Is anyone on Wattpad?

LadyA · Mar 16, 2014

jr0127 said:
Wattpad is wonderful! I've been on Wattpad for 2.5 years and they just recently reached out to me to see if I wanted to be apart of their featured author program. They're currently featuring my first novel The Runaways and it's been doing very well on the charts & the amount of new readers has been staggering since it went up on Feb. 21st (+274,604 reads, peaking at #3 Action & #2 Mystery/Thriller).

Contrary to popular belief it's because of Wattpad that I was approached by an agent about my work (she was interested in shopping the piece I had on Wattpad to publishers). I'm interested in pursuing self-publishing that particular piece, but she's interested in signing me for other work samples I've posted on Wattpad. My friend Taran hit 1 million reads with his fantasy novel "The Summoner" was featured on NBC and had was contacted by Audible to buy his audio rights to his Wattpad novel & now has multiple agent offers. Sally Slater, author of Paladin (6 million+ reads) was also discovered by an agent on Wattpad. So it is possible to find representation via Wattpad. The major success stories are from authors like Beth Reekles (The Kissing Both), Abigail Gibbs (Dinner with a Vampire), My Life with The Walter Boys (Ali Novak), etc. these authors found an audience on Wattpad and found representation as well as landed Big 6 Deals (minus Ali) from Wattpad.

So definitely stick with it! It's an incredible place to get active, consistent feedback, it keeps you writing, and it certainly doesn't close any doors. While a trad publisher would like all of your rights ideally, if your book takes off and builds it's own market there is a lot of potential in that! Enjoy & feel free to add me!

www.wattpad.com/user/jr0127

Hi! It's actually because I read your thread talking about how you were spotted on there that I joined up! I know I'm not going to be spotted but it drew my attention to Wattpad again and I thought, why not?

Incidentally, Abigail Gibbs is actually from my (small) home town!

I'll add you now

Howard Beale · Mar 16, 2014

"We'll Be Back!

Wattpad is currently over capacity. Thanks for your patience while we work to get Wattpad back up. We will be tweeting updates at @wattpadsupport, so stay tuned!

Or visit support.wattpad.com for the updates."

What have you lot done!?

Cyia · Mar 16, 2014

Wasn't there chatter a few months ago about a big name author doing a new project on Wattpad?

LadyA · Mar 16, 2014

Cyia said:
Wasn't there chatter a few months ago about a big name author doing a new project on Wattpad?

I know Margaret Atwood is a fan. She's got a few stories up, apparently.

fredXgeorge · Mar 16, 2014

LadyA said:
Argh, he's my favourite! I'm doing a degree in publishing and one of my friends got work experience with a publisher working on the new 1D book, and she got to email back and forth with Zayn, I was so jealous!

Omg that is so cool. He's my favourite too.

Cyia said:
Wasn't there chatter a few months ago about a big name author doing a new project on Wattpad?

I know Maureen Johnson just started on there, though I don't think she's put anything up yet.

ReflectedGray · Mar 16, 2014

Sooooo...some of the positive comment on hear made me decide to pull the trigger. I posted my story, Grayscale. Feel free to check it out, if you want.

Also, i'll read whatever links are posted here / if anybody wants to send me a private note, that's fine too. I'd love to be directed towards the high quality stories. I'm already impressed with some of the ones I've found through absolutewrite.

Also, I thought it would be worth mentioning that I don't intend Grayscale for publication, so don't judge me too harshly. My current novel is a lot better, as I've grown quite a bit (IMO).

WATTPAD LINK:
http://www.wattpad.com/user/CecilyKrane

FICTION PRESS LINK: https://www.fictionpress.com/s/3187562/1/Grayscale

CheesecakeMe · Mar 17, 2014

Hey! Another Wattpad user here! I've only been there a couple of months, so I'm still learning the ropes, but it's been... interesting. So strange that the majority of my peers there are half my age, haha. But it's a nice community for the most part.

http://www.wattpad.com/user/Cherry_Cheesecake100

Torgo · Mar 17, 2014

I like Wattpad and I have used it in the past to scout for writers. It's the first 'display site' that I would actually recommend; though I think the secret is that it isn't really a display site.

