Last week I thought I was hitting all the important places to get word out on my work and ongoing projects. Then, out of the blue, without so much as a “By-your-leave”, a good friend of mine asked me if I had spent any time on Wattpad.
I had to reluctantly admit that, no, I had not spent ANY time on Wattpad. As in none whatsoever.
That lack may not surprise those of you who don’t know what Wattpad is. In a nutshell, and borrowing a line from their About section:
Wattpad is a revolutionary way for readers to discover and participate in the creation of new stories.
Okay, that’s great, but why do I care? Let me put it to you this way, my friend has two of his novels up there for comment (for free) and currently has 16,000+ readers. That number alone caught my attention.
Then he mentioned that the work was protected, could not be downloaded or copied. That was cool.
THEN he mentioned the discussion forums about anthologies and how someone started to talk their anthology up and immediately got a ton of interest in it. Now we are talking about something that has an immediate value. Since I am looking for submissions for the Mad Scientist Anthology, it might be a very valuable thing and, who knows? I might just put one of my older works up for comment too.
So, despite thinking I had everything in hand and all the major media covered (in plan if not in action yet), I learned how very wrong I am. All because I finally listened to the hype that this friend has been pitching to me for a few months now.
Have you heard any useful information that you haven’t acted on that could be helpful? Maybe it’s time to start hearing and seeing what’s being thrown your way. Like me, you might just find something useful.
I saw John Mierau post something about Wattpad a couple months back. When I saw that they had mobile apps, and that the text of my story couldn’t be copied and that people could comment on each chapter posted I realized it would be the best platform to beta readers. I’ve been posting the novel I’m going to self publish and podcast up there chapter by chapter after revising and once I’m done I’m going to ask all the people on my beta reader list to go over there and start reading and giving me feedback. That said, someone on the site stumbled upon my book and read all 17 chapters I currently have posted. They left me great feedback and on the last chapter said the book has grown on them and they hope I finish it. I have also put several short stories on there, all the ones you can find for free on Smashwords.com because they’re under 5K words. I look forward to seeing what you think of the site. There are also a lot of users in the clubs that offer to critique and edit your work, and it’s free. I think the site is definitely worth looking into my friend, if for networking, getting your work in front of a lot of eyes, and as a beta reading resource are just a few. Nice post. Thanks Michell.
I plan to spend some time on Wattpad. I just have to find it first. 😉
Thanks for the great comment, Dan.
It’s protected, but could it be sold/sent to a publisher? Just curious. Unless I totally missed something.
I haven’t dug as deeply as I should, yet, but my understanding is, none of the material can be copies in any way. You, the author, have sole right to the work and can pull it off the site any time you wish. You can still sell it and submit to publishers. There are no obligations to the site that prevent that.
Does that answer your question?