By Elizabeth S. Craig, @elizabethscraig
Visibility and discoverability are words that I encounter time and time again on the industry blogs I follow. There are a lot of books in the marketplace right now. How can you make your book stand out…and find readers?
The best approach for obtaining visibility (in the current climate…things change rapidly) is to compose a lot of well-written books.
I’ve been pretty happy about my visibility on retail sites (90% Amazon, really), but I keep wondering how to reach more readers. I’ve got avid readers who I’m determined to keep happy. But how do I reach out to other demographics? Can I reach other demographics?
One publishing platform I’ve been hearing a lot about for the last year or so is Wattpad. There are authors I respect over there: Joanna Penn and Lindsay Buroker among them. They wrote glowing recommendations of the platform. As Joanna put it in her January post “How to Use Wattpad as an Author” : “How does Wattpad sell books? It’s about building a fan-base for your writing, as opposed to your tweets or blog posts.”
You’d think I’d have gotten on Wattpad much quicker than I did. I was even, for heaven’s sake, on a virtual panel with the Head of Content of Wattpad, Ashleigh Gardner, back in November for Dan Blank’s Get Read online conference. I was fascinated hearing her talk about the readers there: 25 million readers and growing. And another big number: 85% mobile (across all devices). In addition, it’s supposed to be a good way to gain international readers.
Wattpad is free to upload to and to read from. So this is for writers who maybe already have a perma-free book published or who want to hook readers with one.
I did have reservations about using Wattpad, which is why it has taken me so long to get on there:
1) It’s where the young people are. I have an older readership and my youngest protagonist is in her sixties. My oldest is in her mid-eighties. Wattpad has a lot of fan fiction and YA and I was worried I wouldn’t fit in.
2) I don’t want to write serials. I love the idea of writing serials, I love the way readers respond to serials…but I didn’t want to be on the hook for a serial while I’m under contract to Penguin-Random.
So…this was me basically just not understanding the platform.
Because you don’t have to upload the book as a serial…in the sense that you’re writing it as you go along. You can take your already published book and stick it up there, chapter by chapter. So…no pressure.
And…yes, that’s where the young people are. But it’s growing every day. And…don’t I need to find some young readers, too?
Also I saw…an open niche. Okay, 25 million readers. How many cozy mysteries could I find on the site? I found one. Exactly one. And two chapters of another.
It sounded like there would be very little competition. And that, honestly, is how I got a toehold at Amazon—I was one of the earliest self-published cozy mystery authors to show up there.
If you’re interested in Wattpad, it’s very easy to get published there. Of course, I did kill most of my Thursday there because I had to read everything about it that I possibly could and figure out best practices and site etiquette. I’ll share what I learned, below.
Getting started on Wattpad:
First I set up a user name and profile (since we’re authors, it’s a good idea to use our real name or the name we write under as our user name). I put a picture of myself up there and stated that I was from North Carolina, USA. They had other basic info on there for Wattpad’s benefit, but not to be shared on the site.
Then I clicked “create.”
I put in the title.
I copy-pasted from the book’s Word document into the box on the screen. But I wasn’t wild about the way it looked, format-wise. So I copy-pasted the first chapter into Notepad and saved it as a .txt and then hit ‘upload a file.’ It looked better to me.
Just like Amazon, I chose categories for the book.
I added tags for the book (cozy mystery, mystery, amateur sleuth, etc.)
I rated the book’s content…we can choose G, PG, etc.
I linked to the book’s Amazon page. (Advanced tab: External Link).
After we ‘save and publish,’ we have the opportunity to click on the square where our cover would be and upload a cover file.
We can also then add a book description. You click “My Works” below your profile name and picture and then select “Manage” next to your book’s title.
That was about it. It looks like this.
As for the best practices, this is what I was able to find out:
Like all sites, begging for people to read your content is considered in poor taste, although apparently they do have a special club (forums are called ‘clubs’ there) set up for writers to do so. I didn’t look for that club. :)
Upload regularly. There were complaints from readers about getting hooked on stories and the writer neglected to upload a chapter for weeks. Wattpad recommends updating your profile to explain the delay, if you encounter some sort of unexpected issue you’re dealing with.
But only upload a chapter at a time. Apparently, to game the system over there, you want each chapter to get votes and comments, which increases visibility and readers. As each chapter uploads, you get fresh opportunities to hook more readers. So if you put all the chapters in at once, you lose out on chances to get in front of more readers.
