Hello Episode Authors!
As our team continues focusing on developing new features to help authors tell stories on Episode full time, we’ve heard many thoughts from the community surrounding your story’s impact on Episode. Previously, for Episode authors it was difficult to get data on how the actions you’re taking with your story (e.g. releasing new episodes, adding gem choices, adding interactive elements like points or mini-games, trying out Early Access or Skip-the-Wait) impact the reads and gems you’re earning on your story, and its ranking as a result.
With the introduction of the Story Dashboard for each story on the Writer’s Portal, we hope to empower authors to use this knowledge to write stories their audience loves, and make decisions that help them get the most out of what they’re choosing to write. This feature is rolling out to all published stories with at least 300 reads in the past 30 days today!
- For stories with under 300 reads in the last 30 days, the story dashboard will not appear. This is due to the data being unstable and unreliable without the volume necessary from this established number. This number indicates that your story has achieved enough reader activity for the trends to be reasonably accurate.
What if your story falls below this number in the future? Don’t worry! Once your story reaches 300 reads in the past 30 days, the dashboard will stay unlocked thereafter.
A huge thank you to all of our participants in the recent Open Betas for this tool. Your candid feedback helped us shape the features released today, and the future work our team will be putting into this section of the Writer’s Portal.
To access the Story Dashboard, you’ll see a new button appear in your “View Story Stats” section on your story’s page in the Writer’s Portal.
When your story has a consistent amount of data from reads, this button will appear automatically.
Once you enter the section, you’ll be presented with dashboards that show you how your story performed over the last 30 days, up to yesterday. Clicking on each of the metrics at the top takes you to a 30-day view for that metric.
Here’s some more information on what we’re providing in each section. These details will also be available in the help guide on your story’s dashboard in case you need it.
Rank
This is your story’s position on the leaderboard during this time period. The line chart shows both how your overall rank (calculated across all stories) and your genre rank (calculated only with stories of the same genre as your story) have changed in the past 30 days.
If your chart indicates that there’s no data available to show, it means that your story has not consistently trended above #20,000 for the past 30 days, which is our threshold for being able to store your ranking data.
Reads
This is the number of reads you’ve accumulated during this time period. The stacked bar chart shows how many reads your story has gained daily in the last 30 days as the total height of each bar, and how many of them come from your first 3 episodes, versus any additional episode(s) you’ve since published. You can click on the options in the legend below the chart to look specifically at the data for just the first 3 episodes versus any additional episode(s).
Read data for your most recently published episode will not appear on this chart, however, it will once you publish a subsequent episode.
Gems
This is the number of gems used in your story during this time period.
The stacked bar chart shows how many gems have been used in your story daily in the last 30 days as the total height of each bar, and how many of those gems come from the various gem features available to you. You can click on the options in the legend below the chart to look specifically at any of the gem sources (if you use more than 1).
As part of the dashboard, you’ll be able to track which kinds of gem choices readers are choosing in your stories. To be able to track these, in every published episode of your story, you’ll need to update the choice_name syntax if you’d like to be able to distinguish 4 types of gem choices in your story:
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Support the author → author_support_NAME
-
Example #1: author_support_1
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Example #2: author_support_episode1
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Bonus content → bonus_content_NAME
- Example #1: bonus_content_fact
- Example #2: bonus_content_scene
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Points → points_NAME
- Example #1: points_Max
- Example #2: points_Elena
-
Oufts → outfits_NAME
- Example #1: outfits_school
- Example #2: outfits_ballgown
If you make these changes, you will need to republish your chapters, in order for these choices to be tracked. The dashboard will then provide a breakout you can use to determine what’s most effective for your in your stories.
We’ve also updated our Gem Choices Zendesk FAQ here with the above information.
Gems/Read
This is the ratio of the number of gems used in your story to the number of reads you’ve accumulated during this time period. This line chart shows you how this value has changed in the past 30 days. Note that Gems / Read will be 0 for any day that your story logged 0 reads or 0 gems used.
For more information about any of the above details, or how to use the dashboard, you can also visit this Zendesk FAQ here.
We’re excited for you to be able to see how your stories are performing, and will continue to look into how we can show you even more data about your stories in the future.
As always, we look forward to your feedback and suggestions. If you have any issues with this update, please reach out to our support team.
With love,
– The Episode Team