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Success is different for everyone. Reaching goals specific to your experience is what’s important, not comparing yourself to other writers.
I have no idea what success looks like. Not on Wattpad or anywhere else in the writing world. None. I can’t tell you what the concrete definition of success is because I’m not you, and I’m not sure I’ve achieved it myself. How’s that for irony? I’m also the editor of this book.
The tragicomic truth at the heart of “success” and “making it” is that there is no truth. People will spend their entire lives trying to achieve success, and even the ones who do probably don’t think they did. An individual’s success is often only noticeable from outside of that person’s experience, like a zit between the eyes.
That blindness is symptomatic of the writer’s life, the penalty for practicing mental athletics in solitude. Writing isn’t a job application with a definite “yes” or “no” at the end of the process. It isn’t licensed by the state (yet) and loaded with hoops to jump through. The words of “real” writers aren’t separated from those of the “less real” writers, as if the opaqueness of ink at the printing press varies based on credentials. And even though there are trophies, there are no stadiums.
Because writing is a lifestyle, a frame of mind, an exercise in spirit, its metrics live outside the measurements of money and titles that normally apply to business and industry. Can you really assign a value to a story? No, because writing and reading aren’t commodities like oil or gold. That’s why a set definition of success is hard to come by. For that reason, I don’t know what success looks like, and neither do you, Wattpad writer. Only the bitter, disingenuous, or mean-spirited would claim otherwise.
The good news is that the nebulousness of “success” allows for writers to craft interpretations unique to themselves. Success is defined differently for everyone. To one writer, it may mean getting one hundred reads on a Wattpad story, and to another, success may mean receiving one million. For someone else, it may just mean completing a story. Often there isn’t one goal but a series of goals. Some are small, and some are large, but they are all part of a process that can take a lifetime to play out. Taking this long view allows posting a 1,000-word short story on Wattpad to hold the same weight as nabbing a book deal with a major publisher. The old saying is true: Things are what you make of them.
What’s important isn’t that your achievements are on par with those Wattpad writers you admire. It’s important that you set a reasonable goal and meet it, then hit a goal a few inches farther than that one, and so on. The only failure is staying put, so don’t get discouraged when something doesn’t work out. Keep writing, and celebrate your achievements along the way, no matter how small or large they may be.
Perhaps you’ve heard similar advice before, but it bears repeating. It’s much more substantive and vital than some pithy words overlaid on a stock image of a mountain, and that’s because it concerns the state of mind you need to be in before hitting the Wattpad trail hard. At times, the very nature of Wattpad’s powerful technology makes it easy to fall into a pit of doubt and self-loathing. The number of reads, comments, and votes on a story are front and center. It’s impossible to read a story or write one without noticing those metrics. Will one hundred reads on your story this Tuesday ruin Wednesday? Will your motivation dissolve along with your metrics?
Remember, though, that success exists outside of metrics. It’s tempting to use hard data to gauge how much traction you’re gaining, but numbers can only represent so much of the picture. There are stories on Wattpad with millions of reads and nothing to show for it. There are also stories with a few thousand reads and a truckload of accolades, achievements, and advances to back them up. The reason why is a mix of numerous factors. Once you recognize that, there’s no reason to let Wattpad metrics steer your internal dialogue.
Still, no one is immune to those jaded attitudes, including me. When I joined Wattpad in 2015, it was for two reasons. One was that I’d read about a presentation that a Wattpad staff member had given at a writing conference, and the site sounded interesting. Coincidentally, the mentions of metrics grabbed my attention. There’s nothing like hard data to back up assumptions about where a piece of writing is headed. The second reason was that I’d hit a dead end with my fiction. It needed a home and a fresh shot. Wattpad made sense. I’ll skip the parts about why my writing career hit a snag and how I was a little harder on myself than was necessary because the point remains the same. I had—and still have—a definition of success tailored to my personal journey through writing. Hitting a roadblock didn’t mean the end of the world. It meant that it was time to try something new. I’m now a Wattpad Star, I’m a Watty Award winner, and I can count many opportunities that have come my way after my reads took off.
I’m not pulling from a thought experiment or some glib self-help manual when I tell you these things. It happened to me. It wouldn’t have, however, had I not kept my personal definition of success in clear view because the sound of other writers rocketing past my station in life was deafening. In 2015, many of my best writer buds were signing contracts with big publishers, visiting with movers and shakers in the entertainment industry, stuffing their bank accounts, and traveling the world. Meanwhile, I kept myself busy at home by giving away my work on Wattpad for free. Despite feeling happy for their achievements, it would’ve been self-sabotage to compare myself to those other writers. Had I let someone else’s experiences set the benchmarks for my specific situation, my writing life would be completely different and you certainly wouldn’t be reading these words.
Keeping all of this in mind, there are patterns to how writers define a successful Wattpad experience. They typically revolve around five things, in no particular order:
Again, I’m not saying you need to choose one or all of those. It’s worth noting how other writers approach Wattpad so that you can start to form the specifics.
As an example, I fall into the first and second bullet points. My goal is to build a platform of readers and leverage that into bigger opportunities. I’ll keep the specifics to myself because you need to set your own goals.
On that note, write those specifics down, as in paper-and-pencil write it down. I don’t know exactly how, but it helps. Would you believe that I did that very thing several months prior to winning a Watty and gaining entry into the Wattpad Stars program? It’s true.
It’s spooky how different your mind-set can be when you state an intention, write it down, and focus on the words on a regular basis. It sends a message to your brain to organize its contents around meeting that goal. I don’t mean that in a supernatural, law of attraction way, although these concepts sometimes get framed that way. There is some definite, grounded psychology at play that occupies the same real estate as athletes’ visualization techniques before an important event. It’s no guarantee, but it optimizes your chances.
