What Can Wattpad Do for You?

wattpadI first heard about Wattpad from a post right here on Indies Unlimited. At that time, I was trying to find outlets to publish my YA sci-fi for free so readers could discover it. I checked into Wattpad and found it quite easy to set up an account and get rolling.

But Wattpad has many other goodies associated with it: clubs, awards, writing contests, and an area with writing tips to help get you going. I was curious about the awards so I checked it out. They offer what’s called the Wattys, which recognize the best loved stories posted during the year. Here’s a quote from their site about some of the awards — and you don’t have to be a super-star writer to win them:

“We honor all kinds of writers with Wattys: from a Beginners Luck award for people who have just started writing on Wattpad, to a People’s Choice award for writers with the most viral stories. This year’s awards highlight the love the community has shown for the most popular genres on Wattpad, while also recognizing the strength of writers in the international community. We’ll even be presenting surprise awards. If you’ve written a story on Wattpad, enter the Wattys because everyone has a chance to win.”

I said, “What the heck,” and gave it a try. It was easy to enter, all you had to do was put the #Wattys2015 in the tagging section of your story. Then you promote your story on social media (I was doing that anyway) to get folks to read and give you stars and feedback. It’s doubtful I’ll win, but it’s fun and free to try.

There is also something new called #JustWriteIt. It’s kind of like Nanowrimo, but Wattpad style. They challenge you to write 10,000 words in 30 days and publish on the site with the tag #FreshStart so readers can find your work.

As for other contests, there are many on the site promoted by various writing groups. They change on a weekly/monthly basis, so there’s something new for everyone. If you fancy a challenge, the contests might be for you. Entries are free, and you never know what might happen. Wattpad has been known to have some important people lurking about looking for possible book and movie deals.

Navigation on the site is pretty easy. Wattpad is set up with 22 genres built in, or you can search by author, title, or even keywords. Thousands of stories are just a click or a few keystrokes away. As for publishing, that’s a breeze too. You need only click on your profile icon, click “works” and then either “new story” or “new part” to the story you are already working on. A fresh page appears and you’re ready to start typing, or paste from a word document if you’ve written it elsewhere.

Overall, Wattpad is a useful tool to get your work in front of an audience without having to jump through the hoops of traditional publishing. It can be used to try out new story ideas, showcase a great scene out of your forthcoming book, or to tip your hat to one of your favorite authors with some fan fiction. It’s fun, simple and best of all: free!

Author: K. Rowe

K. Rowe is an experienced and prolific multi-genre author. She draws from over twenty years of active Air Force service. Kathy lives in eastern Kentucky with her husband and a zoo of farm animals. Among her many duties she finds time to offer services as a publishing consultant for new authors. Learn more about Kathy from Facebook, and her Amazon author page.

17 thoughts on “What Can Wattpad Do for You?”

  1. Ages ago, I uploaded a few microfiction stories to Wattpad to try it out and had a few hundred readers. I finally got around to uploading the first few chapters of my upcoming novel and have had 5 reads to date.

    BUT… I pushed the microstories very heavily on social media and have not yet done so for the chapters. This supports what you said, that you really have to promote, push and cajole to get eyeballs on words, as with every other medium. (No surprises.)

    I shall persevere and monitor eyeballs after the promotion push, to see how it goes.

    1. Well, in the mass length of time I’ve been putting Servo up, I’ve had over 600 reads. Not bad, but wishing for more. Yes, it takes work, social media has been the best way to go. I linked FB and Twitter, and TRY to remember to use # to get folks to find it. Such a game…

    1. You are most welcome- stop by and check it out. There’s so much to see and read there.

    1. This was my way to ensure I do a blog post each week- I’m SO bad about that! But when Servo is done, hmm, where to go from there?

    2. Me too, Yvonne. It’s the ‘promote on social media’ part that’s missing. I wish there were something [other than my blog] that I actually enjoyed doing in the marketing arena. Oh well…maybe one day.

  4. Thanks for posting this! I didn’t know what it was, either. I’d like to know about your book? Short story? Is there a link for Servo or do we need to create an account to read it? Thanks.

  6. Hi Kathy, thank you for sharing this very interesting article and your own experiences on Wattpad. Like you, I first heard of Wattpad while reading an article here on Indies Unlimited. Shortly thereafter, I uploaded a chunk of my YA dark fantasy novel into the fantasy genre.
    It took several uploads in various other genres that I thought that my book would fit the profile for before I realized that you could upload one chapter at a time and build upon that at any pace that you deemed appropriate.
    With this new strategy in mind, I went back to the fantasy genre and started posting Blood and Fire one chapter twice a week, following and reading other authors in the genre and then taking advantage of the ‘post a message to your followers’ feature.
    It took some time, but Blood and Fire is now completed and has 3.69K reads and 582 votes from the community, as well as 168 comments. Early on it reached its highest ranking of #79 in Fantasy, but has since fallen to an unranked position.
    More importantly, I have received lots of useful feedback from my Wattpad readers that I am using to make the final revision on Blood and Fire before launching on Kindle.
    Wattpad is a great platform to get attention to your work and get feedback for your edits and revisions. I am very happy that I chose this route prior to launching on Amazon.

  7. I posted a complete 100,000-odd word sci-fi novel there about eighteen months ago – sales were slumping and I thought it better to give it away than let it languish. So far it’s had 163K reads, 2.2K votes and a lot of excellent feedback – some of which I’ve used to hone to story for a new edition that will be out next year. (Incidentally, being useless with social media until very recently, I did NO external promotion. It was an entirely organic process within the WP community)
    It has also garnered a lot of requests for the sequel. I won’t post that on WP in its entirety, so it will be interesting to see if I get a sales boost when it comes out.
    Overall, a very positive experience.

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