Ummy Syalshabella Muhamad Zamri hasn’t printed it yet but her novel, The Boy Who Lost His Sight, has been read four million times – thanks to a Canadian website that has been making big waves in the publishing world.
“I fell in love with this orange-themed website almost instantly,” says Ummy, 20, from Puchong, Selangor.
Wattpad.com, the orange-themed website Ummy is talking about, has gained many fans – and detractors – for the way it has revolutionised storytelling in our hyper-connected world, allowing people to publish and read stories on mobile devices.
Like many of its users, Ummy – who goes by the name “Bella Zamri” on Wattpad – took her first steps by posting fan fiction on the site, beginning when she was 16. She didn’t get many views at first, which is pretty standard, she says.
“Don’t ever feel demotivated if you don’t get many views straight away. It’s a normal process,” says the second-year Dietetics student at Universiti Teknologi MARA Puncak Alam. “Keep writing for yourself and the readers will come by.”
So Ummy diligently posted a chapter a week. By the time she began writing her second novel, The Startled Princess, she had built up a loyal following of readers.
With her third novel, The Boy Who Lost His Sight, Ummy marketed her work through social media for the first time, first promoting her novel on Wattpad’s forums and then writing reviews for other authors and encouraging others to do the same for her novel. Also, she had the good fortune of having her novel promoted by Wattpad.
“It took some time, but it was worth it,” she says in a recent interview. “I was still in the middle of writing the novel and I already had 1 million views. It was mind-blowing. I never thought it would get that popular!”
Her readers are one of the reasons why she keeps writing, she says.
“I know how hard it is for some people to get through secondary school,” she says, when asked about the inspiration behind The Boy Who Lost His Sight. “I want to let my readers – young girls, especially – know and believe that things will get better. I want them to realise that these times will pass. They won’t be sad and depressed for the rest of their lives like they feel now.”
Ummy believes that writers benefit greatly when writing on Wattpad.
“Some people think that writing online is a waste of time – you can’t go anywhere and you don’t even get paid – but the practice and experience you get from there actually means something,” she says.
Ummy certainly hasn’t wasted her time on Wattpad: The Boy Who Lost His Sight will soon be released in print by a local publishing company.
Social media storytelling
Tina Isaacs, 41, founder of the MyWriters group, agrees that Wattpad is a great place to practice – but she wonders if it will hurt a writer’s reputation in the long run.
“You know what they say: that what goes online stays floating forever somewhere in cyberspace,” says the lawyer who is currently writing her debut novel while pursuing an MFA in Creative Writing (Fiction) in Florida. “So imagine 10, 15 years down the line, someone digs up your old, naive work and hacks it.
“Old-school writers do not show their work to anyone until it has gone through major editing and correcting. But the young seem to be ‘hey, will you read my story’ all the time. It’s mind boggling,” she says in an e-mail.
“Well, in the first place, no WIP can ever be perfect,” counters freelance writer Leon Wing, 50, who released his novel, Becoming Ah Lan Toh, onto the wilds of Wattpad a chapter a week from July, finishing last month.
“You have to take that risk of being ridiculed, being snootily looked down upon, by people who have published novels, or even just those who snigger and opine they can do better.”
And millions do, putting up their works in progress, published novels, and fan fiction.
“More than 24 hours of reading material is posted to Wattpad every minute,” says Nazia Khan, Wattpad’s Communications Lead via e-mail.
Even professional authors have jumped onto the site. Literary darling Margaret Atwood has a number of her works on Wattpad, among them The Happy Zombie Sunrise Home which she co-wrote with British writer Naomi Alderman.
Young adult fiction writer Scott Westerfeld has his entire hit novel, The Uglies, on the site, and the comment section of his story is littered with grateful thanks from his readers.
“Thanks so much for putting time and effort into this, to transferring it onto Wattpad. I have the physical copy, but now I have it right in my pocket!” says reader SuperWhoWalkingLock.
But why lose potential profits by putting up sold work online, you may wonder?
Author Elizabeth Spann Craig does it to gain new readers for her cosy mysteries.
“I was interested in ensuring more longevity for my series and hoped to introduce it to a younger demographic,” she says via e-mail from North Carolina, United States.
However, Craig, who has written 18 books (some traditionally published, some self-published) was initially doubtful about the site’s usefulness. For one, would Wattpad’s mostly 18- to 30-year-old readers want to read her work? After all, her protagonist is an octogenarian sleuth and her print readers’ age skews far over 65, she says.
She carefully chronicled her “Wattpad experiment” on her blog, and realised that her first challenge was to be found above the millions of uploads.
