Wattpad!

Hey kids.

On one of our polls, a few of you suggested Wattpad as an alternate website to deviantArt for writers and readers. I tested it out (finally) and I really love it and (hereby) recommend it to everyone in group

Essentially, you make an account and start posting your chapters. All are kept in different books. Novels, poetry, and short stories are welcome, but the novel really is king. A reader can follow you specifically or just a book of yours in isolation. Every time they read, Wattpad keeps track of it, like a pageview. If a person likes your chapter, they can give it a "vote" which are also tallied. The more reads, comments, and votes you collect helps your rating on the site. The higher your rating, the higher you will appear on keyword search results.

It allows you to:
- sync status updates with FB and Twitter
- Group all your chapters together with no links required (reader can just use a swipe to turn to the next chapter)
- Mobile reading compatible (their app is great)
- Notifications by mobile when a writer you follow updates their work. That is, your readers will get a text when you post a new chapter.
- A choice to follow a writer or just one story
- Forum to your heart's content
- Retain or waive whatever rights you see fit. Wattpad does not hold claim over your writing.
- Post synopsis, book covers, links to music, photographs, or video that enhances each chapter, and make a book trailer
- tracking by stat, per chapter (you can see how many people read, vote, and comment on different chapters)
- Sitewide rating system by genre. You can see how well your book is doing compared to other books in that genre! Usually refreshes daily.
- Win awards 'n' stuff
- hold an account for free (obv)


It is not as good of a social site as dA, but since it is for writing only, the people there are only interested in reading and writing. We are not the underdogs against photography and visual art Also Margaret Atwood and Paulo Coelho joined the site to help bring attention to it.

As an example, in the 8 years I've been a member on deviantart, I've gotten 11,500 page views. In 2 months on Wattpad, I've gotten 6,000. I get about 100 reads on my novel per day, and I've done next to 0 promotion (because I suck at that stuff...) People just keep showing up and lovin' on me. It's given my confidence quite a boost, gotta say.

The drawbacks are: there are a some trolls, but boo-frickin-hoo. A lot of the site content is fairly fluffy, dedicated to younger readers. Awards are given out by popularity, not necessarily by merit, and writing about the lives of celebrities has its own genre. But there are a lot of discerning readers that have engaged in some excellent discussion with me. I was up until 4 AM on Sunday just answering my comments.

So I heartily suggest this page to you, readers and writers. Main page is: www.wattpad.com