Opinions on the terms ‘Big’ and ‘small’ authors

I think that Episodians misuse the word ‘big’ when using it author wise. I feel that once a story hits 1.k reads it’s big, but I think small authors are 100 and less. Post your opinions down below!

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Oh this is so hard to define lol.
I would consider “unknown” an author with <1k.
I would consider “small” to be anyone with less than 100k (and I realise a lot of people won’t agree with me here lol).
Mid-sized to be 100k-500k AND anyone with more than 500k but not qualified for payments (because that takes time into consideration).
Then large anyone with over 500k and in payments.

But it’s really hard to define. You consider a big author as someone over 1k… but can you compare that person to an author with 1 million + reads in terms of popularity?
Also, timing is definitely a factor. Someone who gains 1000 reads in a month would probably be considered to have a more popular story than someone who gains 1000 reads in four months.

Although I have my own personal “definitions”, I don’t expect everyone to agree with me because it’s really a matter of perspective. Also, my above categories could probably be broken down further. I don’t think it’s as simple as “big” and “small” authors.

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I consider an author “big” if he/she had 100-1000 reads in a really short period of time like 2weeks to 1 month the “small” authors have like 100 reads in 6 months to a year

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This is like a can of worms!

Personally I feel like it’s all just too subjective to define. I use “big” and “small” authors in discussion topics when it’s called for, but it’s way to hard to define these terms to something that every one would agree on.

I know a lot of people would consider certain people that I have never even heard of as big authors. Similarly, I could list all my favourite authors, who most people would say they’ve never heard of.

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Authors should not need titles and terms to feel validated. If a story has 100k reads, and are total shit, then we shouldn’t give them the privilege to be called “big”. Even if their views speak otherwise. Like the story, “The Heat Inside”. The whole story doesn’t have the best directing, and it’s not written as good as other stories. And that story is based off of a step dad/daughter relationship, which the whole time is the dad manipulating the daughter to do as he pleases?? Oh and let’s not forget that they’re totally betraying their mother in all of this.
What I am saying is, even if this story has been read many times, disgusting stories like these shouldn’t be rewarded.
There’s a story I reveiwed by @Turtle_Cat titled “Save Me, Hero!” which is easily one of the best stories I have seen on this app. Her story only has 100 or something veiws, but her story is one of the most creative, well written stories ever. So we shouldn’t discredit stories like hers by calling them “small”. I think we should get rid of those terms completely, and instead of focusing on reads and numbers, we should focus on if the story itself is actually directed, written, and executed well.
I digress, but what I am trying to say is we shouldn’t even use these terms to begin with.
This is not to shade anyone, I am just speaking the truth.

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@everyone Bootiful answers!

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I agree.
But I will say that when I use those terms (and I only really use them on the forums in discussions like this one), that has nothing to do with the quality of a story. I certainly don’t correlate “big” to “good” or “small” to “bad”. There are plenty of stories with a high amount of reads which I wouldn’t consider to be a good story, but because of the number of reads they’d still be considered popular.

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Yeah I totally agree. But I’m more so arguing against the negative connotation of small or big. Even though small isn’t necessarily a bad thing, some people may take it the wrong way.

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I agree with @EliseC, I would definitely not put an author with 1K to the same category as an author with 30 million reads. Also, it’s not really about the number of reads, but the readers. If a story has 1K reads with 3 episodes, it has about 300-400 readers (assuming that most of the readers who started, finished reading it), but a story with 50 episodes and 1K reads is less popular since it has been read through by only 20 people. And if we calculate with the same amount and assume it was viewed by 300 people, then it’s not popular at all since it has a very low retention rate.

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I always thought the word “big” derived from the idiom making it big. Where there was some sort of hallmark of success (but success on an individual level is highly subjective and should not be held to one standard). So for me personally, I consider authors who’ve made it into payments >500k reads as “big” authors simply for the fact they’re getting paid for their writing. Regardless of the quality of one’s work getting into payments is a big deal. Some authors have even made a career off Episode. Like someone stated above you can’t really compare someone with 1k reads to an author with 1 million reads. Both are two distinct milestones. There is a middle tier of course. Filled with authors with tens of hundreds of thousands of reads that are on their way to becoming big or content in the personal success they’ve acquired thus far. Still, I would consider someone with 1k a small author.

Big, however, shouldn’t be indicative of a stories quality or an author’s talent. Vice versa for smaller authors. I think that’s where these two labels could start to ruffle some feathers. Many confuse popularity as a reflection of quality and one’s own value when this couldn’t be any further from the truth. This distinction isn’t exclusive to Episode. You see it in the publishing industry, entertainment industry, fashion industry, among YouTubers, gamers, other writing communities, etc, etc. All it boils down to is the gap between numbers and popularity.

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To me once they hit the thousands, they are considerably big. I don’t see someone with over 1k reads as a struggling small author.

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I agree! :hugs:

I feel like 1k is still pretty small in the grand scheme of Episode. There are thousands of authors on the app who’ve hit 1,000 reads who are virtually unknown, to the point that you could probably ask 100 people (on the forums, not the app in general) if they’ve heard of their story, and they’d probably all say no.
It’s all about perspective, of course, like others have mentioned, and big/small has nothing to do with talent or quality.

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You know what, I’ve made threads centered around how to determine if an author is less known (smaller) or a top author. In my opinion, a story that has over 100k reads is a top author, and anything below that is a smaller author. But, that’s debatable because some people might say that an author that has reads on a story is over 20k is not really a top author. I think that could be true as well. Anything below the 10k mark is a less known author in my opinion.

That may be true but compared to someone that has only like 20 reads, that’s still quite a lot.