Wattpad: Pros and Cons

You may have heard about Wattpad, or maybe not. It was one of the first places I started to share my fiction online and although I’m not active on the site anymore, I spent years in the community. My perspective might not be exclusively unique but I think it could help with any author who’s looking to start sharing their work online and they’re not quite ready for a full website platform.

So, lets start with the basics.

What is Wattpad?

“Wattpad is a community for readers and writers where one can discover new user-generated stories, spanning across different genres including classics, general fiction, historical fiction, non-fiction, poetry, spiritual, teen fiction among others.” Or so says Wikipedia. Basically if you write it, you may post it on Wattpad. It has it’s roots primarily in fanfiction and is how I was dragged into it. Yes, I wrote fanfiction. No, there’s nothing wrong with it. Accept, embrace, and celebrate the things that make you creative. Not everyone is comfortable with making their own worlds. But that’s a rant for another day.

Wattpad seemed to be the best place for aspiring and budding writers to hone their talent with a community of readers. So I said what the hell, and joined. How did I like it?

Community

The online writing community is one of the best parts of being active on a site like Wattpad. Other writers can follow your work, engage with chapters, contact authors directly or have conversations with other fans, readers, and writers. For the most part they’re obscenely supportive and I haven’t had a bad experience when it comes to the individual Wattpader. It’s like the proto-writing group that can help bolster confidence and really give your ideas a chance to draw attention and support. That said, you’re reaching far more readers than writers which brings us to…

Feedback

I’d call this one a mixed bag. Pro as in you get feedback and sometimes any feedback is good, especially when you’re just starting out. As a con the reader base is predominantly that, a reader base. Despite the insane amount of authors on the website my feedback and communication was mostly with accounts that purely read on the website. I admit, as an author, I didn’t read a tonne of other work unless I knew the person and I rarely commented of my own volition on the website. For this reason the feedback and criticism tends to follow along character obsessions, fan faves, hated plot twists, and even character descriptions. People love pictures and celebrity inspired characters. All of which can be helpful, if taken with a grain of salt. The fan fiction reading community is amazing but often has a “head cannon” that once they settle on, they vehemently defend it.

Additionally I received very little stylistic criticism. As a budding writer I think I was alright with this. My thick skin, still ever thickening, wasn’t really prepared for someone pointing out the clear failings in my style. Failings that I’m sure are still there, mind you. Having fans that followed my work, engaged me about their excitement for chapter releases, and posed questions on where I was taking the characters was amazingly wonderful for my confidence. Not so much for my style.

Online presence

Starting your own writing blog can be tedious. I know, I’ve done it a few times. It’s not a hard process but building up the content to keep the site fresh, interesting, and enticing to new readers (not to mention building a following at all) can be supremely daunting. Wattpad does mitigate these issues to a degree. Because your new content is filtered through their search results, sometimes appearing on the front page or in popular authors  “You Might Also Like” feeds, you get exposure the average website doesn’t. It takes some of the pressure off the marketing and social media interaction that a first time author might not be interested in. But, I stress the but, Wattpad has dangers in this area too.

Theft

Your content is protected by copyright on Wattpad. Hell, as long as you can prove it’s yours you’re safe. Wattpad even has a handy drop down selection tool that allows you to pick what type of copyright you want for your piece. But this doesn’t stop idea theft and copyright is pretty hard to prove when your work is posted online.

My sob story: I completed a first draft of a novel and it was all posted on Wattpad. I had a few dozen followers and a good amount of readers and upvotes on my content. About six months after I finished my novel a follower contacted me with a link to another novel that was winning awards, got a small publishing deal, and was doing quite well on the website. She’d read both novels and was concerned because the award winning novel was from an old follower of mine and she released hers about three months after mine finished. In her opinion they were the same novel with a few changes in the story. She thought I had a copyright claim for my work.

I’m being purposefully vague to avoid legalities but this happens.  Whenever you post anything online there is a potential someone will take it, use it, and make it something very close to what you made. Now in my situation there wasn’t a copyright claim: the award winning novel was just different enough even if the plot structure was nearly beat for beat the same as mine with very similar characters. But we are all inspired and I hope it wasn’t done maliciously.

Wattpad isn’t unique in this fault but there was no recourse to have the other work taken down and,had I not posted it I might have sold the idea myself. The world and our lives are filled with these kind of what-ifs and although I still put some of my content online I was scared into more careful control of my ideas. With websites like Wattpad, with blogs, with any sort of distribution of your intellectual property you have to be aware of the risks. This was one of them.

Not to mention it killed a little to see my book on the successful authors “You might like” feed. Twisting knife, right in the gut.

Formatting

Maybe I’m being a stickler here but format is important. I spent a good amount of my education studying the Marshal McLuhan “The Medium is the Message”. Ie. How your work looks or is conveyed effects the emotion, intention, reception and understanding of what you create. With that said Wattpad had a lot of failings when I was writing on the website. I admit, it’s been a few years. Their text editor might be updated but, yikes. No indentation, strange spacing, there wasn’t an html editor and your options were bold, italic and that’s it. Many of my pieces online were just, wow. Hard to read because the formatting was so limited. Some might see this as good, how much formatting should you really need? But when it interferred with understanding and added line break after line break, I wanted to scream.

I can’t lie, it was the primary reason for me not sticking it out with the site. Email managers have mastered the art of the WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor for years. It seems like a pretty big failing for an author sharing website to not invest more time in one.

Awards

The Watty’s. A beautiful mixed blessing. Great for exposure, fantastic to reach loads of readers but a lot of the work is because of obsessive fans. It’s a user based upvoted awards, so, basically popularity contest. If I sound bitter, I don’t mean to. If a book is good people will read it. Popularity, although GREAT for sales, doesn’t mean it’s skilled writing that earned them the award. But then again look at the fiction that’s on bestsellers lists. It’s not always pretty.

People want what they want and honestly, as an author, this is a good first lesson. If your stuff gains a serious following on a website like Wattpad it may mean you have something there. With that said, you can’t publish fanfiction without some serious changes. That, my friends, is illegal.

With all that said and done, would I recommend Wattpad?

Can I still be on the fence about it?

If you’re just starting out, writing for fun, trying to get some confidence or maybe just experimenting with some fun stories on a lark – go for it. Wattpad will link you with like minded people and you might get to share your fun fantasies with others. Everyone loves a fan or two that just “squees” when you post.

If you are an author seriously wanting to reach an audience, be careful. Wattpad can be great for sample chapters and other small content but entire novels run the risk of theft and ruining future sales.

If you’re a reader, I say go for it. There are gems on the site of authors who dedicate their time to regular updates, like a serialisation of their work. And you could have some fun talking directly with the author. I know I loved engaging readers and I can’t be the only one.