Shortly before I began work on this chapter, I posted an open question on my Wattpad profile page. I wanted to know what success looked like in the eyes of other Wattpad writers. I especially wanted to know the POV of writers who weren’t Wattpad Stars like myself since they’re paddling upstream more often than I am. Yes, there are advantages to being in the Stars program, and I’d be the first to admit that.
As expected, the responses varied. The one constant revolved around Wattpad being a tool or a path to something greater. I’ve selected a few responses to highlight here.
LL Montez (@LLMontez) saw value in the support of a community of writers, writing: “When I came in here, I knew no one. Now I’ve made many friends—actual friends who are honest and supportive. That’s the biggest Wattpad win.”
Taking a wider view of where that support can take you, @Maeve Siverling wrote that, “Having your work adapted to something else, like a TV series or a movie would be considered a great success. The challenge then is to keep that engaged community of fans interested in those other adaptations.”
Of course, success need not mean sitting in the banquet hall with glamorous Hollywood types. Melissa Luznicky Garrett (@MLGarrett) took a granular view by replying, “As long as I have one person who finds joy and entertainment in what I write … [someone] who can relate to my characters in some small or big way, I’ve done my job.”
Not everyone felt as optimistic. @TheAlvarezChronicles cited the difficulty of both obtaining and leveraging reads on Wattpad, stating, “Real writers don’t have to be successful on Wattpad for their writing life to mean something. Some of the best writers I have ever seen are on here, and no one reads them. Wattpad is a crapshoot. Never judge your writing by your success on it. You will get it wrong. Just write how your heart tells you to write.”
I included that comment in this chapter because it’s fair criticism. Does everyone writing on Wattpad go on to fame and fortune? Of course not, and I’m not here to convince you otherwise. It’s true that some well-read Wattpad stories wouldn’t fall into the category of Pulitzer Prize-winning literature. Some of them might even be my stories. It’s also true that deserving writers and writing go unnoticed. The Wattpad experience isn’t always fair.
However, none of that is endemic to Wattpad. Writers have levied these criticisms about the publishing industry since there has been a publishing industry. As far back as the first printed books, when a tiny scoop of elites monopolized literacy, nothing was fair. The democratization of writing ushered in by twenty-first-century technology is certainly progress, but it’s still not immune from things like the Pareto principle, which dictates that about 80 percent of effects stem from 20 percent of causes. You can tweak those percentages up or down, but they don’t matter as much as the general idea, because this lopsided phenomenon is present in almost every market on Earth. Therefore, you can’t drop millions of writers into a Wattpad bucket and expect everyone to have the same experience. Some of it is talent. Some of it is luck. Some of it is a mystery.
You need to consider that with clear eyes because your path to success, wherever that might be, isn’t going to feel fair. Heck, even when it’s in your favor, it might not feel fair. That’s why you’ve got to keep your focus wrapped tight around those individual goals and, again, define where you are on your own terms.
None of this is meant to discourage you, dear writer. You are actually at an advantage if you recognize the obstacles in front of you because you’ll have a better appreciation of how to deal with them. When you expect walls, you can pack a ladder.
Let’s get to the real rock stars of Wattpad, the writers who turned reads into reality. Remember, it’s counterproductive to compare your successes to the following writers’. Still, it’s helpful to see what is possible so you can dream big.
Anna Todd (@imaginator1D) tops the list as the original breakout star. As of this writing, 1.3 million Wattpad users follow her profile, and the reads on her stories are into the billions. The popularity of her After series on Wattpad morphed into a traditional publishing contract with Simon & Schuster. That propelled her into what looks a lot like the dream life of a full-time writer. If you’ve read about Wattpad writers in the news media, you’ve probably come across Todd’s name.
Isabelle Ronin (@isabelleronin) worked up more than 170 million reads on her Wattpad story, Chasing Red. That landed her a major publishing contract with Sourcebooks, and two of her books hit shelves in 2017. Like many contracted writers who got their starts on Wattpad, her original stories remain available on the site to read for free. That may sound surprising, but it speaks to the way Wattpad works as an on-ramp toward building a readership that can be monetized elsewhere.
While Todd and Ronin nailed a traditional bull’s-eye, some writers have seen their stories permeate other media. In 2018, Lauren Palphreyman (@LEPalphreyman) debuted a TV pilot through CW Seed for her story Cupid’s Match. Twenty-four Wattpad writers, as of this writing, saw their works adapted into audiobooks via Hachette.
That should get you thinking about the possibilities. Your success doesn’t have to flow from Wattpad to a traditional publisher and then to film adaptations or other initiatives as in years past. Intellectual property can be exploited in any number of ways right off the bat. At WattCon 2017, Wattpad’s official event in Toronto, someone on Wattpad’s staff told me that writers should think of themselves as creators more than writers. To wit, in 2017, Entertainment One, a distribution company based in Toronto, announced it would be partnering with Wattpad to source content for virtual reality projects.
These writers represent only a few of Wattpad’s success stories. An exhaustive list would include millions of writers and every shade of achievement because once again, success has no hard-and-fast definition. It’s soft and slow. What does success on Wattpad look like? It’s up to you.
Benjamin Sobieck is a Wattpad Star and 2016 Watty Award winner. He’s best known on Wattpad for Glass Eye: Confessions of a Fake Psychic Detective, the Watty Award–winning sequel Black Eye, and When the Black-Eyed Children Knock & Other Stories. Four of his titles have appeared on Wattpad Top 100 Hot Lists, all at the same time.