Wattpad Launches Wattpad Books, a New Publishing Division to Bring Diverse, Data-Backed Stories to Book-Lovers Everywhere

#364

It’s not impossible for it to work out alright for wattpad, but I think an explanation of royalties and advances would be necessary. It also depends on wattpad’s ability to retain readers to actually pay for books as the site’s marketability up to maybe 2 years ago was that it was free. As it moves into publishing- it will most likely experiment with books with high fanfare like those mentioned above. It all depends on the audience.

It could either be well received or die soon out the gate. There’s also a mention of choosing stories based on certain mechanics that they find to be successful in the music- which feels like what they said about the wattys. It’s all sounds like a game to me if I’m honest. Game of chance or something akin to that…

But good luck to them, and all the best to the chosen authors XD

It will be an interesting trial run.

What are your thoughts?:face_with_raised_eyebrow:

#365

But with Amazon, you have to upload an ebook from scratch and promote it anew.

Whereas I’d be shocked if Wattpad didn’t let you convert the stories you’ve already posted into ebooks, and facilitate promoting them to your followers. And that lack of friction – the ability to self-publish with a website you already know like the back of your hand – could make it very competitive against Amazon, especially with authors who are new to self-publishing.

As for deals, I think Amazon takes a 30% cut of sales from books priced between $2.99 and $9.99. What’s to prevent Wattpad from taking a 15% cut instead? They could easily make their terms more attractive than Amazon’s, and they probably will to attract authors to the new platform.

I’m thinking all of it, really. Wattpad doesn’t just have writers, but a lot of people offering covers and editing services too. Why not monetize that with a marketplace like Fiverr? Wattpad could take a story from first draft to self-published book more seamlessly than Amazon simply because the manuscripts, cover designers, editors, and readers are all under the same roof.

While this may be a more complicated task than teaming up with a Big 5 to traditionally publish a handful of books, I’d be shocked if Wattpad wasn’t updating their app or adding new ones to make it happen.

As for distribution, I imagine authors will get a choice, just like they do now on Amazon. If they promise to be exclusive on Wattpad, they’ll be rewarded with more favorable terms, but if they want to go wide that’s an option too.

#366

Maybe, maybe not. A lot of the photos/images for covers people use on here are from the internet and not commercial free.

#367

Or they’re dog vomit that someone whipped up in ten minutes on MS Paint. But there might be some writers willing to pay freelancers more for something better.

#368

Thanks for the tag :slight_smile:

I’ve already mentioned what I thought, and there’s not much to speculate since information is rather limited. It’s better to talk about it once more information will be brought forth to the public sphere whenever that will be? All we can do is wait, so I’m continuing writing up storms and having fun with writer friends :slight_smile:

#369

Anna has published a number of other novels, including The Spring Girls and The Brightest Stars.

#370

Naturally we’re getting permission from the writers. The writing journey is unique for everyone, and we understand that not every writer may be interested in having their story published. We work closely with our writers to make sure the opportunity is right for them so if it’s not for you, that’s okay.

#371

Hi Sam! Thanks for taking the time to answer all of our questions. I do have one myself. Are you able to say whether or not authors published under the imprint would be allowed the option to sell or retain certain rights? for e.g. Audio.

Also, do you all have a MSWL? (Manuscript Wish List)

#372

I’m with you Edan…, and as so many people have said here, there is a lot more information we need to know before we can have a clearer picture of how this is going to pan out for everyone :grin:

#375

Excited because other authors get to do this yes!!!

Am I interested? I don’t think my writing is any good for this xD

#376

I’m very happy to see Wattpad go this way!

I have been suggesting it for a while now, and was mostly told that Wattpad Stars program covered it, but that wasn’t what I was suggesting.

This, however, is!

I think this will be what separates Wattpad from Radish and other sites. It should help elevate the professional level of the site.

