How good is the Wattpat site to publish my novel?

[Sleds]

Man, imagine your story being allowed on Royal Road. Couldn't be me.

Well, you could have changed your story if what you wanted was an old army going into another world, cause nazi are not liked and I understand that some site may have this type of rules to be honest with you.

 

[General_Komrade]

Is it worth re-writing my novel just to post on Royal Road?

 

[Kamelingil]

I published mine and barely reached the average viewers I get here in Scribble Hub, Webnovel and Royal Road

 

[General_Komrade]

I published mine and barely reached the average viewers I get here in Scribble Hub, Webnovel and Royal Road

I know what I must do but I don't know if I have the strength to do it

 

[Sleds]

Is it worth re-writing my novel just to post on Royal Road?

From what I see, you are at the beginning of your story, so that won't take too much time right now, but if you enjoy what you write right now as it is, then it's up to you if you want to do it for RR or if you don't care.

 

[General_Komrade]

From what I see, you are at the beginning of your story, so that won't take too much time right now, but if you enjoy what you write right now as it is, then it's up to you if you want to do it for RR or if you don't care.

Thanks, I will not change my story. I am determined to die on this hill.

 

[Kamelingil]

I know what I must do but I don't know if I have the strength to do it

Yes, but Wattpad is good for writing there, so I only stayed there because it's very efficient to write there than writing in sites

 

[Kenjona]

There's nothing sketchy about Wattpad if that's what you're asking. The visibility and traction is slow at first, but if you're consistent you can start racking up a following. I somehow reached #1 in a few categories on multiple occasions and that managed to net me a pretty consistent follower base on the site. Didn't have to write smut either, but if you do you will probably hit those numbers much sooner.

Self-insert CYOA/"roleplay" stuff is super popular and it doesn't need to be written well either. If you're into that, you should get a pretty big following very quickly, especially if it's written well.

If Paramount wants to steal my story, I'd be honored. I don't think I've written anything that's worthy of being adapted yet.

As a woman, I think these tropes are just as bad as the "slave harem isekai" stuff that I see geared towards men. But then again, I'm a lesbian.

No argument there, and I am a guy who likes Isekai and Harem stuff.

 

[ChaosOmega98]

Don’t use wattapad because I can never find anything on it as I find the tag system too complicated and hard to use to find anything

 

[Fox-Trot-9]

You should've seen what it was like when Wattpad was booming back in the first half of the 2010s. I've been active on Wattpad from 2011-2018 (just after the Wattpad site took down the forum half of it's site). I've seen trends come and go, and I've had fun in the early years of that site (2011-2015), but taking down their own forums b/c of some bullshit reasons connected with online hate speech was the WORST mistake they've ever done! It used to have such a lively community back then, but now it's pretty much nonexistent on Wattpad. From my experience, reaching readers was difficult if you don't write fanfiction/band-fiction, romance/billionaire, vampire fiction. I've mainly written in the poetry, horror, some fanfiction, and fantasy genres on there, and horror was a tough sell there. Poetry and fantasy was a little easier to reach readers, but that was back in the 2010s. Now that there's no Wattpad community on that site, it may as well be a ghost town.

I'll show some numbers, so you can undertand where I'm coming from.

Villainess, Retry! [first few chapters of volume 1] (posted on Wattpad, 2022): 212 views
Villainess, Retry! [volume 1 only] (posted on RoyalRoad, 2021): 20.4k views
Villainess, Retry! [volume 1 to current] (posted on ScribbleHub, 2021): 31.2k views

Days of Blood and Roses (posted on Wattpad, 2017): 8.5k views
Days of Blood and Roses (posted on RoyalRoad, 2018): 17.4k views
Days of Blood and Roses [volume 1 to volume 2 (pending edit)] (posted on ScribbleHub, 2020): 22.8k views

The Late Bird's Tale (posted on Wattpad, 2016): 1.2k views
The Late Bird's Tale (posted on RoyalRoad, 2021): 3.4k views
The Late Bird's Tale (posted on ScribbleHub, 2022): 2.5k views

Do you see a pattern here? Back then, Wattpad was livelier; you still had views but not that many if you wrote in genres other than the ones catering to its reader base. Compare that with the views I had in the first half of the 2010s when I was writing poetry and horror and fanfiction on Wattpad.

