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A presence on Wattpad offers several advantages when it comes time to make the leap into traditional publishing.
At any given time, there are thousands of websites, apps, devices, articles, and channels competing for young people’s attention. It’s a loud, crowded media world, which means it’s more crucial than ever for publishers to cut through the noise with books that connect with readers. An author with a preexisting platform or fanbase is an automatic leg up.
When young adult publishers consider whether to acquire a book by a new author, they often look at the author’s social media following, particularly on Twitter and Instagram. A considerable following is helpful for two reasons: It shows that the author has opinions, expertise, or a compelling online voice that inspires people to follow and listen, and it shows that those same followers may very well be inclined to spend ten to twenty dollars on the author’s future book. A considerable following demonstrates that you’ve already captured the cultural consciousness in some way and that you already possess the tools to cut through the dreaded noise.
What’s important for publishers to understand about Wattpad is that it’s more than a self-publishing platform; it’s also a social network. Yes, writers from all over the world are self-publishing their work on Wattpad—but they’re also connecting with readers and writers, building fanbases and brands. Popularity on Wattpad is like any other following on Twitter or Instagram: It demonstrates reach and influence. And beyond online reach and influence, it demonstrates the appeal of your manuscript. It’s like a vetting process. When publishers see a lot of reads, positive comments, and a high ranking, it’s a signal that there’s something special about a book. The Wattpad community is a test group telling us what’s working (and not working) in your book. There is no other mechanism like it.
Publishers recognize that not all writers on Wattpad are looking for traditional book deals. For many writers, posting on Wattpad is about the joy of posting on Wattpad: the camaraderie of the community, the immediacy of the fan interaction, the mutable nature of the content.
For writers, on the other hand, who are looking to have their manuscripts picked up by traditional publishers, there are certainly best practices. First, in terms of how publishers find Wattpad books to publish, there are two mechanisms. The first and most common is that the wonderful folks at Wattpad go out on submission with a manuscript that’s already posted online. Whether writers are aware of that process is handled on a case-by-case basis by Wattpad staff. Wattpad draws publishers’ attention to a project, and it’s considered an official submission (the same way that we receive submissions from literary agents). Another means of discoverability is that editors keep an eye on Wattpad themselves. They may pay close attention to the Wattys or simply poke around on the site, looking for books that are performing well. As I’ll explain later, Wattpad has many advantages from a publisher’s perspective, and that includes its ability to help an editor keep a finger on the pulse of popular YA fare.
Another way for a publisher to find your piece is for you to submit it directly. When it comes to these submissions, it’s important to do your research very carefully. A lot of publishing houses do not accept what we call “unsolicited submissions,” or manuscripts that aren’t submitted by a literary agent. It’s important for you to determine which publishers accept submissions and which publishers do not. Writer’s Market is one option for that research.
When submitting work to houses that welcome unsolicited submissions, it’s key to use Twitter or a paid site like Publishers Marketplace to determine what kinds of projects certain editors are keen on based on the types of books they’ve previously acquired. Editors oftentimes specialize in (or have a strong preference for) particular genres. You wouldn’t want to submit your paranormal manuscript to an editor who only handles realistic contemporary romance.
One trick is to look in the back of your favorite books and scan the Acknowledgments, where the author will usually mention their editor. And the most important thing to remember is that an editor’s list of previously published books will tell you both what the editor likes in general and what the editor already has enough of. If your book sounds identical to another book the editor has published, that’s a negative, not a positive. You want your book to fit into the wheelhouse of what an editor does on the whole, but you don’t want it too similar to another project because editors can’t have overlapping titles on their lists.
Now, the manuscript evaluation process! The first note is that with the upside of data comes the downside of data. If you or your agent are querying a traditional publisher with a manuscript published on Wattpad and the ranking is middling, the comments are few, or the general engagement looks low, the publisher is going to take that into account.
It will be important to strategize on your own or with your literary agent. It might be good to include some positive feedback or comments from your readership to demonstrate that while your story may not yet have a giant fanbase, those who’ve read it have enjoyed it. The publisher will be interested in how long the story has been live on the site, whether you’ve published other stories (and in what genres) and how those have performed, and what edits you’ve made to your story since it went up. These suggestions aren’t intended to be alarmist; it’s simply good to be aware of how editors may assess prepublished works and use the information available to determine whether to take on a project.
I think many—if not most—editors first read the query letter when they receive a submission, or they’ll read the project first if they find it online. Then they may dip into the comments.
Editors want to evaluate manuscripts using their own assessment tools. We are guided by our instincts, and we rely on them first and foremost, rather than letting strangers’ comments determine our decisions. This means that if there are indeed some negative comments on your story, do not worry that it will spell the end of your success with traditional publishers. Trust and believe in the process and in editors’ abilities to judge for themselves.
Once your book is acquired, you will have to undergo what every contracted and soon-to-be-published writer must undergo: the editorial process. It’s something that most self-published writers are unused to since they have been in charge of their own writing destinies up until this point (except, perhaps, when it comes to readers’ comments).
