Getting Our Work Out There (A Look at Wattpad)

By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig

Visibility and discoverability are words that I encounter time and time again on the industry blogs I follow.  There are a lot of books in the marketplace right now.  How can you make your book stand out…and find readers?

The best approach for obtaining visibility (in the current climate…things change rapidly) is to compose a lot of well-written books.

I’ve been pretty happy about my visibility on retail sites (90% Amazon, really), but I keep wondering how to reach more readers.  I’ve got avid readers who  I’m determined to keep  happy.  But how do I reach out to other demographics?  Can I reach other demographics?

One publishing platform I’ve been hearing a lot about for the last year or so is Wattpad.  There are authors I respect over there: Joanna Penn and Lindsay Buroker among them.  They wrote glowing recommendations of the platform. As Joanna put it in her January post “How to Use Wattpad as an Author” : “How does Wattpad sell books? It’s about building a fan-base for your writing, as opposed to your tweets or blog posts.”

You’d think I’d have gotten on Wattpad much quicker than I did.  I was even, for heaven’s sake, on a virtual panel with the Head of Content of Wattpad, Ashleigh Gardner, back in November for Dan Blank’s Get Read online conference. I was fascinated hearing her talk about the readers there: 25 million readers and growing.  And another big number: 85% mobile (across all devices).  In addition, it’s supposed to be a good way to gain international readers.

Wattpad is free to upload to and to read from. So this is for writers who maybe already have a perma-free book published or who want to hook readers with one.

I did have reservations about using Wattpad, which is why it has taken me so long to get on there:

1)      It’s where the young people are.  I have an older readership and my youngest protagonist is in her sixties.  My oldest is in her mid-eighties.  Wattpad has a lot of fan fiction and YA and I was worried I wouldn’t fit in.

2)      I don’t want to write serials.  I love the idea of writing serials, I love the way readers respond to serials…but I didn’t want to be on the hook for a serial while I’m under contract to Penguin-Random.

So…this was me basically just not understanding the platform.

Because you don’t have to upload the book as a serial…in the sense that you’re writing it as you go along.  You can take your already published book and stick it up there, chapter by chapter.  So…no pressure.

And…yes, that’s where the young people are.  But it’s growing every day.  And…don’t I need to find some young readers, too?

Also I saw…an open niche.  Okay, 25 million readers.  How many cozy mysteries could I find on the site?  I found one.  Exactly one.  And two chapters of another.

It sounded like there would be very little competition.  And that, honestly, is how I got a toehold at Amazon—I was one of the earliest self-published cozy mystery authors to show up there.

If you’re interested in Wattpad, it’s very easy to get published there.  Of course, I did kill most of my Thursday there because I had to read everything about it that I possibly could and figure out best practices and site etiquette.  I’ll share what I learned, below.

Getting started on Wattpad:

First I set up a user name and profile (since we’re authors, it’s a good idea to use our real name or the name we write under as our user name).  I put a picture of myself up there and stated that I was from North Carolina, USA.  They had other basic info on there for Wattpad’s benefit, but not to be shared on the site.

Then I clicked “create.”

I put in the title.

I copy-pasted from the book’s Word document into the box on the screen.  But I wasn’t wild about the way it looked, format-wise. So I copy-pasted the first chapter into Notepad and saved it as a .txt and then hit ‘upload a file.’ It looked better to me.

Just like Amazon, I chose categories for the book.

I added tags for the book (cozy mystery, mystery, amateur sleuth, etc.)

I rated the book’s content…we can choose G, PG, etc.

I linked to the book’s Amazon page. (Advanced tab: External Link).

After we ‘save and publish,’ we have the opportunity to click on the square where our cover would be and upload a cover file.

We can also then add a book description.  You click “My Works” below your profile name and picture and then select “Manage” next to your book’s title.

That was about it.  It looks like this.

As for the best practices, this is what I was able to find out:

Like all sites, begging for people to read your content is considered in poor taste, although apparently they do have a special club (forums are called ‘clubs’ there)  set up for writers to do so. I didn’t look for that club.  :)

Upload regularly.  There were complaints from readers about getting hooked on stories and the writer neglected to upload a chapter for weeks.  Wattpad recommends updating your profile to explain the delay, if you encounter some sort of unexpected issue you’re dealing with.

But only upload a chapter at a time. Apparently, to game the system over there, you want each chapter to get votes and comments, which increases visibility and readers.  As each chapter uploads, you get fresh opportunities to hook more readers.  So if you put all the chapters in at once, you lose out on chances to get in front of more readers.

Don’t blackmail readers (!) Apparently, there are some writers on the site who have withheld the next chapter until they reached a certain number of ‘votes’ (which are sort of like ‘likes’).

If your book is part of a series, you may want to put the series title in with the book title.

Replying to comments is considered a best practice. So, this isn’t like Amazon where nothing on earth would compel me to respond to a review there.

Comments can be deleted…but I have a hard time imagining a time when this would be appropriate.

When you upload another chapter, an email or notification goes out to your followers on Wattpad.

It’s considered all right to put a short call-to-action at the end of each uploaded chapter.  There’s no way to hyperlink, though.   So, write something like:

“Progressive Dinner Deadly” and other Myrtle Clover mysteries are available in ebook, audio, and print formats from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and other retailers. Follow me on Twitter (elizabethscraig), sign up for my newsletter, or visit my website at Elizabethspanncraig.com for more information.  Hope you’ll enjoy the book. 

At the bottom of our profile page, there is a message board.  We can broadcast messages to our followers there and readers can contact us there.

Many writers will post a couple of chapters from their sequel on Wattpad as a teaser…without putting the entire book up.  This is considered fine as long as you put {Excerpt} in the title somewhere so readers understand no other chapters are forthcoming.

There are several extras and social media options there.  You can cast your characters with movie stars (for fun, obviously, and to give readers an idea what your characters might look like). You can dedicate chapters to particularly loyal fans/commenters on the site.  You can upload pictures and YouTube videos that correspond to various chapters.  In other words…you can add some multimedia aspects to your story or multimedia aspects that complement it.  I’m not quite there yet, but I think it’s very cool.

Wattpad’s help center is here.

That’s all I’ve got so far since I’ve only been on it for a few hours and have no followers or readers yet. I was willing to give it a go.   Basically, It seemed like a good way to get my work in front of more and different readers.

Have you had any experience on Wattpad?  How have you tried any other new ways to put your book in front of readers?