How I (Finally) Got Published

Chapter 10: Stan Lee's Advice

Let's recap. We talked about 2 types of writers: the Trend-setters and the Bandwagoners, and how it's important to care about the audience that we're writing to. Does this mean you should all do like I did and write romance, teen fic, paranormal – i.e. vampire – romance, or fanfic? They do seem to be the prevailing genres on Wattpad because the site is basically owned by teen girls.

Uh, no. That's kind of a stereotype.

You can test it yourself. If you've already published one or two stories, just head over to your My Stories page, click Stats and you're gonna see colorful doughnuts about your audience. Sure, the analytics isn't really close to real-time and it takes a long time to refresh. But personally, I find this a very helpful tool because it tells me who's interested in what I'm putting out (and who's picking up). You can learn about your readers' age, gender, behavior, and even location. Of course if your story's already romance or teen fic then the stats would just mirror your audience and that'll be misleading. Why don't you experiment with very different genres and later decide what genre you want to be the master of?

I have a theory as to why Wattpad is especially popular among teens. It's because when we're all in high school, that's the time we start to sincerely discover the joys of reading and writing. You all have or had high school poetry that makes you cringe now or will make you cringe in the future. Now, think about it: what happened to all the teens who joined Wattpad in the past? Of course they had to grow up. Wattpad isn't Neverland no matter how some people wish it was. So, basically, there are people in Wattpad who are much older than you think.

Let me digress a bit. To beat Amazon's algorithms, indie authors try to sub-categorize their works and find what we call a niche. Why? This is because the general categories are already too crowded for a newcomer to even make a splash. Imagine a jam-packed swimming pool where there's barely enough room to tread water, your rubber ring jostling and squeaking against others. 

The same thing's happening on Wattpad! you say. With over 200 million story uploads to date, however can my story stand out?

Well, I don't think you noticed but there are currently about 7.7 billion people on our planet. The struggle for individualism, self-expression and originality is very real all around. There are 30 genre categories on Wattpad but, basically, all of them are crowded.

But you know what the good news is? There are too many stories in [insert whatever genre you fancy], but I'm betting you there aren't enough good, high-quality stories in that same genre. It's like that paradox: Every category's impossible so every category's possible.

The issue isn't so much that there aren't enough readers checking out your book. Like I said in Chapter 7, popularity's important but it's not everything. Also, we need to define popularity.

If you think you need millions of readers or followers before you can call yourself a successful writer, then I'm sorry to break it to you but that's plain tough and unrealistic. I think you have J.K. Rowling as your standard. But what I can tell you is that there are successful authors on Wattpad who make a real living writing or are very close to it, through Wattpad's opportunities such as publishing and other media deals, including even the Paid Stories program. And it doesn't take a whole army to back them up; it just takes a handful of elite, highly dedicated readers to get them to where they want.

Sure, many of those successful writers now have prolly astronomical read and follower counts because that's the natural byproduct of fame, but think about it: They all started with nothing. Over time, they built up their game and their following and that wave buoyed them to where they are right now, to Rockstar-hood.

A flood of readers or instant votes isn't really what you need right now. No, what you need is a few loyal followers who truly love what you're dishing out and who would stick with you till the glory days.

For that to happen, it doesn't matter if your genre's the most cliché or the weirdest e.g. genetically engineered rabbits forced into an underground death match by a crime ring, or telepathic steampunk zombie-eating dinosaurs. (If you're interested in adopting either of these ideas, I'm giving you permission to do so.)

In a word, just know what you want to write about (after having considered your audience) and do it well.

Let me leave you with this very inspiring excerpt from a graduation keynote address delivered by none other than Stan Lee, Mr. Marvel, himself: 

"Armed with all that wonderful material, those great ideas, I ran into my publisher's office and I told him. This was my reaction – the reaction that he gave me: 'Stan, that is the worst idea I have ever heard. First of all... people hate spiders so you can't call a hero Spider-man. You want him to be a teenager? Teenagers can only be sidekicks. And you want him to have personal problems? Stan, don't you know what a superhero is? They don't have personal problems.'

"Well, I left the office disappointed but obviously a much wiser man. And I couldn't get Spider-man out of my system. So we were about to kill a magazine. I think it was called Amazing Fantasy. It wasn't selling well and we were sending the last issue to the press. When you do the last issue of the magazine, nobody cares what you put in it because the book is dying. Just to get it out of my system, I put Spider-man in Amazing Fantasy, featured him on the cover, forgot about it. A month later, all the sales figures came in. My publisher came racing into my office. 'Stan! Stan! You remember that character we both love so much: Spider-man? Let's do him as a series. '

"Now, why am I telling you this?... If you have an idea that you genuinely think is good, don't let some idiot talk you out of it.

"Now that doesn't mean every wild notion that you come up with is gonna be genius, but if there is something that you feel is good, something you want to do, something that means something to you, try to do it. Because I think you can only do your best work if you're doing what you want to do and you're doing it the way it should be done. And if you can take pride in it after you've done it, no matter what it is, you could look at it and say: 'I did that and I think it's pretty dam good.' That's a great feeling."

Up Next: Just follow your nose!

Stay Phenomenal!

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