Episode Interactive (Promises of Pay, Eventually, Maybe)

I just found this on that website’s FAQ:

How old do I need to be to write a story?
Authors on the Episode Platform must be 13 or older. If you are 13 to 17 years of age, you must have parental permission to submit and publish your story.

Edit: Ok, I found something else. It’s beginning to make more sense now. It seems that in order to get paid, those writers need to have a certain amount of reads within a certain time period. It looks like more information can be found here:

http://forums.episodeinteractive.com/forum/main-category/announcements/910765-writer-payments-now-live

Whow. I don’t have an account so I can only see the page you posted but if they’re pushing for people to write for money rather than for fun, either they have a huge reader base or it’s unrealistic. It sounds like you need over 500,000 reads in 60 days! Good way for the company to get free material anyway.

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This article: Writing Contests sounds like it applies even if they are not exactly a contest.

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that website seems like leechers or scammer using people with false promises about getting paid, and even so they dont tell them how much can earn while they get new fresh histories for free and use them to make money with advertisement and adds…:nauseated_face:

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Oh I have no problem with this site allowing people to create their own works, that’s cool, and maybe their fan base is large enough to support 500000+ reads (and that’s just to get into the paid writers club), but it’s certainly suspect when they fob off questions about how much they’re paying for views after that with “oh it depends on a lot of things really.” Sounds like a scam to me to get people promoting their stories and get them free advertising. Write for them if you feel like creating a game, but I wouldn’t do it and expect to get paid. (Although I could be wrong).

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You could always ask one of the authors that have met that criteria, there are a few that have. But I make a good guess that their commission is way less than HG pays out. Most of the authors do use Instagram. Also as a caveat, all outside author’s games are free as is costing no gems (just passes that regenerate over time). Just a way to get more people to use their app and hopefully get people to use the premium stories.

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Could be right. I saw they’re using paid gems and passes. (Which would work out really expensive if you bought them. Like about $1 for 10 gems and the choices on the one I looked at were between 20-30 gems each (and multiple options to use them I each story.) I had a look on the forums and every time someone asks a question for “paid” authors, I haven’t seen any responses.

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Their only ‘real’ paid authors work for Episodes directly, so you will probably not find any information on what they pay their writers. Though asking some of the successful 500k+ writers might yield you better answers, but getting asked by a random stranger on the interwebs how much they make/made seems likely candidate for an ignore, though it might get some answers.

I am with you vague answers from a publisher does seem sketchy, we most repituable sources tend to be upfront.

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A funny aside: I looked at their design document a while ago and you could get the same effect by taking ours and changing every “do” to “don’t” and every “don’t” to “do”. In particular their recommendation on branching is all fake choices all the time.

Also, when I did that look (in last June), the only information I could get on their payments was that they said they might eventually pay an author if they wanted to.

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I noticed that. It’s like don’t branch the story! It makes it too complicated :laughing:

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That’s not even slightly true. I became a paid author with one story, and I do not work directly with episode. If you go on the app, most top trending stories are paid authors, and the only ones who directly work with episode are featured stories.

Actually, yeah, it might sound far fetched, but there are plenty of us who are writing and getting paid through episode interactive. Now, after 60 days your reads do not reset they slowly decrease. I unlocked the payment section within 2 in a half months with only one story which you can have as many stories out at once as you’d like every read from every story counts. The app is highly popular with stories from hit shows and movies such as Pretty Little Liars, Mean Girls, Clueless and even some celebrities such as Demi Lovato and much more. The app actually pays generously! When I started, I was doing it just for fun, never did I imagine I could make the amount I am in a month. You have to give it a try before you knock it you’d be pleasantly surprised.

Also, I would like to add I do not work for episode directly.
The only people who work for episode directly are the ones on the featured shelf. Most paid writers are not on that shelf.

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Episode pays per read, right? How much do they usually pay for how many reads?

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Yes, you get paid per read, but they never actually tell us the amount per read because it can change depending on how well the app itself is doing. My pay has been steady around the same every month for 8 months though.

But don’t they tell you how many reads you get in the dashboard? You know how much money you get, so it seems like you could just divide pay/reads.

(I’m also extremely curious to know how much you’re making monthly, even just a ballpark figure.)

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Yes, which I roughly have a percentage estimated I’d just rather not publicly post that due to not wanting to break my contract with them. I haven’t seen any other authors post the pay per read amount before, so I’d rather not chance that.

The second question you asked: I can say around 1000 a month depending on how much I update my work. Some months I don’t update at all which will cause my pay to drop a little, but If you take it serious and unlock the payment section and update as often as you can at least weekly you can actually make extremely good money. I know a few authors who make 4-5k a month, which that can change once their popular story is complete. Some authors have a one hit story, and nothing ever does as well… While others come out with hit after hit. No matter if your new stories do super well or not, once the payment section is unlocked you’ll always get paid.

By “updating” you mean publishing new chapters?

I added a little more information to my last comment. Yes, updating, meaning publishing new episodes (chapters) of the story.

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Hmmm, really? There are not that many stories that pass the 500k mark (Good for you that you did manage to unlock it). Out of the few that make it the are hundreds more that will never make it. I could have stated my remark better; That their only paid authors are those that manage 500k reads.

https://www.episodeinteractive.com/payments/FAQ#/faq#h.i9l5nly1zkw2 (You have to log in to see)

Do I qualify for the writer payments program?

The Writer payment program is currently limited to our top writers.
To qualify and enter the program you need to:
Have published at least one story on the Episode platform
Have accumulated a total of at least 500,000 reads across all of your published stories in the last 60 days.
Be 18 years old or older

I will toss in a caveat: That the 500k threshold is across all the author’s stories. (Yes I know there are authors over there that passed 40M reads)

Meh. Too much obfuscation for my tastes, based on not being willing to tell people the rate of pay and making them try to hit a moving target. And the whole tier thing smells bogus. Sure, CoG games get promoted more than HG. But there’s still plenty of opportunity for HG games to make as much or more because this place doesn’t really play favorites, everyone gets the same cut per sale whether they’re an acclaimed regular writer or a green newbie.

Plus, if you are talking about making money writing stories on licensed properties…is that even legal? Or ethical? Fan fiction for hire smells like something that only exists because the right lawyers have yet to sniff it out.

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