Reader retention (also called reader engagement) is a measure of how well your story keeps people reading. Episode looks at the number of people who start your story and compares that to the number of people who finish each chapter. The more people who finish each chapter, the higher your retention is. Generally, we look for stories that have high retention.
We use this measure because it allows us to see how into a story readers are without being dependent on the total number of reads a story has. Here are two examples:
Example 1:
| Story Starts: 10,000 | Readers who finished Ch | Retention Score |
| Ch 1 | 5,000 | 50% |
| Ch 2 | 2,500 | 25% |
| Ch 3 | 1,250 | 12.5% |
Example 2:
| Story Starts: 500 | Readers who finished Ch | Retention Score |
| Ch 1 | 400 | 80% |
| Ch 2 | 300 | 60% |
| Ch 3 | 250 | 50% |
In Example 1 we can see that even though the story has more reads, the overall retention is lower than the story in Example 2.
Episode uses retention scores to measure how successful our own stories are with our readers. We also use this in conjunction with our grading rubric to help select user stories to feature and contest winners.