Don’t blackmail readers (!) Apparently, there are some writers on the site who have withheld the next chapter until they reached a certain number of ‘votes’ (which are sort of like ‘likes’).
If your book is part of a series, you may want to put the series title in with the book title.
Replying to comments is considered a best practice. So, this isn’t like Amazon where nothing on earth would compel me to respond to a review there.
Comments can be deleted…but I have a hard time imagining a time when this would be appropriate.
When you upload another chapter, an email or notification goes out to your followers on Wattpad.
It’s considered all right to put a short call-to-action at the end of each uploaded chapter. There’s no way to hyperlink, though. So, write something like:
“Progressive Dinner Deadly” and other Myrtle Clover mysteries are available in ebook, audio, and print formats from Amazon, Nook, Kobo, and other retailers. Follow me on Twitter (elizabethscraig), sign up for my newsletter, or visit my website at Elizabethspanncraig.com for more information. Hope you’ll enjoy the book.
At the bottom of our profile page, there is a message board. We can broadcast messages to our followers there and readers can contact us there.
Many writers will post a couple of chapters from their sequel on Wattpad as a teaser…without putting the entire book up. This is considered fine as long as you put {Excerpt} in the title somewhere so readers understand no other chapters are forthcoming.
There are several extras and social media options there. You can cast your characters with movie stars (for fun, obviously, and to give readers an idea what your characters might look like). You can dedicate chapters to particularly loyal fans/commenters on the site. You can upload pictures and YouTube videos that correspond to various chapters. In other words…you can add some multimedia aspects to your story or multimedia aspects that complement it. I’m not quite there yet, but I think it’s very cool.
Wattpad’s help center is here.
That’s all I’ve got so far since I’ve only been on it for a few hours and have no followers or readers yet. I was willing to give it a go. Basically, It seemed like a good way to get my work in front of more and different readers.
Have you had any experience on Wattpad? How have you tried any other new ways to put your book in front of readers?
Hi Elizabeth – excellent post .. I’d heard about Wattpad a while ago – but hadn’t looked into it at all – this appears to be another great opening. I’ll come back and have a look at the website and the help centre (the places you’ve linked to) …
Being organised for this -seems to be the key .. and that you are … good luck with it – and look forward to hearing more about it as you progress … cheers Hilary
Hilary–Thanks for coming by! I’ll keep everyone updated as far as how it goes. I put a reminder on my calendar for (gulp) the next 20 weeks to upload a chapter every Friday. Forgetfulness and all..
I’m thrilled you did all this research so I don’t have to. When my second Irish mystery is done, the first one becomes my free book, and I think it’s going up on Wattpad.
Joel–I think it would do well there. There honestly didn’t seem to be many mysteries there, especially considering the size of the site. No cozies to speak of. It reeked of opportunity. :) Who knows…this may be a way for me to increase the age 12-20 readership I’ve got. I do have a few of those because there’s no objectionable content and some school libraries have got copies. Maybe this is a way to get more? Some of the kids there are *young*.
Let’s plow and sow as fast as we can.
Yep. Hey, if we can lure a younger audience to cozies…I’m all for it.
Technical note: do NOT add all kinds of information to your profile and then click the “add Twitter” button. Yes, it will take you to Twitter to connect your account. Then it will bring you back to a blank profile form which you’ll have to fill in all over again.
Joel–Good to know! What a pain.
And heads up to writers on the site–they have a place to put your birthday in on the profile (I think, legally, they want to make sure you’re older than 13)…there’s a box that you need to leave *UNchecked* if you don’t want your info shared (and who would? Seems like a way to help identity thieves, to me). Unchecked is the default, which is good.
I’m still not on Wattpad either. I don’t have a free book, and it doesn’t sound like uploading just one snippet will do me any good. And I’ve heard you have to spend a lot of time reading others’ works – is that true?
Alex–Your stuff would be perfect there. You *can* spend time reading others’ works, but you don’t *have* to spend time reading others’ works. From what I observed on the site, it seemed like the pro writers who were there were just uploading content, responding to a few comments, and leaving. The younger, newer writers appeared to be trading out reads, comments, votes. It’s not a place where I see myself hanging out, no.
“responding to a few comments, and leaving”
Perfect way to alienate the younger demographic there.
These folks aren’t us. They expect authors to “hang out” to some degree. Any degree of “hit and run” will be resented.
