Two Women Writers Convince Me to Experiment on Wattpad . . .

I’ve known about Wattpad for quite awhile but let it linger in the hinterlands of my interest, with all the other wonderful, fabulous, must-engage-on spaces that writers are nearly shamed into using… 

However, Orna Ross, founder of the Alliance of Independent Authors, and Elizabeth S. Craig, bestselling author of the Southern Quilting mysteries and Memphis Barbeque mysteries and link-curator for the Writer’s Knowledge Base, have convinced me to use Wattpad in a very specific way.

My experiment got its first nudge when I saw an article on the ALLi site about Wattpad Insights for Indie Authors.

There’s a video at the end of this post that was the clincher for my experimental use of Wattpad; but, first, here are some takeaways the ALLi article has from that video:

1. Wattpad users are very mobile savvy and skew towards a younger demographic.
2. Authors don’t have to write serially, they just need to publish serially.
3. The Wattpad mobile app is free, and a Wattpad account is also free.
4. Set a consistent publishing schedule for your chapter releases.
5. If you already have a free book, it makes sense to leverage it on Wattpad. Use it as a funnel to your other books.
6. At the end of each Wattpad chapter you can add an author call to action (e.g. sign up to the author’s mailing list, or letting your readers know where to buy the book if they can’t wait for the next installment).
7. A demographics tab gives you insights into the age demographics of your readers and their geographic location.
8. Authors can add images or a video to each chapter to increase engagement.
9. It’ll take about 4-6 chapters to get some audience traction.
10. Wattpad increases your opportunity of reaching your share of the 40 Million global readers.

#2 & #5 were the prime reasons I got interested in using Wattpad.

And, in case you’re new around here or you just never noticed, I give away my novel (even though it’s also for sale) over in the left side-bar; so, I decided I’d add a new chapter to Wattpad every Wednesday for the next 20 weeks and append a comment there to draw folks back here…

So, if you’d rather read just a bit of my book each week (instead of downloading it for free and reading the whole thing in about two days {it’s rather short but quite deep…}) Take This Link (you’ll have to register with Wattpad if you aren’t already a member…)

I’ll be periodically reporting results…

And, now, here’s the video with Orna and Elizabeth that convinced me to do the WattpadExperiment:

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