Do posts on Wattpad with a significant number of readers count as publishing credits?

stiiiiiv said:

Hi,

I've been curious about Wattpad for a while, but I haven't posted anything there yet.

Perhaps someone could help me answer some questions. I didn't see these ones on any other thread.

In general...

1. Does posting excerpts (chapters) of a novel on Wattpad mean you have electronically published your book, making a traditional agent and publisher uninterested in said work?

Yes, posting your book on Wattpad is publishing it. Posting a chapter is not publishing the entire thing, but dependent on chapter length, length of the book, number of excerpts... whatever you put up is published.

2. If you post something to Wattpad and get a bunch of readers, is that something that might constitute a publishing credit worthy of mentioning in a query letter?

Generally, no. Anyone can post stuff, and people put stuff up in tiny chunks and then add up all the clicks and 'readers' and thus everyone says stuff like their book has 400,000 views and a million reads! Yeah, you posted it in 2-page chunks.

3. What are the risks involved with posting partial novels on Wattpad (for the purposes of testing the waters to see if a story's concept can gain any following)?

Unless you're planning on self-publishing, I don't see the point. Your goal if you're looking for a trade deal is to produce a tight, really well-polished manuscript that will gain an agent, not a following on Wattpad.

Any other pertinent information on the subject would be appreciated.

Stiiiiiv

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There's a good number of people who have landed deals for work displayed on Wattpad so agents and editors do not seem to be deterred by it being up there.

I wouldn't put something like that in a query letter.

I have see Suzie Townsend answering questions about whether to include information like that in a query letter and her response was an unambiguous yes.

Collie said:

I have see Suzie Townsend answering questions about whether to include information like that in a query letter and her response was an unambiguous yes.

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That's interesting. I wouldn't have thought it would matter to most agents, but the times they are a-changin'. And there are stories of authors getting book-deals after developing an online following.

Collie said:

I have see Suzie Townsend answering questions about whether to include information like that in a query letter and her response was an unambiguous yes.

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To be fair, the questioner asked about a story, not a novel, though who knows what people mean, with 20,000,000 reads, which even with Wattpad's stupid statistics is a lot. It wasn't a blanket statement about Wattpad, unless I'm missing something. Question here.

A very small few have gone from Wattpad to Trade Publishing compared to the number of stories actually published there. I think if you have not published very much of your story as a Wattpad story, then you shouldn't, and you should query as if it is unpublished. If you have published most of it (or enough to have spent the first rights) and you have a very large number of readers, then it wouldn't hurt to mention that in the query. The caveat there, is that you need to be familiar with what "a very large number" means based on what kinds of reading numbers other works that made the leap were getting prior to their trade publishing deals. Your number can't just look large to you; you have to have the proper perspective to determine whether it might look large to an agent or publisher.

The Suzie Townsend reply was very brief and didn't elaborate. Make of that what you will, but since two of her specialties are in YA and Romance, and Wattpad is a platform heavily slanted towards YA and Romance, I can deduce that racking up millions of hits would be a selling point with her and by extension major publishers. Both genres are very fuel-hungry, by which I mean there's a huge market there that needs constant replenishment.

Other genres, I can't guess.

This Goodreads list of novels that originally appeared on Wattpad, and were later self-published or professionally published, slants toward those genres as well. A now-published Romance author givers her experience with the platform here.

And some recent news on Anna Todd's "After" which was originally boy band fanfiction published on Wattpad.

My conclusion, it's fine for these two genres only.