Tag Archives: Wattpad

The Wattpad Experiment: Week 2

Last week’s stats: 15 reading, 2 stars, 9 comments, 0 sales

I have to admit: I feel kind of guilty. Due to the constraints of my day job and the editing I do in the evening, I’ve had very little time to do Wattpad justice.

As of today, I have 3 people who are either following me and/or reading my novel, The Revenant: A YA Paranormal Thriller with Zombies. I have been reading and commenting whenever I have the chance. I have seen some really good manuscripts that I am eager to continue reading, and some not so good. I am amazed at some of the professional-quality covers I’m seeing, too. I’m also blown away by the plucky initiative of Wattpad’s clientele. Kudos to each and every one of them for putting themselves out there and writing whatever strikes their fancy.

I finally managed to port the book over to Draft2Digital (still not done and Pronoun’s gone, so most of my books are no longer available as eBooks–did I mention I was suffering serious time crunches?) and upload the new cover to Amazon, but still can’t see the most recent paperback online. I’m Looking forward to the break between semesters to get this on Ingram-Spark, too.

Here’s what I’ve learned so far:

One is never enough

Given the rate at which others are posting, one chapter a week seems skimpy. I’ve been reading around about Wattpad. According to TechCrunch, Wattpad has over 60,000 monthly users, most of them teens (though the average age is 20) and female, which is the perfect demographic for my writing. Moving forward, I will upload two chapters week. I plan to do one on Saturday and one on Wednesday.

Wattpad is a form of social media

It took some work to build my followers on social media. Even now, some 3 years after I opened my Twitter and Facebook accounts, I only have a few hundred following me on Twitter and maybe about 100 Facebook likes on my author page, and only 80 people who receive my newsletter. To reiterate: it took 3 years to achieve that. Three years of advertising, liking, following, posting, experimenting, giving books away, and the like. Moving forward I need to engage on social media more frequently (maybe instead of religiously reading Flipboard every evening?).

Too much of a good thing

In addition to voting, reading, and following, authors can access discussion forums. The different forums are myriad, as are the threads. There are so many places to visit, it’s hard to know where to start. I’ve already begun to dabble, sticking my toe in to test the waters. I suppose, moving forward, I have to slowly move deeper in until I have established a foothold on the site. So far it seems as if there is a whole lot of random posts and not a lot of interaction

Moving forward

I am interested to see if uploading twice a week will make a difference. I will also continue with my experiment until the whole book has been uploaded and report back to you. If you use Wattpad, I want to hear your first impressions. What was the first thing you did on the site? How did you work your way into this massively incredible society?

Read The Revenant: A YA Thriller with Zombies on Wattpad at https://www.wattpad.com/story/134197850-the-revenant

The Wattpad Experiment

For years, my friend, Mia Meade, has been encouraging me to try WattPad out. I’ll be honest–I tried it before I met her and had no success. But after talking to Mia and reading “How Authors Can Use Wattpad to Sell Books and Earn Money” by Linda Poitevin, I’ve decided to give it a go and blog about my experience.

 

The challenge was to figure out which story to use as a tester. I currently have three books in the works (The Carrington Pulitzer Revelation Chronicles Online Extended PlayPack–science fiction, young adult; Indoctrination–Book Two of The New Recruit; and Re-vamped (paranormal/supernatural), but they are in various stages of editing and won’t be ready to publish for a while yet.

In the end, I decided to re-issue The Revenant: A YA Paranormal Thriller with Zombies. The plan is to post a chapter a week as Poitevin suggests and to blog as I do. In the meantime, I will be reading other authors in my genre, add to my library, vote, and comment. I will also be posting to social media as I go. In addition, I will be reading a number of resources on how to use Wattpad for fun and profit and share what I learn with you.

The Revenant: A YA Paranormal Thriller with Zombies can be found on Wattpad at https://www.wattpad.com/story/134197850-the-revenant. This is a completed novel that can be purchased on Amazon, B & N, iBooks, and Kobo.

If you Wattpad, please look me up, vote for my book and follow me. I’m interested to connect with you, both here and on Wattpad. After you’ve read a chapter or two, come back and let me know what you think.