How to Categorize Your Stories on Ream
This guide is intended for Ream Authors
On Ream we make it easy and fun for you to categorize your stories so that they can be discovered by readers on the platform.
The goal: to allow readers to more effectively discover stories they love on Ream so that they can become Followers and Paid Members of your subscription.
Here are the main ways you can categorize your stories on Ream:
Genres and Subgenres
For each story, you can assign up to four genres and four subgenres.
You must select one genre to be the main genre.
Selecting multiple genres such as Science Fiction and Fantasy or Romance and Fantasy makes your story visible for readers searching for 'Science Fantasy' or 'Romantasy'. In short, stories that fall into compound genres that are often grouped together, are best separated and should have both as genres or subgenres for the stories.
Audience
Make sure to select what audience the story is intended for, such as Young Adult, Middle Grade, or Adult. Please note: If your story contains mature content, it CANNOT be categorized under a Children or Middle Grade audience.
Romance Pairing
If your story has Romance or Erotica as one of its genres, you will also see the ability to add a romance pairing, allowing readers to search for popular pairings such as MM and MFM. If you do not select Romance or Erotica as a genre, the pairings will not show for you.
You can also put “no romance” into the tags section if you want to make it clear your story has no romance in it.
Diversity
The Diversity section of tags is for authors who write BIPOC, LGBTQIA+, disabled, neurodivergent, and other diverse stories and characters, and want to make that distinction.
Tags
This section is for keywords that help readers find your story.
You can select up to 30 tags for your story but it is best to choose 5 strong tags first, that are weighted more heavily in search (tags that are highly relevant to your story and readers).
The optimal number of tags to have on Ream for discovery is between 10 to 20 tags.
Tropes (enemies to lovers, only one bed, found family) and aesthetics (cottagecore, gothic) should go in the tags section, as well as other tag identifiers that your readers would normally search for, such as dragons, omegaverse, or grimdark.
Content Warnings
Does your story contain content that could be triggering for readers? This is where you’ll mark that. Some readers use content warnings as a shopping list when they are intentionally looking for stories with certain kinds of content, and others use them as a way to avoid stories that would be hard for them to read.
Either way, they’re incredibly helpful for readers, so please use them!
What Happens if a Reader Reports Content on Ream?
If a story is reported by a reader for having a Content Guideline violation or being categorized in a way that is grossly misleading and damaging to the reader experience (think a story claiming to be sweet romance but in fact has many scenes that are erotic in nature) and the Content Moderation Team reviews the content and determines that the report is valid, then the story will be delisted from search and the author contacted.
Note: Being delisted from discovery does not mean your stories are unavailable to any existing Followers and Paid members of your Ream. New readers can still Follow and join your Ream as a Paid Member.
Being delisted means that new readers can't discover your story until a correction has been made.
If you have any questions, please contact our Support Team at support@reamstories.com.