101 Writing Tips from an Exhausted Reviewer

How to Get "READS" On Wattpad

This one is going to be fun.

Now, I'm going to start by sharing a story about when I was a young teenager and I first got Wattpad.

I must have been sixteen? And I had this amazing story idea that I had been writing for a while. Suddenly, someone mentioned Wattpad to me, and how I can share my writing there. I instantly downloaded the app, and I suddenly saw the spam of 'Popular Books' that you first see when you click on Wattpad. A lot have these gorgeous, fantasy covers, and plenty of reads on them. And, when you read some of them, they truly are magical and marvellous and professional.

Then, others... Well, y'all know how much I love grammar (hint: enough to write an advice book to help other people with it). So, safe to say, even sixteen-year-old me had been mortified at the sight of those run on sentences.

But it made me think that... hey, if these guys could write and get popular, so can I, right?

I upload my prologue at night time. And, I swear on the gods of dancing noodles and peri-peri-chicken, I did not sleep that night. I kept getting up, checking my phone, madly expecting a bunch of people to click and comment and read.

When I woke up, I had a total of 1 reads. That 1 being me, clicking on my own story.

I mean, hey, we're supposed to be our own biggest fans, right?

In a way, it was disheartening. Days passed. A week passed. And no one was clicking on my book. Was my story bad? Was my blurb not captivating enough? Was it my profile picture -- were people blinded by my precious, beautiful puppy?

Now, years have passed and I think I'm doing okay on Wattpad! Obviously, my stories aren't front-paging, and I don't have the millions of views that some have, but I'm really happy with my stories and I adore the few consistent readers that I do have. And, unlike my sixteen-year-old self, I don't really see the value in having lots of readers. I'm really quite content.

However! Some of you are not! And that's okay -- I'm here to help you!

Now, the most important thing to understand is that Wattpad works sort of like this: the rich get richer, and the poor get poorer.

Except the poor don't get poorer, because you don't lose reads. They just... stay on the brink of bankruptcy.

Essentially, Wattpad needs to showcase their best books on their front pages to make sure they are still getting people to join their platforms. Now, the people who work for Wattpad are very busy -- they can't read thousands of the new books that are published every day to see which ones they should recommend.

Instead, they have to rely on us, the readers. They see which ones we are clicking on the most, and then promote those ones even more. Which means those ones get more reads. Even though they were already popular to begin with.

The trending pages are quite fair, though! You'll notice that even if your book doesn't have as many 'reads' as other books at the top of what's "trending" for certain tags, it is based on activity on your story relative to other books in that time frame.

Now, despite this "rich gets richer and poor gets poorer" frame that most communities work under (it's not just Wattpad -- it's everything, from dating websites to clothing stores online to youtube videos), there are ways to break the system and make sure your story is that one getting those reads.

So. Without much further ado: here is how to get reads on Wattpad!

STEP ONE: WRITE A BOOK OF WRITING TIPS THAT IS REALLY ESSENTIALLY COMPLAINING ABOUT WATTPAD.