A unique aspect of Wattpad, in terms of the editorial process, is that you and your editor have access to hundreds of comments throughout your manuscript that tell you what people think is working and not working. If the comments indicate that a certain section is lagging, then you and your editor can come up with a solution. And if the comments indicate that a certain section is really working, then you and your editor may consider amplifying it or incorporating elements of its success into other parts of the story. That sort of real-time feedback is not something editors get from brand-new manuscripts, and it can certainly help inform the editing process in all manner of ways. In addition, it will be beneficial to share with your publisher any changes you’ve made to the story, either on or off Wattpad.
When your main or originating publisher (called the “lead publisher”) licenses the right to publish your book, they are doing so for a specific territory. If, for instance, HarperCollins is your lead publisher, Harper may license the rights to publish your book in North America, the British Commonwealth, or the entire world.
Under traditional circumstances (i.e., without the data provided by self-publishing), publishers must use their best judgment and intuition to decide whether a book is likely to find success in a given part of the world. With Wattpad, you, as the holder of the account, already have that information. Are you getting lots of comments from readers in the Philippines? In Iceland? In South Africa? Those metrics will show publishers that you are over-indexing in certain parts of the world, meaning that your story has global appeal and reach. It gives your publisher more incentive to pursue deals with publishers in those territories on your behalf, and it gives them hard data to use when pitching to those foreign publishers and convincing them to pick up your book. You are providing your publisher with invaluable data that will serve to make your book the greatest possible global success.
About six months before your book is published, your publisher will want to strategize with you about how to leverage your preexisting base to maximize book sales. There will be considered discussions about how to handle the Wattpad content: whether to leave it up, whether to edit it, whether to put the complete and fully edited manuscript on Wattpad. Different publishers will have different approaches.
You also want the readers who already love you to buy your e-book for their devices or to go into bookstores and buy the physical copy. It will be useful for you to talk to your publisher about your fans (whom you know inside out) and discuss the best way to convert them from reading your book on Wattpad to spending money on it. Will your readers want you to be a purist, leaving the story mostly as is? Will they want a new ending as an incentive to buy this version? Will they want more content or an added dimension? You may not have these answers in place already; through various conversations with your editor, you will devise the optimal plan.
The copy you see on the flaps of a physical book or on retailer websites like Amazon is a joint effort between you and your editor. It has to be optimized to sound as compelling and appealing as possible to potential readers who have hundreds of books to choose from.
Have you noticed that changing elements of your summary or your copy on Wattpad meant more or less interest in your book? Does it seem like a certain aspect of your concept—the toe-curling romance, the thrilling twists and turns, the lyrical writing—is what’s drawing people in? Your editor wants all of that information; it helps inform the best tack when it comes to enticing readers.
One element that differs between Wattpad publishing and traditional publishing is the use of pseudonyms versus real names. On social media sites, members can assign themselves usernames that allow them to conceal their true identities. When it comes to traditionally published works, a small percentage of authors use pen names.
This is because, as I mentioned above, we want our writers to get out there and connect with the public and their readership. Sometimes this includes in-person appearances, and YA writers frequently make strong personal connections with the people who read their works. Unlike the level of remove on Wattpad, with our authors there’s a lot more transparency between writer and reader—and typically that includes using your real name.
Following publication, another possibility is posting additional content on Wattpad. Wattpad is a great place to post interstitial stories—prequels, sequels, supporting characters’ POVs—that complement the core book. Publishers will be excited that you have a place where your fans already live and that Wattpad is such a natural home for related materials. It’s a way to keep preexisting fans engaged and pick up new fans. Think of it as a marketing tool. As discussed at the very beginning of this chapter, anything you can do to increase your profile and the number of people interested in your work betters the book’s chances of succeeding in the marketplace.
There are also broader ways that the Wattpad platform can complement the traditional publishing process.
Typically, an editor receives manuscripts from agents, and the incoming flow for one editor might be anywhere from a few submissions to twenty submissions per week. Through the submission process, editors get a sense of what kinds of trends are percolating. It may take a handful of submissions over a period of weeks or months for it to become clear that a certain topic or genre (e.g., vampires, dystopian, fantasy, werewolves, contemporary romance) has surfaced in the zeitgeist. This is because, from where an editor sits, there are two types of trends: current marketplace trends (what’s selling at this very moment) and author trends (what authors across the world are writing about and what will be selling in the future).
With Wattpad, we’re able to see what’s popular in the latter category in real time. We can see what stories are popular right now, which may help us predict the next wave or trend. It certainly tells us what thousands of people are spending their time reading! And that can open our eyes to new genres, inspirations, and ideas.
Sara Sargent is an executive editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books, where she publishes platform-driven fiction and nonfiction in the picture book, middle-grade, and young adult categories. Previously, she was an editor at Simon Pulse, an imprint of Simon & Schuster. Sara has worked with New York Times best-selling authors Laurie Hernandez, Abbi Glines, Ainsley Earhardt, Rosamund Hodge, and Lisa Maxwell; internationally best-selling author Lily Collins; National Book Award finalist Deb Caletti; and social media influencers Stacy Hinojosa (StacyPlays), Matthew Espinosa, and Arden Rose. She received her master of science in journalism degree from Northwestern University.