It seems you can’t just slap a novel on Wattpad and hope it’ll be read. One has to use some social media savvy and engage with the site’s readers to gain any traction.
“I realised that for visibility with the site’s algorithm, it’s best to post weekly, uploading a chapter each time,” says Craig.
Also, she made sure to end every chapter with a reminder that her completed novels are available online; plus, she always responds to reader comments.
Also, Craig asked Wattpad to feature her novel on the site.
They did, and the change was immediate: “The reads and comments really started escalating,” Craig says.
She is now reaching readers she previously had not been able to, including more male readers, and she is being read by the millennials she had hoped to attract.
“I love seeing Wattpad’s map showing the different countries where my readers live,” she says.
“I love Wattpad’s storytelling innovation,” Craig adds. “They dabble in transmedia, which is where I believe the future of reading may be heading – sort of a multimedia experience.”
Not only can authors link videos and images and interact with readers, they’re provided with a range of powerful tools that can give them an idea of how readers react to their work, says Craig.
“There is a demographics tab that writers can access that graphs reader responses to each uploaded chapter. There, writers can see where readers stopped reading their story and what chapters especially resonated with readers,” she explains.
It is also a powerful marketing tool. Unlike many authors who take their work down from Wattpad after it’s published in print, Craig leaves her work up even when it’s being sold as physical books.
“I’m hoping that readers will pop over after an exciting chapter and buy the completed book on Amazon,” explains Craig, who now has 466 followers.
So far the strategy seems to be working. Craig reports that many of her Wattpad readers have told her that they’ve bought her books, and she’s noticed more signing up for her newsletter, which she also mentions at the end of each chapter.
“I use that newsletter as a direct marketing tool when I launch new books. As far as impact, my sales on Amazon India have dramatically increased and I know that to be completely due to Wattpad because 11% of my readers are from India,” she says.
But what’s more interesting is that Craig’s experiences on Wattpad has influenced her writing in unique ways: “I’m less likely to make references to things that only seniors will understand, or if I include the references, I’ll make sure they’re explained in context. And my senior sleuth is now very active on social media, which I thought would make my younger readers smile,” she says.
Even publishers are jumping onto Wattpad.
On the local front, Buku Fixi has been uploading whole novels from its lineup onto Wattpad since August and the publisher has 10,300 followers to date. There are new chapters every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 24 novels at wattpad.com/user/BukuFixi. According to founder Amir Muhammad, Buku Fixi pays the writers of the novels – even out of print ones – royalties based on views.
“I think it’s a good way to introduce new writers and to keep some out-of-print books visible,” says Amir (via e-mail while outstation) who got the idea after reading an article about Wattpad in July.
It may seem counter intuitive for a publisher who intends to make money from printed works to give away their products, but Amir just says: “Money isn’t everything. It’s so boring to be merely rich. We also want to delight and shock society with our work, so free stuff is good.”
Mobile reading
Reading on Wattpad is an interesting experience. According to Wattpad, 90% of its users use their mobile devices to access the site.
And reading is no longer a solitary experience – readers can not only share their thoughts chapter-by-chapter, they can rub pixels with their favourite authors. Watt-pad has effectively brought authors and readers “face to face”, digitally.
Finding quality reads, however, can be quite a task. When anyone can post anything on Wattpad, it can be a challenge to wade through millions of entries to find work that you’d enjoy.
“Half of it is really good and all, but I do notice spelling mistakes. That is terrible! I usually show my mum when I find this,” says Maia Malik, nine, who writes on Wattpad – she has nearly 500 followers.
Melanie Lim agrees. “It can be hard to find good books as there is a lot of poorly written fan fiction or other stories that make the ‘popular’ list simply because they are about famous characters or the writer has a lot of friends who vote for them,” says the 19-year-old who also pens stories about her time onboard the missionary ship Logos Hope under the username Writing4Him.
“This doesn’t happen all the time but it happens enough for me to have stopped searching for new books to read for a while now,” she says.
Still, CEO and cofounder Allen Lau (see interview on P11 and below) says that Wattpad’s openness is one of its best qualities.
“What’s special about Wattpad is that it’s an open platform that encourages diverse voices and views,” says Lau via e-mail from Toronto, Canada.
“Anyone can share a story: You don’t need previous experience, an editor, or even a finished manuscript to write on Wattpad,” he says.
“As a result, Wattpad stories provide entertainment that reflects different experiences and interests. It’s is a way for people to tell the stories they feel are overlooked by society.”
Already a subscriber? Log in
Get 20% OFF The Star Digital Access
Cancel anytime. Ad-free. Unlimited access with perks.
