How do you prefer to spend gems?

[giulia.episode]

Hii everyone !!
So, I’m currenty writing my first story and am wondering how to include gems in it…
What do you guys prefer to spend your gems on?

• Early access
• Skip the wait
• Support the author
• Customization
• Bonus scenes
• Choices
• Extra outfits

I’d appreciate your opinions on them , and if anyone could also explain to me what the difference is between early access and skip the wait, because to me they’re essentially the same thing .

[caitlindrewthis]

Early access you have to pay 8 gems to read the chapter otherwise you have to wait a week

Skip the wait you have to pay gems to skip a certain amount of hours:
For 1 episode you’d pay 6 gems or wait 2hrs
For 2 episodes 8 gems to skip 4hrs and so on

I find that’s mainly used with stories that have a lot of chapters out/finished as it’s a way to keep getting gems and stay trending

I don’t recommend skip the wait it’s honestly annoying and I won’t continue reading

[giulia.episode]

Okay, thank you for clarifying!

[AngelWings1983]

To be honest I only like to spend my gems on ‘Support the author’. The other options annoy me enough to leave the story.

[giulia.episode]

Alright! I can definetaly understand the irritation on outfits, skip the wait and choices

[schittwriter]

In addition to what @caitlindrewthis said, here are the posts if you want more details on those features:

Skip-The-Wait Available to All Authors

Hello Episode Authors! Over the past few months, our team has continued to partner with community authors to test new features that can help authors ultimately to have more opportunities to tell stories on Episode full-time. One of the options we recently tested is Skip-the-Wait. This feature allows authors to pace their readers through the episodes they’ve already published. Authors can insert a short break between episodes (the wait time will vary according to the # of episodes between break…

Early Access soon to be available to all Creators

Hello Episode Authors! Starting in the Fall of 2020 we began testing some ways to provide more opportunities for authors to tell stories on Episode full-time. Our goal is to provide a wider range of options for our authors through testing new features. For each of these tests, we’re partnering with community authors who have expressed interest in those features to better understand if they can help achieve those goals. One of the options we tested is Early Access, which allows creators to give …

[giulia.episode]

thank you so much!! that’s very helpful

[dynastywrites]

The thing I most spend gems on is early access for my favorite stories. If I really love a story, I’ll be eager to read a new chapter and won’t mind spending gems to access it as soon as it’s posted. As for outfits and choices, I don’t recommend adding it because readers really don’t like that. Bonus scenes are good and sometimes I’ll spend gems on them if I’m really curious and they seem interesting. Skip the wait can be a good option too but it depends, I recommend testing it and seeing if people are willing to buy it. For support the author, definitely add that option because if readers like your story they’ll donate gems for sure.

[alexwritesit]

In my opinion the best options for gem choices are support the author and bonus scenes. I don’t like the “extra outfits” one because there’s usually nothing special on them. For example, on the episode official stories, you can pay gems for special and unique outfits but what’s the fun if the outfit is normal? Also the thing about adding gem options for outfits and choices, is that it’s an episode official story 2.0 which is what people don’t want. I don’t read episode originals because of that and I won’t read a community story with that as well, gems aren’t that easy to get.
As to why I think those three options I mentioned before are the best ones for gem choices, basically for bonus scenes is something in my opinion it’s worthy to spend gems on. I love reading different POV’s and stuff so I don’t mind using maybe 5-8 gems to read one.
Then support the author it’s nice because it’s a way of spending gems when you can and that it won’t affect your experience on the story. Sometimes I don’t have gems and if I see a story with gem choices or other gem related things in the middle of the story, it’s frustratig. However, if I don’t have gems and there is support the author, I have the option to support the author later on once I have enough gems.

[giulia.episode]

Than you for your advice! Yea, I wasn’t really planning on adding choices or outfits which require gems… I don’t like reading community stories with them either

[giulia.episode]

Thank you for your feedback! I also find it very frustrating to find gem choices for skip the wait, choices and outfits since, like you said, are like episode original stories… I think I will include early access, bonus scenes and support the author since they are things that don’t really impact the story line too much, nor do they force you to wait a certain amount of hours regularly to carry on reading (apart from EA, but that would only be applied to double updates, instead of every two episodes)

[Melc144]

Honestly I pay for early access and support the author. I detest skip the wait I will not continue reading if that’s applied.