Um, I don’t think that the more gem choices you put in your story = the higher you can rank. More like it depends on how many gem choices were selected by readers. Just because you have gem choices doesn’t mean your readers would select them.
But yes, I’m curious to know how two stories with the same amount of reads but different number of selected gem choices would rank compared to each other.
It is what i said and meant: earned gem choices. 
Honestly couldn’t agree more!
Which is why big authors are probably the only ones who fully support this! It won’t affect them negatively. I’m honestly sick of the favouritism, and they can not deny that it exists.
Because many times I’ve seen small authors have certain things removed from their stories, that big authors with millions of reads get away with. 
I think the most important question now is:
Will we now truly have to pay gem choices with gems? We know that by now most of them were free.
It says it here.
IOS users will have to really soon
I’m not sure I like this part. It seems to benefit authors who already have established readers and makes it harder for less known authors to get more recognition. I guess it’s wait and see.
I also think there should be a way for readers to earn gems reading community stories.
You should add a feature in the writer portal that allow authors to use premium outfits (that can be used only with gem choices).
I feel like this makes it harder for small authors, I don’t see any benefits, except for getting gem choices off the list for making it towards writers payment, but even then they’d still need lots of reads, and I know personally I wouldn’t want to read a story with gem choices in general unless I absolutely loved it
Now that is something I could get on board with.
So long as authors don’t get greedy and request more than 5 gems per premium outfit!
I know I’m not the person to dictate how other people should release their episodes, but I just know from experience that it’s very hard to unlock payments releasing rarely (once a month). I remember the times when I tried to unlock payments having the same amount of followers that you have right now, and I spent a few nights till 2AM, sacrificed a few evenings with the family but I was releasing 5-7 episodes in a month and I was able to finally unlock it. You’re very close to do it too and don’t lose hope. But no shelf will give you reads, especially now when shelves mean almost nothing. Updates and hard work will do. If you treat it as a hobby, don’t feel down by not having payments - I wrote almost two years for no penny because I liked it and just accepted things as they were. And if you notice big authors, they usually release 3-6 episodes a month to keep their reads high. It’s just the effort and time that are rewarded.
I know sometimes we just don’t have time so we have to accept that something won’t work out, but I’d say episode doesn’t favor big authors now, what can be noticed on the weekly shelves. I’d even say we all are going down slowly 
let’s not make it an excuse for another small-big battle
You can always reach me and we’ll work on it 
You’re very close so don’t give up
I’m curious to know how much an author earns for that work. I mean, it’s a lot of work!
It’s hard to earn gems, though. I can’t imagine readers would consistently choose gem choices in community stories when it takes forever to amass any meaningful amount of gems.
I don’t want my message to come off as discrediting you or big authors. Most people understand that unlocking the payments and trying to gain readers take time, and it won’t happen overnight. However, episode always shows favoritism for big-popular authors over smaller authors. They don’t try to hide it. This post is one of the many threads they have that prove the favoritism.
Personally, I feel like it’s always going to be a small-big battle. As annoying as it might be, that’s just how things go in the community.
I agree with this statement.
I agree, they don’t always favour them so much regarding winners shelves… but when it comes to what they allow them to get away with within their stories. There’s definitely favouritism there.
A subtly written steamy scene has earned many small authors warnings, that they need to change the content.
But I’ve read a lot worse in stories with millions of reads. It’s unfair.
Another example is that: Birdy’s cover art of Aiden (From the Triangle) with just the slightest bit of his shirt pulled up, whilst being kissed by the female (Emma) was removed by Episode for apparently containing sexual content.
They were fully dressed, and the art scene was so mild and innocent. It was more beautiful than sexual!
But other covers and art scenes containing sexual poses with the characters half naked are allowed?!
Well, I was writing 3 years ago and I am writing now, I had 0 reads and 0 followers too, and I saw how episode worked and changed during these years. Based on that, I can compare how it worked for small authors before and how it works now.
Part of things were always bad - new stories section and search are wrong for over 4 years and it doesn’t change, so yes it was always a struggle.
However when I started, shelves didn’t feature small stories at all. Then they became more diverse (like adding hidden gems shelf) to become “hidden gems shelf” permanently for all shelves. So in this case, episode made shelves only for small authors as some kind of boost for the beginning - if it works or not it’s another topic.
As a big author I don’t support the rank based on the gem choices OR payments based on gem choices. I spoke with many big authors about it and nobody was fond of that idea. I’m not sure why you think we’re so happy with it and how it could possibly benefit us, while we base on reads right now.
So yes, in general we all will be somehow messed up by the changes - either in unlocking payments or in keeping our revenue as it was before changes.
So if a small author let’s say with only 1,000 reads or so added gem choices and they are 17 years old could they earn any money? Or do you have to be 18+ and meet the # of reads for writers payment requirements? @Melani3?
Is the code going to remain the same? Because I think gems ae not showing for everyone. At least for me it isn’t, I don’t see the gem in the support the author choice.
The post that I quoted said “Which is why big authors are probably the only ones who fully support this! It won’t affect them negatively.” Which is true. It might not hurt you is what I was saying. These new changes hurt smaller authors. These changes benefit you all (popular-big authors) over small ones. Hell, the changes made to the guidelines (about the trending section) is still hurting smaller authors. So, yes. It does benefit you more than us.
How can you say what benefits people if we don’t even know how it works… They didn’t share any information about the gem affecting trending.
If it’s based strictly on the number of gem choices picked in the stories then both small and big authors can have them = the same % will be picked = the rank will stay similar if people are eager to have gem choices. Because if we all have let’s say 3 gem choices per chapter it will always give some % of our reads. And in this case it doesn’t matter if you’re small and big, the gem proportion stays constant.
It can do negatively when you have
a big story with a lot of chapters and without a single gem choice - most of big authors don’t have gem choices inside (meaningful ones that will be bought). Then the new stories designed with gems (also from small authors) will be higher in the rank. Old stories will drop if the authors won’t edit them to fit standards
Result: new and small stories boost
second example if the gem choices will be based not on numbers but on the proportion… So let’s say one story havls one million reads and 50k picked choices = 5%
Small story has 2000k reads but better choices inside so people picked 200. = 10%
(We don’t know if gem price counts but it doesn’t matter now, it’s the same rule)
If the rank will base on the gems efficiency and boost stories with better working gems, it also can boost smaller stories that are designed for gem choices
In both of cases I really don’t see how it could work positively for big authors. Maybe you can explain.