Things You Can Expect from Wattpad

Entry 5: Advertising and Followers

Okay, I get it-you're new here.

Or you were new here.

I'm sure we've seen comments where someone might talk about their own story. I'm sure you've even done it yourself at least once.

Something such as "Hey, I wrote (story name), so check it out." or "I wrote a story for (insert show/anime/movie name) too! Check it out, please!"

You're new here, so I understand. I'll let it slide. Maybe you've even written something like that on message boards or someone has written something like that on your board.

Don't. I get if you're excited and you meant no harm by it, but it's best not to do that. It's like you're saying "My book is better than this" even if you weren't. I would only say it's acceptable to do something like this if you're new here.

I even did this once-or at least I only remember doing it once-when I was REALLY new here. I think it was my first week here. It was a fanfiction I was reading and I commented (and voted too, or at least I think I did) something on the first chapter such as "Hey, I wrote something for this too!" but I wasn't trying to say my book was better than the book I was reading like I said above. I was just really excited to be on here.

In fact, I even have a friend who did something like this for a while, but only on my books as far as I know. Let's say I had written a new book and she was reading the updates. I remember she would vote and compliment my story but she would also comment something about her story. I remember she would just let me know that a new chapter of her story was out or something like that.

I never got mad at her. I guess it was because she was my friend, but I was used to it as well.

But that doesn't mean you should post a comment like this every time you finish reading an update on a friend's story.

EDIT: My friend wasn't being mean about it and she wasn't doing it to be rude. Sorry for not clarifying it sooner.

And speaking of which, I know I already talked about followers/follows, but one thing you should know about followers is that not all of them will be your friend.

I talked about her a few times, but just don't private message everyone you talk to. When I was new here, I used to pm just about everyone on here who would add a book of mine to a reading list, followed me, etc.. Of course it didn't happen all the time, but in the end I mainly just pmed followers, but no, I didn't pm every single person who followed me. A lot, yes, but not all of them.

It's best not to do this because you might end up getting cyberbullied. I'm going to try to keep this as short as I can, but there was this girl who followed me in October of 2016.

I should mention that this girl was bipolar. She also had a bad memory (told me so herself) and would claim to have never said certain things a few days later.

I followed her back and shot her a private message about two hours later. She claimed not to remember me and I was confused and tried to jog her memory. Eventually she remembered me. She and I got along well after that for a little while.

It would be like this-she was happy one minute and then suddenly she was angry. I wouldn't have even said anything bad. She would just tell me to go away even if we were talking about something we liked.

Long story short, I eventually just muted her one day after she claimed she NEVER followed me (even though I swear to you she did. She would mute me multiple times but would always follow me back) and she called me a little brat for TELLING THE FRICKING TRUTH.

After I muted her, she was still able to send me messages somehow and even acted concerned and she acted like she wasn't rude to me. I remuted her and the messages stopped.

But then she got some people to gang up on me later on in the week and told them to tell me that she wanted to talk to me. When I finally caved in, I unmuted her for two hours, and guess what?

She never sent me a message.

I actually ended up being pretty good friends with one of the people she sent to gang up on me. The girl was pretty nice and even told me stuff like "I don't want to force you to talk to her if you don't want to" and stuff like that while the other person flat out told me to talk to her. The nice girl told me that the cyberbully also said mean things to her and also told her multiple times "I don't care", which is what the cyberbully would tell me a lot. The nice girl even told me something like "She acts like she cares, but I don't think she does" and I have to agree with her.

So yeah. Watch out for stuff like that, and also, don't expect every follower of yours to read your stories.

Despite having 815 followers (as of writing this), my followers don't care much about my books unless they're friends of mine or if I tell the friend about a new book, but you know what? I don't mind. I'm so used to friends reading my stories that I would probably get anxious if I woke up one day with tons of notifications from followers voting/commenting on the first chapter of a new story simply because I'm not used to it. Occasionally I might log in to see that a follower has voted on chapter one of my book, but after that I won't see them again.

AND NO, if any of you guys are my followers and you've been reading whatever this is, I'm NOT trying to guilt trip you into reading any of my stories. This is just from my experience.

So that's about it for this one. Don't expect every follower to read your book(s)-unless they're a friend and you tell them about it, but not all of your friends might read your newest story-and don't expect your followers to pm you, although SOMETIMES they might.

That reminds me of a time back in February where a former follower-who didn't stay followed to me for long-responded to one of my posts. Then the next day she sends me a message saying "hello?" without capitalizing the h and I was confused. I thought that the message might not've loaded and that she sent me something before that, but it was only that one word and I was pretty confused. I guess she was checking in on me. I replied to the post before I was sent the message and I guess she thought I didn't. Maybe she also confused me for one of her friends.

Speaking of which, there will also be times where followers-who often aren't your friends-will go through a phase where they care about what you post on their message board, but eventually they'll stop.

Wait....I already talked about that.

I'll see you next time.