Fanfiction / The Great Pretender (Ouran High School Host Club) (Wattpad, 2013): 2.1k views
Fanfiction / The Whitechapel Case (Ghost Hunt / Death Note crossover) (Wattpad, 2011): 14.8k views

Horror (short fiction): Behind the Mirror (Wattpad, 2012): 3k views
Horror (poetry): Murderously Disturbed (Wattpad, 2016): 3.2k views

Poetry: Challenge Yourself (Wattpad, 2012): 2.6k views
Poetry: *A Poet's Progress (Wattpad, 2011): 12.1k views
Poetry: *The Who's Who of Clerihew (Wattpad, 2012): 15.1k views
Poetry: Acrostic Quotes (Wattpad, 2011): 15.2k views
Poetry: *Nove Otto of Roses (Wattpad, 2012): 15.4k views
Poetry: *The 99 Poem Challenge (Wattpad, 2011, 2016): 26.8k views
Poetry: More Shakespeare's Sonnets (Wattpad, 2011): 37.8k views

Do you see a pattern here? When I first started out on Wattpad, it was focusing on poetry mostly. Then I tried other genres with middling success. Horror was my jam back then, but there wasn't much audience for it. My fanfiction stories were doing well, but I stopped writing fanfiction by 2015. 2015 to 2016 were my lowest years, as I tried writing stories in the fantasy genre with middling success. It wasn't until started writing Days of Blood and Roses in 2017 that I started finding more readers. But then 2018 comes along, and Wattpad decies to fuck up all that progress and hard work by taking out its forums! If there was ever a time I almost punch a fucking hole through my computer screen, 2018 after they took out the forums was it! After that, I moved to RoyalRoad, then I moved to ScribbleHub, and here's where I'm staying.

That leads me to this weird paradox. It's a case of 'Water, water, everywhere, and not a drop to drink,' in which there are indeed readers by the bucketloads on Wattpad, but there are also loads upon loads of Wattpad users there, too, but I suspect that most of them aren't active there anymore. None of my former readers there are active anymore, so far as I can tell. And even when there are readers there, almost all of them on Wattpad are syphoned off to the writers that have already been established with thousands of readers, reads, etc. Only established writers are ever promoted on Wattpad. So new writers on Wattpad, forget it! It's no longer feasible to try to get any traction there, because it pretty much doesn't exist anymore! It's like getting isekai'ed into a writing website the moment you create a user account there. You're dropped in no man's land, where there's no available readers there. Only you and the remnants of what other writers like you have written and nothing more. So don't go there, unless you want to die there.

 

[wresch]

Atlantic had a story a few years back about how Fifty Shades of Gray was built on Wattpad. It sounded ideal. Paid my $ and found it less than ideal. No readers and no rich and famous. Oh well.

 

[tiaf]

There's nothing sketchy about Wattpad if that's what you're asking.

I have to refute that because I just remembered a very crucial fact:

Moderators have UNRESTRICTED access to your drafts, meaning they can not only see it, read it, but also DELETE it without you being able to do anything against it.

Some authors got their secret drafts of story ideas deleted. I, myself, got a draft deleted because there was an r-18 pic in it.

The public never saw that pic and I NEVER intended to post that pic. It was there because I was using the WP editor to draft a one shot. I didn't want to have it easily accessible over my phone (had I done it in GDocs) for family when I borrow out my phone.

Yet some stranger had access to that even though it only existed for less than an hour! How creepy is that??

 

[HungrySheep]

I have to refute that because I just remembered a very crucial fact:

Moderators have UNRESTRICTED access to your drafts, meaning they can not only see it, read it, but also DELETE it without you being able to do anything against it.

Some authors got their secret drafts of story ideas deleted. I, myself, got a draft deleted because there was an r-18 pic in it.

The public never saw that pic and I NEVER intended to post that pic. It was there because I was using the WP editor to draft a one shot. I didn't want to have it easily accessible over my phone (had I done it in GDocs) for family when I borrow out my phone.

Yet some stranger had access to that even though it only existed for less than an hour! How creepy is that??

I've never heard of this, nor have I ever used draft features on any site for that matter, so I suppose I'd be the most unfamiliar with this side of things. Thanks for bringing this to our attention. That sounds pretty weird, honestly.

Generally, I don't recommend storing your drafts on a site. Having copies on a word processor like Wordpad (it's free) or Microsoft Word so you can have backups is always better. I also use GDocs, but I still have backed up copies of my work in case of data loss.