Hello everyone!

I couldn't decide what to do for this year's Winter Wattpad Block Party. Normally I like to do character interviews or sneak peeks, but that didn't really call out to me. A long, long time ago I wrote a writing guide for wattpad authors (which you can still finding lurking in the Tumblr verse if you google Jordan's Guide to Indie Writing) and I feel like maybe I could do an updated version of that. Not so much writing tips, but Wattpad tips. I'll tell you what I've noticed after being on the site for eight years.

A little bit about me— I'm twenty-three years old. I've been on Wattpad since 2010 and I've been writing since 2006. I'm part of the Wattpad Stars and have been before they even decided to call it that and I'm part of the futures program.

Warning: This is all my opinion.

            Popularity?

            Let's start with the most asked questions. How did you get so many reads on your books? How do you have so many followers? Well the plain and simple answer to that is luck. Maybe 5% writing skill, 5% writing something that's "in" (i.e. bad boys), and the last 90% is luck. Your timing needs to be right. Your genre needs to be trending. You basically need to appear at the right time and at the right moment. You don't have to be the best writer in the world to get popular on Wattpad. A lot of people have the first book hit it big and their second one flop, even though their writing got better in the second. And the reverse is true as well— maybe it's your 5th book that skyrockets into popularity because you got the timing right.

Wattpad says they have a way to see what books are going to do well, but in my eyes, who can? When you go down the WHL you'll see a thousand "bad boy" books ranking number one in many genres. But what about the other bad boy books? You may find one that has better writing than the number one book, but has five reads. People are constantly writing them, shouldn't they all rank then? That's where the luck comes in. Your book has to be noticed out of the thousands of others.

            Which leads me to...

            Getting Noticed?

            Ahhh, the next most asked question. How can I get more reads? This one also ties with luck, but I can give some solid advice. Use the tagging system. It's there for a reason. Even if you think a tag might not be important, use it. You never know what people are typing into the search bar, so the more tags you add, the better chance you'll have at getting your work seen by other readers. Slow burn, romcom, slice of life... those are all good tags to add. If your writing is very niche, this is even more important.

            Writing is a social thing. Make friends. Read other people's books. It'll encourage those people to check out your own works—but never, never message people asking them to read your work. It's akin to spam and no writer is ever happy to see a message in their inbox turn out to be, "Read my book." It has quite the opposite effect.

            I'd also like to add that your description and book cover are very important. Let's be honest, people judge books by their covers. If you need help for a book cover look around the clubs or even pay someone to make one on fiverr. I'm graphically challenged so I always have a hard time with book covers, but they are important. And as for descriptions, one line is what draws in the readers. The first line they read. So, make it good. You can fit approximately two sentences in the preview of your description so do your best to describe your plot and the stakes in those 32 words! Lol.

            Being social? While writing?

            Yes! Being social as a writer is very important. This is a tip for general publishing success as well. Make use of other social media. You don't have Twitter? Make one. Follow other writers. Follow writers who write the same genre as you. Follow writers who don't. Interact with them and make friends. A lot of being a writer is promoting yourself and it helps to have free promotion from your author friends. Get Instagram and Facebook too. Get used to using social media and look up ways to help get the most out of them. It's also a great way to interact with your fans, who are also very important to helping you succeed as an author. Create a relationship with them and they'll be more likely to follow you through multiple books instead of just a one and done. 

            I thought this was about Wattpad success?

            You're right. I got off topic. Success is such an ambiguous term. Your success may not be my success. Anyway, let me say once again that luck plays a lot into becoming successful on Wattpad. But so does hard work. Write. Never stop writing. Don't be discouraged by low reads or engagement. Everyone starts there. Everyone. I know it's hard to hear that coming from someone with over 400k followers but remember— I started with zero followers too. It's taken eight years for me to earn that following. Some Wattpaders have had an account for way less time than I have, but they have double the followers. It's just the way Wattpad works. All I can say is never feel discouraged. You got this.

            So basically, I have to be lucky?

            If you haven't gotten that by me saying it 50x, yes. There are things you can do that can help you though. For example, having proper grammar. Being descriptive. Things you can learn by reading and writing for a long time. Writing about the topics that are popular. But that's not a promise to popularity. You can't think your writing is bad if you don't get reads. Just keep writing.

I feel like a crappy writer because I don't get readers.

            Did J.K Rowling have any readers when she published Harry Potter? Did she get published because of a massive online following? No. Readers are finicky. You can't let them decide whether you're a good writer or not. I know it might feel like that if you're getting zero reads when there are books out there with 100 million, but you can't do comparisons like that. My best tip is to not compare yourself to other authors. Which is hard. I still do it all the time. But you just need to remember why you write. Because you love it. Because you want to publish your book. Wattpad was meant for social sharing. Not publishing. A popular Wattpad book does not mean a best seller.

            How can Wattpad help publish my book?

            Assuming this is aside from the Stars program (which also isn't a guarantee that Wattpad will help you publish your book), I can tell you it'll help you with the editing process. Why? Because of your readers and because of the statistics. Readers will point out plot holes. They'll point out what is confusing to them. They'll point out that this girl had blonde hair in this chapter, but it's brown in this one. When editing, you should go through the comments on your book to help shape it into the best manuscript it can be.

            The statistics will also help with this. You can see what chapters have the most comments— and which comments have the least. The statistics will show you how many readers dropped the book and you'll know you need to change something in that chapter to keep their attention. This is probably the handiest feature about Wattpad. It's very fun to share your book and get feedback, but it's even better when that feedback helps your manuscript get to the best it can be before you send it out to agents or editors.

            And that's all I have to say so far. I'm sure a lot of you have heard this before, but just in case you haven't, I've given my own take on this. Everyone wants to find success on Wattpad and sometimes it seems impossible, but you really, really just have to keep writing. Success doesn't come overnight.

            I'd also like to answer questions anyone might have. Please feel free to leave any and I'll happily answer them.

            Thank you for reading!

            Jordan.

★ ★ ★

ENTER THE WATTPAD BLOCK PARTY GIVEAWAYS BY CLICKING HERE:

Shortened Link to Blog: https://goo.gl/oCHaqH

OR HERE:

Regular Link to Blog: http://kellyanneblountauthor.blogspot.com/2018/01/wattpad-block-party-winter-edition-iv.html