I would not approach Wattpad with a plan for being picked up by a publisher or an author. It's a very supportive writing community where the ethos is essentially about sharing your work with other people, not 'building a platform' or anything like that.

One caveat that's always worth mentioning about it is that when you see "x million reads!" next to someone's book, that doesn't mean it's been read x million times. They're basically page impressions, and as such are inflated by several orders of magnitude. For a better metric of how popular a Wattpad story is, look at the comments count.

ReflectedGray · Mar 17, 2014

CheesecakeMe said:
Hey! Another Wattpad user here! I've only been there a couple of months, so I'm still learning the ropes, but it's been... interesting. So strange that the majority of my peers there are half my age, haha. But it's a nice community for the most part.

http://www.wattpad.com/user/Cherry_Cheesecake100

Haha, funny coincidence. I'm actually reading your story now...don't tell anyone. It’s slow at work. I like it so far!

And yeah. I so rarely feel old but Wattpad definitely does that to me sometimes. It’s like walking into a Forever 21. Sometimes you can find cute sweater at cheap prices, but other times it just makes you feel like you’ve made a terrible mistake.

I’m just joking. I think the website is great for the most part. Really talented people if you select the stories carefully. Sometimes I take a break and head over to FictionPress as well.

ReflectedGray · Mar 17, 2014

jr0127 said:
Wattpad is wonderful! I've been on Wattpad for 2.5 years and they just recently reached out to me to see if I wanted to be apart of their featured author program. They're currently featuring my first novel The Runaways and it's been doing very well on the charts & the amount of new readers has been staggering since it went up on Feb. 21st (+274,604 reads, peaking at #3 Action & #2 Mystery/Thriller).

Also, all I have to say is WOW! I've seen your stores floating around and was impressed. The stuff that goes to the top isn’t always a combination of good writing and good story telling, but I think yours definitely is. It’s great to hear you've had representation offers because you totally deserve it.

PS: Sorry about the double post. I'm not really sure how to quote twice in the same response yet.

CheesecakeMe · Mar 18, 2014

ReflectedGray said:
Haha, funny coincidence. I'm actually reading your story now...don't tell anyone. It’s slow at work. I like it so far!

*Blush* Why thank you so much! Yours is the wolf shape shifting book Grayscale right? It's pretty good so far too!

I'm a pretty passive person in general, and have found posting my story on Wattpad is really helping to build up a little more self confidence, even if my story is not exploding with reads. (Yet

)

lauralam · Apr 14, 2014

jr0127 said:
My friend Taran hit 1 million reads with his fantasy novel "The Summoner" was featured on NBC and had was contacted by Audible to buy his audio rights to his Wattpad novel & now has multiple agent offers.

He ended up signing with my agent, Juliet Mushens, I believe.

Abigail Gibbs was also picked up by HarperVoyager for Dinner with a Vampire through Wattpad (through my friend Amy McCulloch, who now works for Puffin and is a YA author as well).

Torgo · Apr 14, 2014

lauralam said:
He ended up signing with my agent, Juliet Mushens, I believe.

Yep! It's doing the rounds.

Abigail Gibbs was also picked up by HarperVoyager for Dinner with a Vampire through Wattpad (through my friend Amy McCulloch, who now works for Puffin and is a YA author as well).

I see Amy has put an extract of her book up on Wattpad too.

lauralam · Apr 14, 2014

Hi Taran!

I'm debating signing up for Wattpad too, to help raise awareness of my books. I'm also publishing some short stories myself this summer on Kindle, so that could be good too. Plus it seems like a fun community.

Torgo · Apr 14, 2014

lauralam said:
Hi Taran!

I'm debating signing up for Wattpad too, to help raise awareness of my books. I'm also publishing some short stories myself this summer on Kindle, so that could be good too. Plus it seems like a fun community.

Oh I'm not Taran - just an interested observer!

lauralam · Apr 14, 2014

Torgo said:
Oh I'm not Taran - just an interested observer!

