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Any Scribes use Wattpad?

Creed

Sage
I heard about Wattpad and started reading on it years ago, but only recently did I return. And I noticed that there were millions of readers in the fantasy section. Like... millions.

I looked into it more and it's quite a robust platform now, with options for advertisements as well. I started a thread a while ago about writing serial fantasy fiction (in smaller sections than Wattpad chapters tend to be) and it generated some decidedly negative/critical responses. While I admit that Wattpad's content seems geared to a certain age group by and large, I'm only more convinced that it's a powerful way for fantasy writers to get noticed.

So is anyone on Wattpad? Has it worked out well so far? (This could be a little bit of a plug too, I'll definitely follow :D)

Food for thought.

Happy Monday!
 

Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
Hello Creed!

I am a proud Wattpadian, or Wattpadder as sometimes we are called. I have not completed my first year at Wattpad yet, but so far I am very happy with how the site works and what the community is like over there.

You can find me in Wattpad as Sheilawisz.

At first, it's slow and difficult to get your stories noticed in Wattpad. The site is filled to the brim with stories everywhere, and many of those stories have a surprisingly good quality. The Fantasy Club is the second most popular in all of Wattpad (after Romance), so Fantasy writers there really face loads of competition.

It has worked well for me.

My stories are slowly getting more and more attention in Wattpad, and the comments have been alright. It takes a lot of patience, and also you need to make yourself noticeable from the social point of view in the various Forums of that site. The people are very nice, and Wattpad is about the enjoyment of stories more than about the business side.

Most Wattpadians are young people under twenty years old, but there is a good number of older folks as well.

Something that you have to keep in mind is that Wattpad rules do not allow to advertise your stories just like that. I mean, that you cannot join a conversation and say: "Hey, my story is like this and about that... please check it out!". You have to use the special SYS threads for the promotion of your stories, and that system does not work well.

Getting to know people and being socially active is very important in Wattpad.
 

Creed

Sage
Listening to this interview with Michael R Fletcher on the Grim Tidings podcast, it sounds a lot like the regular world of publishing in terms of how much effort it takes to make a name for oneself: be social, think about media, and use social media. In the interview, Fletcher describes how he thought signing with Harper Voyager would make the publishing process easy, and quickly came to realize that by not being active on social media and promoting his own book, his sales suffered immensely.

Wattpad is the same game, I guess. :)
 

JediKnightMuse

Troubadour
I heard about Wattpad probably a few years ago and made an account, and stuck some writing up on there, but wasn't getting any reviews or anything at all.

Then I heard about the plagiarism issues, where Wattpad refused to help the author whose writing was plagiarized by someone on Wattpad, and I decided it wasn't worth it to risk putting my writing up there, especially since I wasn't even getting any reviews or anything. (Which, I realize that you really have to put yourself out there to get noticed on Wattpad, which I wasn't doing, but even still...)

Now, what I find interesting is that as of Saturday, they now have this article up regarding what to do if you find out someone has plagiarized your writing that you have up on Wattpad. I'm wondering if something must have happened that made them put that article up, because up until then, they didn't have any kind of a policy regarding plagiarism, and like I said, they refused to help when someone reported to them that they'd had their writing plagiarized.

I'm actually a member of a Facebook group where even DISCUSSING Wattpad is against the rules. They had a member at one point who took the advice of the group and put their story up on Wattpad, only for it to be plagiarized by someone on there and sold on Amazon, and Wattpad wouldn't do anything about it, so now members are no longer allowed to discuss it.

So just an FYI, you might want to be careful about putting your writing up there, regardless of whether or not they have an infringement policy now. The fact that they have one now after this long doesn't make me want to rush off to put my writing back on there, especially since I wasn't getting any reviews, anyway.

I will say that there are established authors who've put their writing up onto Wattpad, so obviously it's working out well for them and hopefully no one is going to be stupid enough to try and plagiarize a well known author. But that's the key- they're already established.

I think, personally, I would probably only put something up there 1. out of boredom and curiosity and 2. if it was something I didn't care enough about...but it's doubtful the latter would happen.
 
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Sheilawisz

Queen of Titania
Moderator
If you are really worried about somebody stealing your ideas or stories, then do not share your work anywhere.

Wattpad is for people that have a real desire to share their stories, and share them for free, because we enjoy stories. If you are very successful in Wattpad it could help you to start a professional career, but that's not the idea behind the site. In Wattpad, people that really want to be paid professional authors are a small minority.

Now, posting your work somewhere has certain advantage: This act generates a record of the date and time when you posted the material, and this can be used to prove that you are the real author, if necessary.

I have heard personal testimony of people that had their story stolen by someone and posted in Wattpad. In those cases, Wattpad deleted the stolen material and the account responsible, and that's all that can be done. It's impossible to magically keep people like that from creating new accounts and trying again, you know.

In case that another site is involved, then you cannot expect Wattpad to fix the problem for you.

So, in general: If you have the personal goal of becoming a well paid and established famous author, do not share your stories anywhere because of people that may want to steal your stuff. Also, as far as I know many Publishers do not accept any material that has been shared anywhere, anyway.

At most, you could try sharing just the start of your story in Wattpad and hope that people will be hooked enough to purchase the complete material somewhere else... and good luck with that, because you are facing savage competition from tons and tons of excellent stories that can be enjoyed for free.

I think that if you are interested on getting paid for your e-books, you should go straight to Amazon or somewhere like that.
 
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Rkcapps

Sage
I had only recently heard of Wattpad so find everyone's comments interesting. Thanks for asking question :)
 
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