We all talk about the words undiscovered and famous, but does anybody really know what they mean? Come find out with us as we talk to 107 Wattpadders about fame, discovery, and how to get a leg up on this platform. Show up for the (simple) science...
Bonus points to anyone who gets the reference in the gif above. (;
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We asked people "What would it take for you to consider yourself famous?" Their answers were surprisingly striking, and we found ourselves wishing the survey hadn't been anonymous just so we could give them a virtual hug.
It turns out, most people aren't looking for astounding numbers. They're just looking to be connected with.
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Not everyone responded to this question because it was open answer, but 76 honest, thoughtful people did. We sorted their answers into types, and everyone whose answer contained one of those types got put into the above buckets.
User Engagement Almost half of the people who answered are primarily looking for someone just to talk to them. Talk about their stories. Talk on their message board. Care about what they're doing. Some participants even said that it wouldn't matter if the number of people who did this was small, just so long as they were there. And for 29% of participants, that was all they wanted. They didn't ask for engaged readers and. Just some people to enjoy their work.
Official Recognition Seventeen percent of people in our sample believe that official recognition would make them feel famous. These people are hoping for traditional publishing, winning the Wattys, being translated to film, Wattpad endorsement, and things of that sort. And I can't blame them. I'd feel pretty famous if Wattpad chose our book to make a movie out of too.
Reads and Follows After that, we have the numeric counts. These people feel like they'd be famous if they had a certain high number of reads and followers, or in the category below that, just a certain high number of reads. Some of these people had specific estimates and some just said "lots of". Note that if you combine these two categories, you do jump over the Official Recognition people. In that case, we'd have 30% of people who think they'd feel famous if they had high reads and follows.
Talked About in More Circles A smaller but interesting group of people think they'd feel famous if more people knew of them or talked about them. They'd feel famous if people had name recognition with them/their book and/or if their story stirred up conversations.
