[Display site] Wattpad

Old Hack said:

I don't see the advantage of using Wattpad over self publishing unless you want to be able to boast of high numbers of page-views; but remember that many of those page-views come from bots and are meaningless if it's a readership you're after.

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It's also likely that each "view" is for a single page. If one reader pages through a 370 page novel, then that's 370 views. If they page back or reread sections, then each of those clicks counts, too.

I don't know enough about Wattpad to say one way or the other, but I've been on fan fiction sites that are set up like that.

Margret Atwood in favor of Wattpad.

I'm not sold on the idea of a display site, especially this one where, if I'm reading Section C. of their user agreement correctly, you are giving up first publication rights. For someone like Marget Atwood, a publisher isn't going to blink about that loss of FPR, but for the new author...

And then there's this: http://todaynews.today.com/_news/20...3-book-deal-with-record-breaking-romance?lite

I have an account in wattpad and i love reading different novels there..

Thank you!

I just heard about this site from a fellow author friend who uploaded her story as she wrote it - hence the editing issues and plot holes wouldn't be fixed yet. She self published her first book and did extremely well with it. She said that some of her fans from Watt were the first to buy the book.

Sounds good, but I also feared what I found here at AW. The internet is so useful and shady. I think I'll hold off and see where this site goes.

Thanks for all the info.

I just had someone recommend Wattpad to me as an alternative/addition to other forms of putting small, odd-shaped pieces of fiction/prose-poetry/weirdness out for free. ("Other forms" would be: on my blog, seeded as text on a bittorrent server, recorded into a free amateur-quality audio podcasty thing, etc.). That was my first time hearing about Wattpad at all, so I looked for a thread about them in BR&BC. Hello.

When considered purely in terms as a free-to-read display site, with no real publishing expectations beyond "see what happens", how would y'all say Wattpad compares with other such sites? I notice comparisons upthread to An Archive Of Our Own, for instance.

As a teenage girl*, I think I can confidently say that Wattpad is mostly original fiction and One Direction self-insert fanfics. Archive of Our Own has more fanfic than original fic: Sherlock, Avengers, etc. Neither is particularly good for getting noticed (I tried), although the Wattpad readers seem to love romances.

*this is supposed to be a joke, but I'm not funny.

I can't speak for Wattpad. I know AO3. This may go off-topic, but you will have better pingbacks to your original work if you write well, post in popular fandoms on AO3, and actively engage with its community. I added a fandom last year, and went from no notice to several AO3 visitors a day on my blog. I can't guess at the numbers, but emails and IMs have shown about half of those go on to buy one or more of my books. It's a good resource, if you can use it without being obvious and evil about it.

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/technology/web-fiction-serialized-and-social.html?referrer

So, apparently wattpad is trying to make itself into a viable publishing platform. Thoughts?

It will only work if they can figure out how to monetize it. There are probably five 'books' out of perhaps 60,000 on my favorite display site that I would happily pay to own, and which I will certainly download when they are complete.

As much as I love using them as entertainment and outreach, I have a few problems with Wattpad, Archive of Our Own, and other display sites. The biggest is the general lack of editing, which distracts me from many stories. I don't care that lots of readers may not be well-versed in English, and so want/forgive approachable stories that may have flaws.

I see the flaws. If there are too many of them, structural or mechanical, I stop reading the story. I can't take seriously a Wattpad author who never edits her work, and posts chapters a few minutes after she finishes them. She's got to be pro-level already, for that to have a chance at working in the long term. In my experience, posting unedited work-in-progress usually leads to overlong, careening stories with many errors. Reasonable revision is a part of editing, and a skill even dilettante authors should know.

I've also seen this on AO3: authors with strong, clean prose tend to attract a loyal readership that appreciates the same. Authors with clunky, immature, error-ridden prose tend to attract readers that will forgive it because they may not know better, themselves.

I've been using wattpad for some time now. Currently have over 10K fans. A lot of the work on their is unedited and unoriginal. It is rare to find a good book, but sometimes you do.

It is however, a good place to build a fan base. Use works you completed but decided they wouldn't go very far to draw in readers. This could help in the long run since once you are published, you have an audience.

Wattpad has helped multiple people get published. Authors and agents alike hang out on the site. I have seen many authors posting samples of their books to lure in buyers.

Over all, I like the site and use it regularly.

