Wattpad Rants

26. My Niche

"Romance: ∞ stories

Fanfiction: Also ∞ stories

Sci-Fi: Much fewer stories

Poetry: Even fewer

Nonfiction: Oh, cool fact book

Historical: Wtf is this genre?"

Hi, my pen name is Coffee, and my niche is historical fiction. Oh, yes, you heard that right.

Historical non-fiction is even better! I LOVE writing about true events. Not a teenage love story "based on true events". Oh no, when I write "based on a true story" I'm talking about the Roman Empire, WWII, 1940s insane asylums.

You give me anything written in old English and I will devour it. Heck, I read Shakespeare for fun, and that's not me 'bragging' or alluding to my theater kid origins, that's just the truth.

When I was ten, if you asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would say "I wanna be a reporter!" without question. If my career was just writing history books in the style of your average novel, I would probably be the happiest person on Earth.

Scroll through my profile though, and the last thing you're finding is a history lesson.

Why is that?

Wattpad's community is extremely biased. Perusing the internet with a very quick Google search of "Wattpad main demographics", I've found that a little over half of Wattpad's audience is female (the other portion comprised of male and private users). Not only that but the vast majority of users are aged between 13-24. Now, that is just an estimate of course, with the amount of concerningly young children on here (more often than not 10-12-year-olds), you can bet some of those users aren't telling the truth about their age.

Wattpad isn't the same as picking up your usual hardcover book. Sure, in some cases, the content can be just as good. But most people use the site as a form of escapism—to immerse themselves in the lives of their favorite characters.

Now, with the main audience seeking escapism and teenage hormones cranked up to high, you can bet a lot of focus is put on romance.

Don't believe me?

Wattpad shows publicly the top books in the US, let me go through the current list. (You can skip these if you'd like, just scroll to where I stop numbering the paragraphs).

1. "The Nanny" by Selenegreyy: A comedy romance about a struggling teenage girl working at a restaurant to pay off her university debt. Said teenage girl also gets swept away by a past crush re-entering her life. Also, there's a billionaire somewhere in there (probably the crush, I haven't the faintest clue, it was just one of the tags).

2. "His Substitute Bride" by thepsyhcowritter_: A romance about a woman whose sister runs away with her boyfriend forcing her to marry a sexy Italian mafia boss...? Listen, I wrote that without any context other than the tags and the description, but WOAH THERE.

3. "Emelia: Finding My Forever" by _dat_one_girl_: An enemies-to-lovers romance in which a bright, young, female college student is forced into an arranged marriage with a mafia leader.

4. "The Enemy's Ex-Wife" by senoradanah: A romance where a young wife of a man in the mafia secretly gets divorced (is that a thing?) and runs away from home. Later, she seeks refuge with the rival mafia and eventually marries one of them—most likely the head of it because why wouldn't it be? Again, there are the tags "billionaire" and "teenfiction" but at this point, who knows what's going on?

5. "Until Death" by pigpigpig12345: A romance about the best assassin—a young woman—in a mafia who is forced into an arranged marriage with the boss of a rival mafia

6. "His Miracle Mate" by amba9999: A fantasy romance in which a young woman in a supernatural university falls in love with a werewolf cursed to never find love. (what were you expecting? You heard the word "mate" and didn't think soulmate wolves?).

7. "Bulletproof" by TahliePurvis: A romance involving an equal split of first-person POV chapters between its two main characters—a high school-aged boy and a girl. The former of which goes from being a popular football player to coping with stress by fighting underground. The two find love and solace in one another.

8. "Enchanted by Love" by SANAMIKA_WRITES: A romance in which a—young?—woman is married to a king through an arranged marriage. Think of the king as your modern mafia boss character, the first chapter states, and I quote, "The man [the king] who never lost a battle! The man who never spared an enemy! The man who never smiled!" (Okay, listen, I know the title is in all caps and has an awkward dash, but you know I can't stand that).

9. "Lilah" by AshlynPope: A young adult romance in which a college-aged "good girl" girl falls in love with a "bad boy" (The description didn't give me much context, okay T-T).

10. "Double Booked" by tayhatesevery1: A college romance in which two hockey players are forced into practicing together and eventually find love.

I'm sorry, I didn't expect the list to be that perfect for my point, but this looks practically satirical.

Now, I'm not endorsing judging a book by its cover. I've never read any of these books past the first chapter, and the only reason I even picked them up was to provide you readers with a decent description. These books just aren't the type I read—even though, I'd like to point out, I am in the target audience for them.

Alright, let's take a moment to use our common sense (this is not judging, I swear... if I get canceled for this—).

Reread the first handful of words I wrote for each mini-description. Anything that sticks out? Whether it's comedy, college, or enemies-to-lovers, every story is a romance. I'm not inflating anything. Every single one of the ten stories has either the tag "Romance" or "Love" and you can bet that they all are in the genre of romance because that fact is showcased heavily in their book descriptions.

Four out of the ten stories include the tag "mafia"

~Five of the ten stories are told mainly from a female point of view (the rest are split between the two love interests almost equally).

When you first publish a story on Wattpad, you have twenty-one different genres to place it into. Everything from sci-fi to non-fiction, poetry to horror, comedy to fantasy, and yes, fanfiction to romance.

The fact that NONE of the other genres happened to be in the top ten cannot be explained by anything other than Wattpad's reputation (a site for teenage girls) and its audience (said teenage girls).

If your story isn't doing well, then it may not be your fault at all! While it isn't always the case, your book might not have a large audience on Wattpad. The entire website is skewed. Most people are looking for a certain form of entertainment—escapism—on the site. You might love learning about history and niche sciences, but that just might not be why you pressed on Wattpad.

That doesn't mean you shouldn't check out new books, quite the opposite actually! Step out of your comfort zone and you might just discover something amazing. Believe me, most popular romance books on this site aren't even that good (shots fired). In my time here, I've found that the best books—which don't have half the grammatical errors or awkward things so bad you could rant about them—are the books made by smaller authors. The reason why is because they take their time to put a plot and fun-loving characters together. Those things take time and often ward away any popularity the algorithm may give them.

~•~

1311 words

"Ah, this would've been so much longer, but I decided to break the other core topic of this one into its own chapter. I (very) recently posted a non-fiction historical short story on here and I sort of wrote this chapter out of rage that there wasn't even a tag for historical non-fiction. Anywho, I'm not here to advertise my books. Vote if you liked it, comment your thoughts, and thank you for picking up this book! (I'll see you next chapter!)"

- Coffee