I’m not a famous author by any means but I’ve seen lots of smaller authors write posts asking how to get more readers so I thought I’d share what worked for me. (This is how I went from scraping 100 reads when I first started episode to accumulating 850K after 6 months). I hope this will be useful 
- Go to the trending lists and click on the famous author profiles. Go to their followers and follow all the recent people who followed them. This is how you know those people are most likely to be active on the app - following lots of people on the Episode app was what gave me my first thousand reads because they’re likely to check out your profile and story.
- Don’t start off with a drama or romance story but pick a genre that isn’t as popular e.g. horror. These categories don’t have as many stories in them as romance do so your story is more likely to get noticed.
- Do some read for reads on the forums
- Have a link tree on your Instagram with links directly to your story and tell all your family and friends to read it as it helps immensely with the read count
- Having a longer story with more episodes helps because every chapter someone reads will give you a read on the app.
- Have a really eye catching cover and title! Probably the most important, if something doesn’t grab somebody’s attention they’re likely to skip past your story in the trending lists.
- Use of keywords that most people search for like pregnant, bad boy, sexy, mafia etc
even if your story isn’t related to these - Write more stories because if a reader enjoys your story, they’re more likely to check out your others too!
- Interact with your readers, answer fanmails, accept constructive criticism, answer Instagram DMs
- Use Instagram to post updates, sneak peaks, use hashtags like #episodeapp #smallepisodeauthor etc
- Include character customization because readers love it
- Update frequently! It helps keep the excitement going for your story and readers love binge reading
- Make sure the story is directed well and you have a killer first chapter that leaves the reader wanting to carry on reading!
That’s all I can think of for now… if I remember anything else I’ll add it to the list but I hope this helped! 
