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Erin Latimer

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So it sounds like YA would be the best fit for Wattpad? Or am I overgeneralizing?

You would be correct. :) The majority of users are teens. Teen girls to be exact. Paranormal YA and romance are both things that tend to do very well over there (not saying other things don't do well of course).
 

Terie

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You would be correct. :) The majority of users are teens. Teen girls to be exact. Paranormal YA and romance are both things that tend to do very well over there (not saying other things don't do well of course).

Which kind of proves the point about Wattpad counting spiders and such as 'users'. There are around 21-22 million teens in the US, which is around 11 million teen girls. Most teens don't read, and of those that do, it's a fair bet that only a minority of them hang out at Wattpad. I'd bet it's really only a couple tens of thousands, including non-US users.
 

Torgo

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Which kind of proves the point about Wattpad counting spiders and such as 'users'. There are around 21-22 million teens in the US, which is around 11 million teen girls. Most teens don't read, and of those that do, it's a fair bet that only a minority of them hang out at Wattpad. I'd bet it's really only a couple tens of thousands, including non-US users.

I think it might be more than that. I suspect the NYT number is an estimate based off a service like Quantcast, which estimates around 1-2 million uniques per day. That's obviously rough and counts visitors, not accounts; but you have to factor in the huge Filipino audience and significant chunks in places like Brazil, too. I always look at individual authors, though, and at the comments per chapter stat if I want to estimate audience size. If you're engaged enough to comment on a chapter there's a chance you might buy the book.
 

neicolec

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Wattpad = rejection? (merged into BR&BC thread)

I understand that publishers generally won't accept books that have already been published in one form or another. Yet, reading about Wattpad, it appears that a number of authors published there first in serialized format, and then had their full books published later.

So, what's the deal? If you post on Wattpad (which seems a good way to get feedback and build a following), will it ruin your chances of getting traditionally published?
 

Torgo

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I understand that publishers generally won't accept books that have already been published in one form or another. Yet, reading about Wattpad, it appears that a number of authors published there first in serialized format, and then had their full books published later.

So, what's the deal? If you post on Wattpad (which seems a good way to get feedback and build a following), will it ruin your chances of getting traditionally published?

No.

Cards on the table: I've been involved in two acquisitions from Wattpad. Success on Wattpad is a pro, not a con (though I was always very careful to quantify the scale of the opportunity - x million 'reads' does not, of course, equal x million readers.)

It might be different for different publishers, but I've seen plenty of UK Big 5 houses getting involved. The 'first rights' thing is nowhere near as black and white as it used to be.
 

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Someone who works for Wattpad contacted me after looking at my website, suggesting I use it for promotion, that they were looking to bring on more romance writers, etc. Huh.
 

nkkingston

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There was a nice article in the Observer Magazine about Wattpad and its appeal, especially for teenage girls. When it comes to YADS here, you often get a lot of people talking about the popularity contest element, the idea the system is gamed by those with the most friends rather than rewarding the best writing, but the article makes a nice point about how the social element brings in teens who had no interest in reading or writing before. It gave me a strong sense of Wattpad as a place that's For Them, rather than For Us, and made me wonder if I've judged other YADs unfairly.

(I was also impressed to see a major new outlet talk about YA and romance and teenage girls without being patronising, but the article was written by a teenage girl, so that's not quite so surprising.)
 

LJD

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Someone who works for Wattpad contacted me after looking at my website, suggesting I use it for promotion, that they were looking to bring on more romance writers, etc. Huh.

I thought I would share my experience with Wattpad.

After the correspondence above, I started writing a short (15k) romantic comedy. The sex was fade-to-black so I could rate it as PG-13. My intention was just to put it on Wattpad; I didn't plan to submit it elsewhere. After two drafts, I started putting it up in December, proofreading each chapter before posting. I did not have much other activity on Wattpad (participating in clubs, reading other people's work) and got very few reads.

But the woman I had corresponded with from Wattpad got my story on the featured list for Feb. 12, and my reads, votes, and comments increased dramatically. The story now has >130k reads. Now, each read is for each viewing of a given section, and my story has 10 chapters plus an author's note, so keep that and mind :) I can check the reads for a chapter individually too; each chapter has a minimum of 7k reads.

According to the demographic info, the majority of the people who've read the story are female. About 1/3 are ages 13-18, 1/3 are 18+, and for 1/3 this info is private. From the comments, it is clear that most of the posters are quite young too, as several asked me what grade I'm in and what grade the main character was in.

It has been a positive experience in that I've actually gotten lots of people reading my writing, and I've received lots of positive comments.

But. I hoped this would be a useful promotion tool, and people would buy my two books that are published with a romance e-pub, one of which is similar in tone to the story I posted in Wattpad, except with sex. I mentioned these books in the author's note.