Whoops!

jr0127 · Apr 14, 2014

lauralam said:
He ended up signing with my agent, Juliet Mushens, I believe.

Abigail Gibbs was also picked up by HarperVoyager for Dinner with a Vampire through Wattpad (through my friend Amy McCulloch, who now works for Puffin and is a YA author as well).

That's fantastic. I was just speaking to him earlier this week regarding how to go about negotiating between agents. I'm in the middle of negotiating a contract and weighing my options with other agents. I'm still very much considering if I want to go the agent direction or handle things independently. But he's been fairly successfully egging me in the signing with an agent direction and moving forward from there.

jr0127 · Apr 14, 2014

ReflectedGray said:
Also, all I have to say is WOW! I've seen your stores floating around and was impressed. The stuff that goes to the top isn’t always a combination of good writing and good story telling, but I think yours definitely is. It’s great to hear you've had representation offers because you totally deserve it.

PS: Sorry about the double post. I'm not really sure how to quote twice in the same response yet.

Thank you so much for such kind words! I really appreciate that! I'm still weighing my options in terms of whether or not to sign with this particular agency or to approach other agents with an offer on the table. Thank you so much again!

lauralam · Apr 15, 2014

jr0127 said:
That's fantastic. I was just speaking to him earlier this week regarding how to go about negotiating between agents. I'm in the middle of negotiating a contract and weighing my options with other agents. I'm still very much considering if I want to go the agent direction or handle things independently. But he's been fairly successfully egging me in the signing with an agent direction and moving forward from there.

I definitely think it's better to have an agent. There's a lot of terms within a contract which you probably wouldn't know are negotiable or realise that they're, frankly, not good terms. Agents make deals better for a living. For my existing deal, my advance was raised by almost 30% and royalties upped by 2%, which I probably would have been too timid to do. There's also subsidiary rights and all sorts of other things. And, if something is awkward with your publisher, the agent can be the go-between and preserve that working relationship.

Plus, there's the long-term career to consider. For my next book, it can go out widely to lots of publishers who don't look at unagented work. My agent knows editors' tastes and which publisher is most likely to make an offer, and can get a much quicker response from them than if I went in through the slush.

I wouldn't give up my agent for anything. She's ace.

gambit924 · Apr 15, 2014

Okay, just a quick question. Is this a good place to put your first story and get good feedback on writing? I am working on something now that was going to be a screenplay, then a graphic novel, but now I think it would just be good to write it out and see if people like it. Is this a good platform to share your first story on? I am not famous, no agent, and I haven't published before (except for bad fan fiction, yes I wrote bad fan fiction, I'm a silly person). And I can kind of add chapters as I go right? Is that the way it works? And I figure if I get good feedback, I can write something I am really serious about publishing. Is this a good plan or am I shooting myself in the foot? I will admit that not everything I write is gold.

Hapax Legomenon · Apr 15, 2014

If by "good feedback" you mean meaningful critique, I don't think Wattpad is the best place for that. If you're looking more to build a base/fans wattpad is a good place to do it but it'll take a lot of work. In my limited experience the people there are very polite compared to, say, FF.net and similar sites.

lauralam · Apr 16, 2014

Probably you'd be better off finding a small group of trusted critique partners first, and then put up the final product to judge reader reactions. That's how I'd do it, I think.

Torgo · Apr 16, 2014

gambit924 said:
Okay, just a quick question. Is this a good place to put your first story and get good feedback on writing?

Wattpad? Not really. It's not really a place where critiquing is asked for or given. It's a very supportive community - if people like your story, they'll give you a thumbs-up, but if they don't, they'll just move on to something else, it seems.

gambit924 · Apr 16, 2014

Ah okay. Thank you!

thejamesramos · May 29, 2014

I just signed up for wattpad!

http://www.wattpad.com/user/jamesthedorkasaurus

Message me if you're there, I need people to follow.

Is anyone on Wattpad?

Always lurking, never posting...

Mad as Hell!

Rewriting My Destiny

Always lurking, never posting...

I heart sexy elves and wizards.

Formerly Phantom of Krankor.

Moonshade

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Moonshade

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I write stuff sometimes