Joel–That could certainly be true. This is definitely a feeling it out kind of thing. I think, clearly, we’ll be more successful the more networking we do…but from what I read, the site is only 10% author (source) , so it’s not as if every comment will be from an author wanting us to comment and vote on their own work. At least I sure hope not.
Understood, though I was referring to readers, not writers.
Joel–Oh! No, hanging out with readers is fine and should be easy…it seems they send us Facebook-esque notifications of contact from readers and then we can respond/have a conversation/share ideas, etc. But if we hang out with *writers* there (which we shouldn’t…heck, that’s all we hang out with anyway, right? Much as I prefer spending my time with writers–I’ve got to get over my reader shyness and make some overtures) then we’re going to be critiquing/reviewing/commenting on others’ books, which is what I think Alex is referring to. That could really get to be a time-suck, although I don’t mind doing a *bit* of that there.
Elizabeth – Wattpad sounds really interesting – thanks for sharing your experiences with it. It certainly pays to be where the people are. I’m not in a position at the moment to put something up there except perhaps for some of the short fiction I’ve written on my blog. I don’t have the rights to my books, and I’m hoping my manuscripts will be picked up. I may try Wattpad with some of my shorter stuff and see how it goes. Friday ‘food for thought,’ for which thanks.
Margot–I totally understand that…I didn’t feel comfortable, for instance, putting up part of a teaser chapter for the Penguin stuff–am sure that would be frowned on, if not downright copyright violation.
You can, on Wattpad, put up as much or as little as you like. So…short stories would be great and then you could link to your Amazon page. Might get you some exposure.
I’ve been on Wattpad a little over a year. I use it to test the waters for experimental genres and get critiques. (I’ve gotten really fantastic ones from actual genre readers who are sharp as tacks. “I don’t like your main char because he’s passive. Everything is done to him!”)
I’ve heard that its harder to turn Wattpad reads into Anazon sales, but if you have a free book or two, it can increase your visibility! Especially if you get the site admins to feature your book.
Kessie–I’ve heard about the book featuring Wattpad does–sounds like a great bit of promo. The trade-off is keeping your book up there for 6 months, I believe?
Sounds like you’ve gotten some really great feedback there!
Very interesting. I never heard of this before, Elizabeth. It’s not for memoir, certainly. But Good luck. I’ll be tuning in to see how it goes for you.
Karen–You’re right…I don’t see memoir on there, at least not at first glance. But there is lots of other non-fic on there, if there are non-fic writers interested.
I’ve heard of Wattpad, but haven’t had any dealings with it that I remember. You mentioned that the crowd was younger there and the fact that your protagonist is older. This sounds like the perfect place to expose that younger group of readers to the joys and entertainment of reading about older protagonist. They may not jump on it immediately, but having it there for them to see might just entice them to read a little and find they want more. From a reader’s point of view this would be a great place to be exposed to new writing that I might not otherwise pick up. Wishing you much success with this, Elizabeth.
Mason–I hope so. I know I loved reading about Miss Marple when I was a teen, but I wasn’t a typical teen, either. :) And you’re right–I’m poking around there from a research angle to see what’s trending. I don’t *write* what’s trending, but I’m always interested to know!
Great post, thanks for doing all that research! I’ve been on Wattpad for a year now and noticed absolutely no jump in sales coming from that direction but from what you say (and your commentators too) it sounds like I did a few things wrong (yeah, I suspected that but didn’t quite know what I had done wrong…)
First, yes, you probably need to hang out there and I didn’t. So I guess readers do notice if you don’t interact and start reading yourself and making comments etc.
Two, I may not have explained clearly enough that what I had posted were “excerpts” and that I wasn’t going to upload the whole book!! Thanks for drawing attention to that aspect, I shall certainly go over there now and fix it…
Three, you have to be ready to “sacrifice” the first book in a series because it’s a way to make it available for free. Now, that can be good if that’s what you want (it’s impossible nowadays to make books perma-free or so it seems to me: I tried leaving a first book in a series free on Smashwords hoping that Amazon would notice and follow suit but they never did!) But if it’s not want you want, and you are trying to reach out to new readers…Well, it doesn’t seem to do that unless you join a “club”.