It will still be different from Amazon, however, as based on what they said, it sounds like algorithims will be determining which stories they reach out to (I am sure there will be a few other means that make it so some hand pick stories) but it’s still in the right direction, I think.

I am excited to see where this takes the site.

#377

Contemporary Romance is the easiest to DIY publish on either Draft2Digital or Amazon or both.

#378

I’ve been so dead curious about the “data” and “algorithms” that I made a list of the ways Wattpad might analyze data. Can you guys think of anything else they might look at, before the human aspect enters?

  • Votes
  • Reads (including partial vs. completed reads, and how many people click on the blurb vs continue to the story)
  • Read/comment ratios
  • Unique views
  • Comments
  • Demographics (age, gender, and country)
  • Pattern of reads over time (does a story consistently gain traction, or have long periods of quiet)
  • Ratio of reads vs. time (20,000 reads in 2 years is 10,000 reads a year; 5,000 reads in 3 months could become 20,000 reads in just 1 year: I’d pick the 5,000 read book)
  • Wattpad writers vs new member reads (are they attracting new members to Wattpad)
  • Consistent readers (are readers continuing to read the story all the way through, or putting it down in the middle)
  • Reading level (I have no idea if Wattpad does this, but there are programs that can analyze the word-length and sentence-length and convert it into a reading level, like kindergarten, fifth grade, etc)
  • Tags, and how popular those tags are
#379

Pretty sure they do that. They did that in the personalized report thing you could buy that lasted for 0.2 days before they realized no one would buy it. I think they might also use a spell checker of some sort.

Also, they probably check if people add the story to their library or not. Unique voters too seems to be something they consider for some reason. I don’t get this because it’s much easier to get five 1-vote readers than one 5-votes reader, but anyway.

I can’t think of anything else right now, but I do know that data ambassador are tasked with looking at stories & manually adding some extra info to a database used for machine learning. So really, with this “human factor” they could look at anything really. But then again, with humans subjectivity comes in and it necessarily creates a bias of some sort in their data & the subsequent analysis.

#380

You, my friend, are a marketing genius.

#381

It’s probably a safer option to go with the big time publishing house partnering thing for now. Depending on how that goes Wattpad may then seal the in house editing, designing thing with Wattpad users.

#382

blushes Really, I’ve just self-published enough to notice that the real money in it often isn’t made by the author.

Consider KDP. The average book on that platform sells a handful of copies, from which Amazon takes roughly a third of the cover price. So if an author sells 5 copies at $3 each to his friends, he makes $10 and Amazon makes $5.

Which isn’t a path to riches for the author, especially if he sunk more than $10 into the cover, subpar editing, etc. But for Amazon beyond a marginal volume, that $5 could be pure profit. Multiply by a million authors’ ebooks and it’s obvious why Wattpad would want to emulate that – especially if they could also make a cut from the freelance services associated with ebooks.

Ah. In my head, those were two completely different services. The news article described Wattpad selecting a few of their most popular titles to be traditionally published by a Big 5, and I expect that’s how it will continue to work for such titles. My speculation about an in-house service or marketplace was something that the rest of Wattpad could use when self-publishing.

#383

As I’ve understood, Wattpad is going to be the publisher and work with Macmillan for distribution in the US.

So they’re not just working with another publisher as an agent as they’ve done in the past - they’re going to do the publishing themselves. So you’re signed with Wattpad - Like you could be signed with a publisher like Random House for example.

#384

You’re correct.

#385

Yes, and no. Most US big-five contracts are remarkably similar on the basic clauses:

  • Term of contract: copyright
  • Hardcover royalty rate 10% of list for first 5,000, 12.5% on next 5,000, 15% on 10,000+
  • ebook rate 25% of net
  • audio book rate 25% of net
  • paperback rate 6% - 10% (7.5% for trade paperbacks, 8% on mass market for first 100,000 and 10% after that)

Things that are negotiable are the “small stuff” that doesn’t matter that much in the grand scheme of things.