Is gem option really necessary?

Hi! :smiley:

Hope I am in the right forum thread :sweat_smile:
I actually would like to know your honest, yet positive opinion on this.

Well, you can say that I am quite a new writer; I’ve started publishing my stories 5 months ago, and I have 3 completed stories as of today. I had never added any sort of gem option in my stories at all.
But, the more stories I read, I do find out that quite many authors, be it a brand new author or a long-time community author do add the gem option. Some are for supporting, and some are with exchange for extra scene or outfit.

I am NOT against this at all. I am actually quite proud and happy for them, if there are people who choose to support them. I too had chose to support them a few times, though I have limited gem :sweat_smile: (Yup, I’m a little poor in gems :gem: )

But, it got me thinking on whether I should add gem options for my stories. Currently, my story reads are increasing steadily, so it may seem like an opportunity to me if I do add the gem option. Will it be awkward, or will I let my readers down if I suddenly add in gem option? I’m certain that many of the readers, including me, don’t really purchase gems; we only earn it by reading Episode featured stories or we get them from daily rewards.
And I may not be writing anymore new stories, as I am getting busier with my work and life, so adding a gem choice may seem redundant for me.

However, it is nice to see that if I could ever get a minor income from this, as adding gem option will need only 100k reads for 2 months, and having no gem option will need 500k reads for 2 months. I its a small difference, this wouldn’t bother me, but this is a large difference, especially for a small author like me. I started writing this story as a hobby and interest, but knowing that I can get paid is like a little bonus to this!

I do come across some amazing and successful community authors who doesn’t add any sort of gem option, which I really adore, but they have millions of reads. I’m certain either having a gem option or otherwise is quite unnecessary for them.

As of now, I think I shouldn’t be adding a gem option for my stories, but what do you guys think!
I love a honest and raw feedback, but please keep them positive.

Thank you :heart:

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I really wish Gem options wasn’t necessary at all…

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I don’t need to read this to make up my mind What I’m about to say is an opinion a statment and a fact, No

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Me too honestly. And with the number or reader differences to enable payment really get me thinking on this :thinking:

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I do appreciate any sort of feedback. Thank you :heart:

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Let’s be honest nobody likes gem options except youtubers :grin:

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LOL! I’m guilty in watching youtubers’ videos on using all the gem options for the featured stories! :laughing:

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If I could like this more then once I would

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I totally understand your predicament here. When gem choices in community stories where first announced, I was seriously against them because they don’t offer the reader anything. It was like Episode was punishing their consumers for just being loyal readers…? However, most people couldn’t see gem choices at first anyway. Recently, they rolled it out further so right now about 50% of readers will see your gem choices as if they were a normal choice.

But this right here:

Is the honest truth. It’s like, you’re doing this for free anyway, so if there’s a chance you can get even a small amount on the side, you want to go for it, right? Which is why I made somewhat of a compromise with myself on my gem morals. Instead of simply including gems in my stories, I used gains to make sure that people who do see gem choices don’t see them in my story. This means that only about 50% of my reads go towards my payments count, but the way I see it is that even if I need more than 100k in 2 months, it’s still much easier to achieve than 500k in 2 months.

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I do see your point. I agree with your choice too.
I actually did read your story, By the Book recently, in which you did ask whether do we see the gem option or otherwise. That is quite a noble way to go, honestly. :smile: As a reader’s point of view, we will feel glad to see gem options like yours for instance.

As for my story reads pace, 100k reads is quite far away, hence 500k reads is totally far-reached to me. :sweat_smile: But at the same time, I need 300 selected gem choices, in which I think that it will be less likely to attain in my case. Some readers do get the point in supporting the author, and some with limited gems will not likely to click on it.

I would love to know the writer’s point of view in this, hence I asked in this thread.
Thank you for sharing your opinion on this. :heart: As of now, I am towards to not putting in the gem option, but I love to hear what others think about this.

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Oh thank you so much for reading my story! I guess you know exactly what I mean now.

Since you are looking for an author’s experience, I can offer a bit more insight there too…

The first time I was featured on a shelf, I didn’t have gems. But I did gain about 100k reads in less than a month thanks to the shelf boost. So whilst you might be far away from it now, it really can jump right up in a small amount of time too.

With the way I include them, this is actually the easiest for me to maintain :laughing: I thought it would be the hardest, but currently I have 8407 gem choices selected in the past 60 days which is way beyond what you actually need. And from my friends experiences too, I find most people who can’t see the gem choice have no worries at all with selected the support-gem choices either, since it takes nothing away from their experience.

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Wow! That’s lots of selected gem choices.:star_struck:
You did give me a different aspect of this matter. I will think about adding a gem choice to my stories. I do hope that my stories will get a boost of reads at some point of time.
Thank you once again for your insight. Really appreciate it :smiling_face_with_three_hearts:

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I don’t think gem choices are necessary. We should just use the points system instead.

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I was just about to comment on the consequences as well, as the gem choices go up go by reads, 2 gems for stories below 10k then 10 gems…etc.

But @amberose what you’re saying is you coded two different choices, for people that could see them and for people that couldn’t? How did they not see them if it’s a choice?

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Not a problem at all :heart:

The first gem choice is this:

NARRATOR
Does this appear as a gem choice?
choice (gemchoice) “Yes” {

} < GEMS > “No” {
gain gems
}

And then in future episodes I will code choices like this:

if (gems) {

[add choice with gems]

} else {

[add same choice without gems]

}

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FBI! We got her!

But seriously I was thinking about this because I thought you couldn’t put choices in if statements.

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To be honest, as a reader, I too dislike gem choices. But as a writer, especially the ones who wants to earn, having gem choices will definitely enable payments to writers.
But it depends how the author does it. The way @amberose does it for instance, is really noble, and this makes the readers feel less pressured when choosing a gem choice.

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Actually I have a doubt on that. I did come across this 2 gems for less than 10k reads stories etc, but nowadays, I see almost everyone with gem choices uses 15 gems per choice. Are these 2 different matter?

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Thank you for the coding script. :grin: I was just thinking on how do you do that :sweat_smile:

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When I was following the book “Psychotic Lover” (a shelf feature) it was the first time I could see gems. And it was a choice that the author coded. So, it started off with 2 gems and then it changed to 15 gems, (now a 500k read story) as her story started getting noticed from the shelves.

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