My Wattpad Experience

When I decided to begin self-publishing, I discovered a website called Wattpad that allowed people to post their writing for other people to read. An author and self-publisher I know uses it to display his own work, and I thought it would be a good way for me to build a readership in preparation for when I started publishing.

I may have been wrong; I'm not sure.

In the beginning, each story that I posted received a fair number of reads (Wattpad records when someone reads a posted work, but not who); anywhere from 12 to 22, depending upon the subject matter. But then they dropped off, first below 10 and now below 5. More recently I consider myself lucky if a story gets more than the "1" read it acquires after I post it.

(I don't know what that means. It's either a program glitch, or the site moderators review every posted work to make sure it complies with the Terms of Service. I have noted, however, that sometimes the program acts as if it counts my viewing of my own works as a "read". It shouldn't, but apparently it does.)

There are, however, two exceptions. Almost from that start I began posting stories from one of my planned collections: Strange & Unnatural Tales . I did so because I include excerpts from two of its stories with each of my published ebooks, and I wanted to have them available for people to read if they wanted to.

I post a new story from the collection every third day; I'm now a little more than half-way through. They seem to be popular, because each time I post the next story the collection jumps anywhere from 10 to 20 new reads; right now it stands at 415 reads. Based on that, I decided to post selections from a novel I'm working on, The Dream Trials . That also seems to be popular; it currently stands at 150 reads.

On top of this, I only have 3 followers. Granted, it hasn't even been 2 months since I started my account, but I would think that out of all the people who continue to read my stories at least a couple would have chosen to follow me so they could stay informed of my latest postings.

Meanwhile, I discovered another site that promised to be better than Wattpads, called Goodreads. Though primarily a database of published books, it also allows authors to promote their works. They can not only create an info and display page, but also create a blog, sell books, advertise, offer sample excerpts, and post free works as on Wattpad.

Except for the fact that Goodreads doesn't tell me whenever someone reads one of my posted free stories, I am beginning to question whether I even need a Wattpad account at all. Especially since two of my Wattpad followers are now Goodreads friends, and I seem to be making better progress on Goodreads.

Even so, Wattpad does seem to be a very successful and popular platform.

For the time being, I will continue to keep my account open. I have started excerpts from another unfinished story, The Hardboiled Eile . If that proves to be as popular as SUT and Dream Trials, I may dedicate Wattpad to posting works-in-progress, excerpts, and background material rather than finished stories. If, however, by the end of the year I have not gained anymore followers, I will probably just close the account altogether.