Lmao when I was featured last July (Beach Reads) I went from around 750 reads to about 60k in the week that I was featured which was wild… to be fair though, my story did have bad boy in the title
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Bump! 
It is my duty to keep every topic of the people that I love open, the only thing that can bring me down is “no more than 3 consecutive replies in a thread” 
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In which case, you can PM me to get me to do it lol
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Yes, because if you make a thread saying you’ll bump posts, it’ll get closed and you may get in trouble so better to ask over PM 
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Somehow I liked this post before but never commented? I have no recollection of this…anyways I looked through the spreadsheet you made and wow- I really underestimated how powerful shelves are? This is crazy. Most stories increased by at least 50-100K reads in a week…that’s outstanding.
Good.
Thank you for making this spreadsheet though, iconic.
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Yeah 
Crazy imo! Though I’ve noticed that it’s died down with these monthly ones? Where only a few seem to be really taking off? One didn’t even get 5k reads which I am still really sad about coz I adore itI really need to track another one. I guess April’s? Oooh, I should do a side by side of the April’s Editor’s pick and the Arab-American shelf. Thanks for the idea Coco!!!
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Yeah the monthly ones dying down makes some sense…after the first initial week most people who would have been interested in reading these stories would have already. That’s why the rotating shelves are a great idea.
Go off, I guess.
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bumping because I am definitely doing this whole tracking thing for the next shelf
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my story was featured on the editors picks and I started with around 1k reads and ended with about 55k!! I had five episodes up at the time.
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From my personal experience it’s a mix of genre, cover, description and available episodes. Although I would leave the last one out because a shelf is a great opportunity to gain new readers, not just reads in general.
So, the reads per episode would be more important to me in this context:
Being Perfect: Drama/Romance, Editor‘s Pick, 28 episodes while on the shelf: About 170k for the week. (equals 6.1k per episode)
Her Innocence: Romance, College Days Contest Shelf, 3 episodes (+2 updates in the first week): Around 90k for 1 week. (equals 18k per episode if you take the updates into account)
The Shadow Heir: Dystopian Fantasy, Opposites Attract Shelf, 14 episodes (I think): around 80k for the week. (equals 5.7k per episode)
What I think is happening to the themed shelves is that they are being chosen by recommendations from the community. And, while I think it’s great that Episode decided to include the community in this decision, it also results in stories being shelved that may not target the core audience as well as stories that are picked due to high retention rates, which in themselves prove that the story is being well received by readers.
This is not me, saying that the first mentioned are not good stories.
It just means, they aren’t tailored to the average Episode user. At least that is the experience I have with my 3 stories, from which the better storyline (my opinion) has the least engagement, because it just doesn’t appeal to the Episode audience as much as the rest.
Also, thank you @amberose for sharing this data. I love numbers and it was very interesting to see those charts. I’m amazed by the effort you went through to make this! Thank you!
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Ahhh thank you 
And thanks for sharing your own experiences too 
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Hidden Gems Shelf
Alright, so… 3 weeks ago I thought it would be fun to track the Hidden Gems shelf was on because my friend was getting featured on it and I was interested to see if I could find any patterns in comparison to mine and I was bored and I’m extra.
But honestly, my “findings” were kinda weird this time and if anything, they either expose Episode for something I’ll make my theories later or I just figured out I have a glitch? Either way… Here’s my table no graphs this time, lol
Stories and their number of reads when the shelf started
The Wedding Buddies - 687
La Vida Lively - 2.6k
Daizees LL - 192
Dark Temptation - 12.8k
The Princess’ Bodyguard - 1.1k
The Adventure of a Lifetime - 9.8k
Mafia Misfits - 3.2k
Dangerous Desire - 2.6k
The first stuff up here was the fact that they missed a story! The shelf was up at 6pm AEST and I went to bed around midnight and it still wasn’t there. Idk what time they fixed it as but when I woke up there were a few people telling me I had “forgotten” a story. So like, thanks Episode for making me look like the incompetent one 
The Week’s growth in numbers (at 12 hour intervals)
| STORY | |||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 6:00 AM | 6:00 PM | 6:00 AM | 6:00 PM | 6:00 AM | 6:00 PM | 6:00 AM | 6:00 PM | 6:00 AM | 6:00 PM | 6:00 AM | 6:00 PM | 6:00 AM | |
| The Wedding Buddies | 3.1k | 5.5k | 8.2k | 8.2k | 8.2k | 11.9k | 11.9k | 15.5k | 19.4k | 19.4k | 24.4k | 27.5k | 27.5k |
| Dark Temptation | 15.7k | 15.7k | 24.2k | 25.2 | 31.2k | 31.2k | 41.1k | 41.1k | 50.3k | 50.3k | 59.1k | 59.1k | 70.1k |
| Mafia Misfits | 4.4k | 4.4k | 6.8k | 7.3k | 8.1k | 8.1k | 10.4k | 10.4k | 12.2k | 12.2k | 14.4k | 15.8k | 16.3k |
| La Vida Lively | 2.6k | 5.9k | 9.8k | 10.4k | 10.4k | 14.4k | 14.4k | 19.2k | 20.7k | 20.7k | 23.7k | 25.1k | 27.4k |
| The Princess’ Bodyguard | 2.4k | 2.4k | 4.9k | 7.8k | 8.2k | 8.2k | 10.8k | 10.8k | 12.9k | 12.9k | 14.7k | 16.5k | 17.1k |
| Dangerous Desire | 3.4k | 5.1k | 5.2k | 8.2k | 9.8k | 9.8k | 11.8k | 13.6k | 13.6k | 16.4k | 16.4k | 18.7k | 19.7k |
| Daizees LL | 192 | 1.1k | 1.1k | 2.1k | 2.1k | 3k | 3k | 3.8k | 3.8k | 5.3k | 5.3k | 5.7k | 6.2k |
| The Adventure of a Lifetime | 9.8k | 12.2k | 15.6k | 20.4k | 18.8k | 24.4k | 24.4k | 31.8k | 31.8k | 36.7k | 41.1k | 45.6k | 47.1k |