Watto.com? (moved from Novels)

Hi, so I landed on watto and started looking around and saw the people can rate stories and novels. But a lot of them have covers with them. Er, wondering if anyone has used this before? What are your thoughts on posting ch. 1 just to see what other people say about it, or would that be consdered "published"

Just seeing what to do next. Thanks.

I couldn't find the site you were talking about. All I got was Watto from Star Wars and a metalworking website.

But if it's not password-protected, I believe it's considered published. SYW would be a safer bet if there's any doubt.

I have no knowledge of this wattpad, and I'm no expert, but I believe one is always safe to post a small segment of one's work. A single chapter posted as a sneak peak, or for the purposes of critique should not get you into trouble with publishing first rights, regardless of where it is posted.
That said, a password protected site, like AW's SYW, will never cause problems with first rights, so it's a safe place to get critique.

Do you mean Wattpad?

There is no Watto.com

As far as I know Wattpad (which I guess you are talking about?) and Scribophile and the like need a login for anyone to access the stories, so they're not public and therefore not published. But I might be wrong about that. I haven't looked into the concept too much.

I like sharing with my beta readers and do not like having more than a few bits and pieces out there on the internet for critiques.

I have to chime in here. I'm a huge fan of wattpad.

If you go to the "featured" list, you'll find hundreds of well written books (that are NOT 1D fanfic or about werewolf mates).

Numbers on Wattpad are shooting up like crazy. They have something like 30 million users now (with 28 mill regularly active users), and there have been a number of new books deals springing up from there (and a movie deal).

Some of Wattpad's users are: Amanda Hockings, Maureen Johnson, Scott Westerfield, Beth Revis, Lauren DeStefano, Margaret Atwood, Lindsay Cummings and Brandon Sanderson.

And it's absolutely true that there are a lot of copyright violations on there. There are a lot of teens that don't seem to understand that it's NOT okay to post someone's work, even if you say "this belongs to so and so". I've dealt with people stealing my work, but every time Wattpad has gotten back to me immediately and dealt with it. They also ban repeat offenders.

I've met some wonderful people on there, readers, writers, beta readers, etc. It's also a great place to work up a fanbase before you publish something (my fan numbers are in the 40k range now and still growing fast).

Anyways, sorry for the long-winded speech, just wanted to get my two cents in about my experience with Wattpad.

Erin Latimer said:

Numbers on Wattpad are shooting up like crazy. They have something like 30 million users now (with 28 mill regularly active users), and there have been a number of new books deals springing up from there (and a movie deal).

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I doubt that Wattpad has 30 million writers on the site. That's a ridiculously large number of people. I know that Wattpad used to count webcrawlers and indexing bots as readers, and I suspect they're included in that number.

Old Hack said:

I doubt that Wattpad has 30 million writers on the site. That's a ridiculously large number of people. I know that Wattpad used to count webcrawlers and indexing bots as readers, and I suspect they're included in that number.

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You have to be careful about those numbers, yes. I've had lots to do with Wattpad and I think it's a good site, but 30m is way bigger than my best estimate. It's probably a tenth of that or less (still big numbers, but far more believable.)

Old Hack said:

I doubt that Wattpad has 30 million writers on the site. That's a ridiculously large number of people. I know that Wattpad used to count webcrawlers and indexing bots as readers, and I suspect they're included in that number.

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That's true, I'm sure the numbers are hard to count exactly. Also some are silent readers, who never sign up for an account.

Here's a source (NYT article) that states twenty million:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/03/24/t...serialized-and-social.html?smid=fb-share&_r=1

I've also chatted with the people who work at wattpad, and they confirm it's grown another ten or so million since the article (they also just had people invest in them, and they've partnered with Sourcebooks).

I will admit that I am totally and completely biased here, because my experience with the community has been overwhelmingly positive.

I've looked through Wattpad's guidelines, user agreements, text samples, and general audience. I have some qualms about their very broad usage claims. I'm on tablet, so I can't link easily. But check out Paragraph 6-C here.

Even my mainstream work is too mature and dark to safely fit Wattpad's style. I could retrofit some 'cleaner' stories as small-chapter serials, but that wouldn't be representative of my other work - and it certainly wouldn't be fair to any Wattpad fans I might gain.

So for now, at least, it isn't a great match for me.

6-C looks to me like the standard "we have the right to display your work on our website to the extent required to make the website work" clause. I've acquired books from Wattpad authors and had no issues with Wattpad asserting any kind of rights.

Good to know, Torgo. Some of the language in that passage sounded a bit iffy, even with the 'nonexclusive' qualifier.