With difficulty.

I have altogether too many books; this is a problem you are all familiar with. One of the (many) unique challenges this brings is deciding how to promote them, starting with which books to promote in the first place. I've been developing this process for almost five years now, and it's still in flux, but I'll do my best to condense it!

I also need to add a caveat. I'm pretty small on Wattpad, all things considered. I've also been done dirty by the algorithm many times over. Is my promo working? It's hard to tell sometimes. So take everything I say with a grain of salt. This is a post on "What I do on Wattpad," not "What TO do on Wattpad," and you may treat it accordingly.

1. The Building Blocks

My promo strategy relies on having a lot of books. In addition to that, it relies on having a lot of completed, polished books both novel- and novella-length, with pretty covers, half-decent blurbs, and other basic advice you'll see thrown around on Wattpad whenever you ask how to find readers. I've followed that advice. The only thing I haven't done is make an alternate profile for different genres. There's significant overlap between my main ones (Dark Fantasy, Horror, and soft Sci-Fi), I bend and blend genres anyway, and discoverability is so terrible on Wattpad that I really want all my stuff in the same place. It makes promotion easier.

The other major building block of my strategy is reliability. I've never dropped a book. I write and polish all my works offline, then post weekly+ on a predetermined schedule; I've had at least one book posting weekly since the month I joined Wattpad in 2017. Because of offline completion and my writing speed in general, I keep posting even through writing hiatuses, so my profile's never gone on break. All this means my readers can expect regular updates and finished books from me, and that kind of trust underpins a lot of what I do on this profile. It means they stick around... which is crucial for the next point on this list.

2. Internal Promo

The engine of my profile is an internal promo network. This is a series of ads for my books in my other books: nearly every novel or novella on my profile has a promo chapter like this, and I have the data to say my readers use them. Most are at the ends of my books. The only exception is the biggest, oldest, lowest-quality book on my profile (Frost on the Grasslands) which I care little about, and thus treat like a promo mill for everything else. It has a promo chapter at the beginning, where most of its readers drop off anyway.

Each of these promo chapters advertises three more books of mine that I think a reader will like if they enjoyed the one they just finished. I use genre, subgenre, tone, theme, and even character attributes to built this network, and it gets more refined as I finish more books and thus have closer genre matches to refer people to. Each book gets promoted with a quick summary and a pretty graphic, like this:

I also point people to follow me if they haven't already, and make sure there are no closed loops in my network... no clusters of 4-5 books that only lead to one another with their recommendations. Just little promo things!

I say "nearly" every book has a chapter like this, because there is one exception: series. Reader retention between series books is low enough already, so I don't want to distract people when they reach the end of an earlier series book. Because of this, I only put a promo chapter in the last (or currently posting) book of a series, and reserve promo in earlier books for pointing readers to their sequels.

Internal promo means a reader can land on any book on my profile, read it, and easily find more books of mine that they might enjoy. Many readers finish at least two of my books before leaving, and a small but significant handful stick around to finish three, five, eight, or more. But how do they find the network in the first place? More details below!

3. The External Promo Problem

If internal promo is my greatest advantage in being a super-multi-book writer, external promo is my achilles heel. Not because I'm bad at it (though I'll be the first to say I always have more to learn) but because when you have as many books as I do, you simply can't promote them all. You can try, but even if it's logistically possible, you'll end up spreading yourself too thin, and none of it will be effective.

This is my external promo problem. Out of all the books on my profile, I pick 2-3 to actively advertise, and I sacrifice the rest. Many things inform this selection. Read count, growth rate, book quality, and reader retention are the main ones. Ideally, I want to advertise a book that's already doing well, so continued activity can push it past the milestones that lead to sustainable growth on Wattpad. I want to advertise something I'm proud of, too, and that gives readers a good taste of my writing style. And I want to advertise something that people actually finish, so they hit that promo chapter at the end and hop to more of my books.

These promo darlings get the top spots on my profile, the most applications to external promo, and the most recognition from me. They get the most editing and the prettiest covers. I point readers to them when those readers ask for recommendations of my own books. I enroll my promo darlings in cross-promotion campaigns and shout-out trades. These 2-3 books get more than 90% of the promo on my profile, and then feed readers to all the rest.

It hurts to pick favorites, especially when I'm proud of newer books that don't make good magnets just because they're still small. But such is life when your book count passes 20.

4. External Promo

Once I've selected my promo darlings, I can actually promote them. This includes cross-promo campaigns with other writers, shout-out trades, community read-a-thons, contests, applications to genre profiles on Wattpad, social media posts (I'm partial to Instagram), share-your-story threads when the forums were still around, self-promo channels in Discord communities, and just generally talking about my books in those same communities. Being active on Wattpad also helps. Reading and leaving genuine comments on other books is the point of Wattpad anyway, and makes for great visibility on the side.

Some of these promo methods (cross-promo, shout-outs, and community activity) are more effective than others, but a readership stream is a collection of trickles, and it all adds up in the end. I've reached a point where things like genre profiles no longer move the needle for me, but they might help smaller writers who're just starting out!

5. Long-Term Maintenance

Promotion isn't a one-and-done kind of thing. Every part of this process takes active maintenance. I rejig my internal promo network with every new book I launch, to further refine my recommendations. I update covers, promo graphics, and blurbs. I shuffle around my top books depending on what's performing best (this is one reason why I track stats), as the top spots on my profile are hot real estate, and I don't want to waste them. I even reassess my promo darlings as needed.

I also engage in regular profile upkeep, as the lifeblood of my profile isn't just readers... it's loyal readers. It's the people who see my book count, see my profile, like what they see, and follow me as a pseudo "Add all to library" button. It's the people who finish one book of mine, see my recommendations, and head back to my profile to start another. And another. And another.

I review my profile bio probably twice a year. Maintain my Wattpad info doc linked there. Make sure my books are in a logical order, with series grouped together (in order; I can't stress this enough), promo darlings easily accessible, and updating books easy to find. I have symbol codes in my titles for complete and ongoing books, then a legend for those symbols in my bio.

I pick one updating book to announce and announce its updates weekly, with a quote as a hook and a fun fact from my research to reward people who actually read my announcements. I answer comments. Stay active in the community. Write flash fiction. Talk excitedly about my future books, which often end up with a built-in audience by accident before they even launch. And I have fun with it, which is the most important part.

Then I cross my fingers and hope the Wattpad gods will smile on me. Do they? I don't know. But I'm doing pretty well, all things considered. 

If you're a reader on Wattpad, how did you find the last book you read here?

If you're a writer, what's the biggest promotion boost you've ever had? What's your favourite ongoing strategy?

What is something you've seen an author do (to promote a book) that made you go check that book out? Bonus points if you might not have otherwise!