I’ve come across some small or newish authors, who had been getting nothing but very few reads on their story/ies for months, even when they did r4r. Then they disappear from the forums, stop doing their r4r, and suddenly their reads are shooting up from about 50k to 100k or more a WEEK, and they’re not doing any promoting, just the usual posting up stuff on Instagram. I just find it very odd that a story goes from like about 20k reads for about 40 eps to 400k reads for 40 eps within a few weeks and they’re doing no proper promoting or anything. How is this happening?
Probably they got like 1,000 reads in a few hours and their rank went up and they were able to go on the top 100. Thus being noticed and many people liked it and probably posted about it on IG
I’m assuming they didn’t pay for an IG promotion from popular authors like a few people have been doing recently?
Sometimes it can be luck. Maybe the story hadn’t been reviewed previously, then it made the trending section, and a few people binged it. That would automatically bring the story higher up the ranks (especially for a story with 40+ episodes) where more people would see it and read it, then push it higher.
My new story gained over 10k on just 5 episodes in a week the moment it got reviewed and put on the ranks. That’s not the same spike as you’re talking about, but I went from 400 reads on 3 episodes to like 12k reads in a week on 5 episodes (I double updated when I got reviewed). No further promotion. If I’d had more episodes, I could have had a bigger spike.
Sometimes, a story just doesn’t catch on until it has a lot of episodes, since some people like waiting until stories are complete or are well underway. So that could also be what happened. Or maybe someone “big” shared it on IG (whether paid for or not).
It’s quite doable with 40 episodes because if people binge read, just 3 or 4 readers will push that story quite high up the ranks (and then more people will read).
But other people could have promoted the story too.
I meant review by Episode.
To have your story showing up on the trending sections, you need to have it reviewed and approved first which happens when you hit the top 100 in any genre.
So after my story was reviewed and approved by the Episode team, it showed on the ranks. Because of the cover and description, it was quite popular and managed to climb right up the ranks (It did well for me. Ended up top 20 drama and top 60 or so overall (very temporarily ahha) with just 5 episodes) which gained me a few more reads.
Well, if the story hadn’t been reviewed previously, you actually wouldn’t know if they were trending or not because the story won’t show up until reviewed.
So they may have hit top 100 in a genre temporarily which put them on the review queue. Then they could have been reviewed, had their story hit the ranks and then suddenly flown up. That’s what happened to me. (And yes, 10k isn’t 50k, but it was only 5 episodes lol.)
I don’t know about that cos I saw a story that had only about 30k reads for about 40 eps. I don’t think that would get them into 100 rank, whether story has been reviewed by Episode or not. I still think it’s a pretty big leap with the reads jumping up so high within such a small space of time.
Depends on the genre. Rank isn’t just the amount of reads. It also depends on how fast those reads have been gained. It’s very easy to hit top 100 in genres that aren’t drama or romance. (I think fantasy is hard too.)
I hit top 100 mystery with 200 reads lol, but I actually think I hit it before that. I think 100+ reads in a day was enough to hit top 100 in that genre.
I’ve seen a couple recently which suddenly pop up on the top 100 overall seemingly out of nowhere lol. My best guess would be that those stories took a while to be reviewed, or the author batch updated, which pushed the up their genre ranks, gained them more readers and then pushed them higher on the trending. 40+ episodes are a lot and binge readers would easily push a story up the ranks.
It’s been taking a while lately. I believe it took a couple months for Earl Grey’s newest one to be reviewed? And her story definitely would have been top 100.
It’s also possible that the story wasn’t top 100 until it hit 20 or so episodes .
40+ episodes are a lot and binge readers would easily push a story up the ranks.