Now that’s something I haven’t done yet – actually it’s the thing I meant to try and hadn’t made up my mind at all which club to join. I had two very different types of books there, one a YA series with historical/paranormal and techie elements – yes, a crossover genre book, the hardest thing in the world to sell!! – and then, I had a romance featuring older people with an MC in his 60s – again, a hard sell and no visible club to join- but now I have a science fiction series. So that might work better and it’s easy to see what club to join…I will let you know if that’s the key, I mean, joining a club, because I suspect it is!
Claude–Yes, responding to comments (although I saw lots of authors who didn’t) is definitely important there, from what I saw and read.
The things I read about excerpts did say the title was the best place to put notification of an excerpt, yes. Just to keep it all clear.
Ahh…with the Amazon thing, get some friends to ‘report a lower price elsewhere’ and link to the Smashwords page. Works like a charm for me. (Now getting the price raised back *up* again can be a whole other problem…)
I think your SF series sounds like the way to go—BUT vampire/werewolf stories are huge there, if that’s your paranormal. Let me know what you find out about the clubs!
Elizabeth, I swear, it’s as if you were in the car with me and my sons yesterday. One of my 14 year olds said, “Mom, you should sign up for Wattpad.” He’s reading there.
I don’t have any free books (only one published so far). Is it a no-no to put up an excerpt & link of the one book and that’s it?
Julie–Ha! That’s cool that he knew all about it and does really underline the age group we’re talking about here. Yes, a girl in my middle school carpool was talking about it last year to me (but I’m slow on the uptake).
No, I don’t think it’s a problem at all to post an excerpt, just judging from what I saw on the site. But be very careful with listing it…so, in your case, you’d probably want to title it on Wattpad as “The Boy Who Loved Fire {Excerpt}”. Then, when you copy-paste or upload your excerpt file, you could put at the top or bottom of the excerpt: This is an excerpt of the completed novel, available at these retailers…etc. That would make it super clear.
Awesome idea! Thanks for the tip. I’ll do it today :)
Good luck! :)
Thanks.
I have serial miscreants who may have to make an appearance this fall. What else can I do with a pair of favorite criminals I use in short stories? Well, this is an out and not one I would have considered before …
Thanks
Jack–Could be good for exposure, for sure. Hope it works out!
Thanks for the research & report, Elizabeth! I actually put some stuff up there a few months back but haven’t gotten much attention on them. It may partially have to do with not “hanging out” there (though I don’t have time to hang out anywhere, really, and was thinking yesterday of reducing my cyber-hangout time even more so I can actually get some writing done), and it may have to do with not having much for full stories or serials to post there. But now that I’ve read your post I’m going to revisit it right now! :)
J.D.–I hear you on the hanging out! I’m absolutely terrible on Facebook (which I loathe, although I have 3 accounts there) and Twitter is something that I program in. But I’m very quick to respond to reader emails (usually within an hour) and I do hang out on Google+ some, so I feel like I do better there. If I know there are comments waiting for me on Wattpad, then I do think I can probably handle that–I can pop over and have a quick conversation. Hope it picks up for you over there!
Thank you Elizabeth for this very informative and helpful post. I think I might give it a go.
Carol–Good luck with it!
Late to the comment! :)
I read David’s post on Lindsay Buroker’s blog last year and got interested in Wattpad as a way to reach more readers. I start posting about a month ago and I’m currently putting up a chapter a week from the first book in my series.
Word of warning. My impression is that if your book is in KDP Select, you will violate their TOS if you publish more than 10% of the book for free anywhere.
“All content made exclusive to Amazon in KDP Select must remain for sale on our site only; it cannot be available for free or for purchase in digital format anywhere else, including publishing the content of your book on the web, including on your own website, blog, etc. However, you may choose to make up to 10% of your book available on other sites as a sample, as well as continue to distribute your book in physical format, or in any format other than digital.”
I interpreted the above as including posting for free on Wattpad. I waited until my book was about to come out of KDP Select to start putting up my chapters. I have no idea how likely the chances are that KDP staff will come across a violation of their TOS by an author but I didn’t want to take the risk. It would be good to get others’ views on this.
AD–A very important note, AD! Thanks for making this point.
Yes, I believe Amazon is very insistent on that particular point and that material free on Wattpad would violate the KDP Select agreement. I think you were smart to wait until it was coming out of Select–I believe the chances are very good that Amazon would discover any violations of their policy. I’ve not been on KDP Select myself–choosing instead to go free by going free on Smashwords and having Amazon price match. In fact, I’m wondering if Amazon will price match to free for this Wattpad book…and imagining that they will at some point.
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