust me; some stories are really masterpieces but they never caught attention as much as the others. WHY? Oh yeah wait, they don’t contain romance. I’m tired of seeing same type of stories getting promoted.

I don’t know how does this forum work. If the application managers read these, please just hear the authors. Some people spend weeks writing their stories yet best to come there’s no view. How can someone keep writing for your app if you don’t give them the support they need?

If this comment triggers someone, DM me. I don’t wish to debate with anyone here in a platform visible to everyone.

To get to the point, authors wish to see some support to keep writing. Don’t crush their dreams, don’t waste their labors and most importantly, don’t let them get broken. I don’t say you managers need to promote EVERY story, just remember behind every story stands a person who took a lot of time from their lives to finish their works.

Sincerely.

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PREACH! You couldn’t have said it better than me. The reason why they promote and recognized popular authors more than anybody, is because majority of their stories are cliches. I’m not saying all popular authors write cliche stories; that’s not true. Bad boys, gangs/mafias, inappropriate stories, nerds, popular girls, etc, are cliches that Episode likes. They keep promoting them and featuring them, so they must like them.

Originality is not overrated. It comes from the heart. A lot of authors write cliche stories because they’ve read a story that contains the same plot as what they want to write about. I’m going to talk about myself when I say this: I’ve did the same thing when I first started out writing. I read a lot of stories about popular girls, nerds, cute boys, etc, and that’s how I came up with my first story, Popular Girl Gone Bad. I was first starting out as an Episode writer, can you blame me for wanting to get inspiration from those types of stories? No. I was young, and I made a lot cliche stories that I am not happy with as of today,

Now, I write stories that are original and based off of reality. You don’t really see stories on the app that are based off of the real world and reality. As an author, you have to be able to relate to real people and real times. People living in poverty, young people going to college thinking that that can make something out of themselves based off a degree (that is true, but it gets deceiving), diversity, and etc. That’s the real world. It’s okay to write fiction and fantasy stories because we’re using our creative writing skills, but sometimes it’s good to take about the real world.

I’m an upcoming author of The Queen of Freaks. I have to say that, even though I found a little bit of success on the app as of late, it is next to impossible to find good stories from authors who aren’t super popular - and when I do, I’m often scared to waste my passes on a story I might not like.

I think Episode needs to take more care about promoting less known authors and I would recommend the following steps:

  • An Episode Approved Diversity Badge - added to your story if your story is packed with positive diversity. Then, the audience will be able to search for stories that specifically focus on diversity when looking for something new
  • An Episode Approved Good Grammar Badge - same principle, but applied to good grammar, so that people like me (people who hate reading stories with bad grammar) can know what to look for.
  • Increasing the synopsis - having a long synopsis and a short one. That way, if you’re more interested, you can read the longer one and see if it’s your thing.
  • An Originality Badge - another badge that can be added to a story if it’s not a regurgitation of everything that’s come before it.

As you can see, I like the idea of badges - they encourage people to up the quality of their work and also promote and praise people who meet those standards.

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I see what you mean, but how would Episode go about giving less known authors badges?

I was thinking about this and I came up with a solution I think would work.

Kinda like how we’re asked to rate a story after chapter 3, Episode could involve people in the process. People could reward people with a diamond or two if they’re willing to fill out the questionnaire with 4 or 5 basic questions, and encourage people to rate truthfully and accurately. The number of positive rates needed before you get a badge can be kept relatively low, but there could be rankings for these badges: 20 good rankings would give you a certain colour badge and it could work up to gold or platinum! :slight_smile:

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And if someone’s questionnaire answers are consistently quite close to the average, the number of diamonds they get could increase :slight_smile:

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Okay. Hopefully I am interpreting this correctly, so every time Episode asks a person to rate a story after episode 3, Episode should give the author something in return if their story is rated 5 stars.

Kinda, but instead of 5 stars which doesn’t really do much, readers will be given a questionnaire and given the incentive of diamonds to fill it in. The writer would then get badges on their story if they get lots of positive feedback from the questionnaires! :slight_smile:

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