However, as a promotion tool, it has been a complete disappointment. My sales are just as low as they always are. There is a slight increase in traffic to my website, but that's it.

I also started putting up another story on Wattpad, posting a new chapter 2x a week. (I did 1x a week for the first one.) It's a story that I had submitted to a few publishers and failed to sell, despite getting one very nice personalized rejection. The word count is 15k, which is too short for many publishers, so it wasn't like I had lots of options. So I put it on Wattpad.

Unfortunately, the large number of readers who read my first story don't seem to be reading my second story. Even though my first story is no longer on the first page of the featured list, it still gets way more reads per day than the second story, and few of those people seem to be taking a look at what else I've written.

Anyway. Just thought I would share my experience. Note that these stories are not YA, but contemporary (adult) romance. I will continue to post the second story and see how it goes. See my signature for links to my Wattpad stories. :)
 
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Jacquelyn Bay

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I think it could be argued that Wattpad's audience activity is similar to that of Fanfiction.net in that you'll find the biggest successes, the most read, reviewed, and talked about fanfiction, are those in Harry Potter and Twilight (I'm rarely in the other sections, but I've never seen quite the same numbers as I did in the fiction section).

Wattpad is know for it's audience that really likes the romance genre. They also really like One Direction fanfiction. In fact, Wattpad has a sort of success story in Anna Todd's After, which is a 1D fanfiction series.

On a more personal level, I've come to decide that I don't work well with Wattpadd. I'm an awful serial writer. Awful.
 

Deb Kinnard

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Coming at it from the other side (a reader), there is some pretty good writing on Wattpad. If I were going to put my fanfic out there, I'd do some sack-scene deletion and put it on Wattpad, not AO3 where the quality isn't as good.
 

Filigree

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That's one of the problems I've been having with AO3, since they began more-open membership invitations. I've been noticing a *lot* more indicators of amateur writing on AO3, across several fandoms. Reader-insert stories, obvious Mary Sues, word choice errors, typos, and just baaaad writing. It's embarrassing. I still love AO3, but I'm getting way pickier about what I'll bother reading.

Even so, I'll stick with posting fanfic at AO3. None of my work fits on Wattpad.
 
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Deb Kinnard

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I did post something in part on A03, it got basically a half-dozen hits, at which point I removed it and self-pubbed it. And I found during the process that I didn't want my stuff keeping company with the other content that was on that platform.

You're right, Samsonet, their tagging system is pretty good.
 

LJD

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I found an old mms of mine that cleaned up just well enough for me pitchfork it onto Wattpad today. I'm not expecting a huge readership, but maybe there will be a percent of a percent of read-throughs to my commercial work.

Hope it works better for you than for me. About 18,000 people appear to have read one of my stories. My total sales for all 4 of my books is maybe 0.5% of that, and I have no evidence that any of those sales were made to Wattpad readers.
 

c.m.n.

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I'm considering Wattpad for one of my previously published books. I'm going to re-write it, clean it up (of its many dirty scenes), and break it up into serial chapters. After the first book is posted in its entirety over a few months, I'm thinking of continuing it.

Since WP is mainly focused on Teens and YA, what are their rules and standards about on-page sex? Is it some what allowed, like vanilla scenes, or not at all? Would fade-to-black be a better alternative for the site and its readers?
 

Filigree

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As near as I can tell, Wattpad has two levels: under 17-safe and Mature which is is 17+ only. Even though my piece has no graphic sex, there are sexual themes and some violence. So I put it at Mature - probably removing it from the tween girl market. Bloodshadow is more NA, but definitely not the contemporary college romance that most current NA seems to be. I kept the sex mild, off-screen but mentioned or inferred, and some fade-to-black. The MC was happily married for one hundred days, after all, and she's an earthy person to begin with.

You can always read deeper into the Wattpad FAQs or ask their mods.
 

LJD

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Since WP is mainly focused on Teens and YA, what are their rules and standards about on-page sex? Is it some what allowed, like vanilla scenes, or not at all? Would fade-to-black be a better alternative for the site and its readers?

See guidelines. If you have on-page sex, you can mark your story as having mature content (17+). Otherwise, stories are supposed to be appropriate for all ages. (Well, 13+.)
 

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Hi! What if you entered your story as rated "R" or whatever as then only readers 17 and older can read it. Would that be proper etiquette to do that? I think my story is PG13 instead but there's a lot of room for age ratings and what story should be rated as such. Maybe 17 and older readers would be angry thinking it doesn't seem to fit the "R" rating. I'd just like to post a story for older readers there thinking that out of 30 million there must be some older readers, right?

Sincerely,
Winfred