| Sorry, Wrong Number | 7.9k | 7.9k | 14.3k | 14.3k | 19.9k | 19.9k | 23.6k | 26.8k | 29.9k | 29.9k | 33.6k | 35.3k | 37.8k |
So I know it looks like a mess. My spreadsheet this time around did too, because something weird was happening every time I checked the app. See I wanted to check it at 6 hour intervals, but uhhhh, some stories just weren’t changing. I found it weird because even though people have pointed out the app lags and doesn’t always reflect the exact number of reads that someone has… it still wouldn’t be the complete same 6 hours later and especially if you were on a shelf too. How come I could calculate changes every four hours for my own shelf but for Hidden Gems shelf, some “apparently” hadn’t changed after 12 hours? I refreshed my app so many times and turned off my phone and there was still no change so…
Theory number 1: Remember the horror that was the rankings glitch? After so many people complained, they said they would leave it how it was. But what if they did something else? Like not reflecting the reads in the app as a way to avoid needing to change the ranks in the app so often too. I have noticed that sometimes my portal says I’m a certain number in comedy but on the app it’s different. Idk I might be reaching, but the thought of Episode pulling something like this makes me laugh hysterically and I hope it’s true.
Theory number 2: I have a glitch - tbh this is more likely.
Anyhow… despite possible glitches and conspiracy theories, I noticed most of the stories on this shelf did a lot better than the diversity themed shelves. Also this was probably a given but the more episodes you have, the more reads you tend to gain. If you look at the current contest shelf, the ones that have updated since announcing have got a lot more compared to the ones that still have the minimum three episodes. And so a similar thing was displayed here as the stories with 15 episodes gained way more readers than the story with only three episodes.
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Sorry, this adds nothing to the discussion, but
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I can’t believe you did this for me 
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I had to! It was the perfect situation 
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It’s not only you who has the glitch, I tested this with my story a few weeks ago. We already know that there is a glitch with the reads when you pass the thousands category, but now it’s working even worse.
When my story reached 11K, the app was showing 10.9K for a whole day, then the next day it changed to 11.7K (the actual number on the portal was 11070) and the next stage was 11.1K.
I’m a little sad that none of the stories on this shelf reached 100K, but as you mentioned they still did better than the diversity shelves. I’m really starting to think that people are more interested in these shelves when they have a specific theme.
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Yeah, it would have been nice to see the hidden gems shelf take off since everyone is normally so supportive of it. But I’ve noticed that a lot of stories featured on other shelf this year have been hidden gem quality (starting with less than 20k reads) and they never really sky rocket either. It kinda scares me because I’m worried Episode will turn around and revert back to featuring only stories that already have a mad amount of reads already because they’ve been proven to preform better, which is what shelves felt like this time last year
Yeah, I think this is the general consensus tbh.
Side note: I noticed on their insta that aggggggeeees ago, they were asking for shelf theme suggestions. It would be nice to see them do that again so they can ensure the themes they pick are more enticing?
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I don’t know, I seem to have a glitch too. When I view a story on the app, the reads don’t change hardly ever. I think my story was stuck on 5.7k on the app for a couple of days and Diazees was on 2.3k for me the entire time. 
It was up at 8am for me (GMT) but shelves don’t usually appear on my app until around 5pm? So I was surprised when I opened the app on the morning and saw it was up.
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I am actually pretty sure they went with their initial plan to update the app less frequently - ranks included. I sometimes am far better ranked on the portal for almost a day, before it shows on the app. Same for the reads of stories I see. But at least the glitch is gone for most of the time, so it’s not as obvious as it was back then.
I also think the comparison between a story being updated while on the shelf to a story starting the shelf with more chapters may not be an exactly right conclusion.
Here’s why: If a story is updated, while on the shelf, not all the reads will be from the shelf alone. It’ll include the readers that read the previous chapters anyways. If the story had already 500 regular readers and then gets on the shelf and is discovered by 500 more (numbers are just random for example), and is then updated with one chapter, it’ll gain 1.000 reads.
If a story only had 2 regular readers and is discovered by 500 readers, it’ll have 502 reads on the update. If a story has 2 regular readers and is not being updated but is discovered by 500 people through the shelf, it’ll also have 502 reads. But without an update, there won’t be as many additional reads. I know, the numbers are lacking but I hope I was still able to explain what I meant 
So, the reason for it, gaining more reads on the contest shelf is not that it has more chapters, but the fact that they updated at all.
Of course, more chapters to begin with, usually gives more reads, because one person discovering a story with 3 episodes equals 3 reads, while a story with 20 episodes would mean 20 reads per person discovering it through the shelf. Updating will push the reads though, in both cases.
About stories with more reads to begin with, getting more reads while on the shelf: I think one part of that is that, a story with more reads may be catering to the target audience better to begin with. Hence, if shelved, it’ll be clicked on by more readers too.
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