Is it true that gem choices affect the ranking? If it’s true I don’t really think it’s fair community stories must be f2p in my opinion. I don’t think I will ever add a gem choice on my story. I genuinely just want my readers enjoy the story, not focusing on the gem choices.
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I think so yea. but I do get your point, but IMO you shouldn’t be worrying too much about it, like just worry about your story and make it the best you can. for me im still doing my story but im only going to add gems only to support me and the readers don’t have to, but if they want that’s cool and I appreciate it. 
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so then don’t add the gems. as you said you just want your readers to enjoy the story. so just don’t add them. 
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I didn’t added any 
Unfortunately, gems matter a great deal when it comes to ranking, which is why the vast majority of authors have incorporated them into their stories at this point. People write stories, they want people to read them, but they can’t trend high enough to get noticed by people without them. Personally, I despise this system, but the community as a whole has accepted it.
My suggestion would be to incorporated non-exploitive gem options. These would be for things that are in no way necessary for the story. None of that “spend gems or you wear a garbage bag” type of crap, and no shaming for not choosing to spend gems. Support the Author is the most common. It’s a simple question, usually at the end of a chapter, asking if people would like to donate some gems essentially. Some people may read your story and want to spend gems on it to help it trend higher. This enables them to do so and in a way that is completely on their terms. Some other ideas include topping off or gaining extra points if the story has a point system (though it should never be necessary to do so), skipping over a mini-game if any are present, or viewing other endings than the one the reader earned if there are multiple endings.
In my experience, readers are fine with these types of gem options being present because they in no way pressure the reader to spend gems. But they do enable readers to spend gems on stories they like to help said story trend higher so others may discover it. Just something to consider.
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I added support the author choice at the end 
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It definitely does, but worry not, the community is quite generous with their gems if your story is written well 
Like the posts above, non-exploitative gems usually will receive a good amount of gems compared to those that’ll affect the reading experience as a whole.
Also, focus on the quantity of the gem choices that you place in rather than the quantity of the gems required. What I mean by this is that you can offer 4 gem choices but with 5 or 8 (anything below 20) per choice, and trust me, readers are more inclined to invest in more cheaper gem priced choices than one 35 gem choice.
a deep dive as to why:
You see, if one reader reads your story and encounters a gem choice, it’s a gem read, but gem/read is actually a ratio of how many readers actually support your story.
Imagine if in every 5 readers, 1 spends the cheapest gem choice, you get one gem/read, that’s be 20% of your reader base, and trust me, that amount is humongous.
Vice versa, if in every 39 readers, 1 spends the 39 gem choice, you still get one gem/read, but that’s only 2.56% of your reader base.
If your reader base is, let’s say 100, then 2.56% of that is only about 2 to 3 readers spending gems; but 20% of 100 is 20 readers spending gems, and trust me when I say, the community is generous: you definitely can get more than 20% of your reader base to buy those gem choices.
It’s always the reader feedback that counts, because for 20% of your fanbase to love your story, it’s not a simple task. Keep in mind that Episode still has a large margin of readers whose taste can go very wild.
For smaller authors, gem choices are also a good way to boost up your ranks (given that you update regularly 
in which I’m failing to do so). Because it matters almost as much, if not more than read counts, you can still have a spot on the shelves without needing a large fanbase to compete with the other experienced writers on the platform That’s actually a good thing.
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