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...
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So, hoping that we would get definitions for "undiscovered" and "famous" during this survey, we also set out to find what our participants thought contests and other promotional opportunities should look like for those two separate groups. If you've participated in many awards at all, I'm sure you're familiar with read limits. For example, a rule stating that "you may only join this award if you have less than 5k views". Different awards use different amounts, of course, but I thought it was important to find out what participants for these kinds of things think about read limits. Do they help undiscovered authors? Are they fair? If so, how can we apply our definitions of "undiscovered" and "famous" to them?
To explore this idea, we asked four basic questions:
1. Should awards/contests only be for undiscovered authors/books? 2. Should awards/contests exclude famous books? 3. Should awards/contests exclude famous authors? 4. Should all awards, contests, and other promotional opportunities be open to everyone, regardless of how many reads/follows they have?
Now, some of the results we got appeared to be a little contradictory at first, but I think that's for three reasons. One, I think people were making up their mind and sorting through their thoughts as they were answering these questions. This might have been the first time they'd made a solid opinion on the matter, and so maybe their convictions weren't as straightforward as you might expect. Two, when writing the questions, I thought that "undiscovered" and "famous" were antonyms, but as we saw earlier, most people do not. There is some middle ground I didn't account for well in my questions. Three, some people when they say "famous" mean "Wattpad sponsored," like Stars, Paid authors, Wattys winners, etc. So keep these things in mind as we view the results.
Question 1:
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This one was a close call! The people on the fence about this question are evenly matched. However, 8% more people Strongly Disagree that awards should be just for undiscovered books than Strongly Agree. So, by a narrow margin here, it sounds like our sample thinks awards should be for more than just "undiscovered" books, as a lot of awards claim. It's obviously a split topic, though.
