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You finished writing your manuscript and you are just about ready to publish on Kindle by Amazon. You are so thrilled to share your work and excited to take this next step in your career as an author. But wait right there. Before you publish your book, here is an important piece of advice from my personal experience that helped me when publishing and promoting my book. As you may have guessed from the title, I am talking about publishing on Wattpad and here are some reasons.
You can Establish a Fan Base
If your social circle is relatively small and you see yourself struggling to promote your book, Wattpad is an excellent way to promote your novel as you have access to over 80 million readers who enjoy both reading and writing. As you have an audience who share your interests, this will enable you to make strong friendships with your readers and continuously have their support when you publish your book and any other ones to come. With the Message Board on your account, your followers and anyone who visits your account can see any announcements you post. Once your book gains enough reads and you publish your book on Kindle, you can also include the link to your book in your bio. Your readers may also add your books to their reading library, which can bring more attention to your work when their followers go through their selection of books.
Gain Readers’ Views and Opinions
If you haven’t had many people read over your manuscript or simply do not believe your friend’s opinion, you can be happy to know that readers on Wattpad will give you an honest review of your story. As Wattpad allows readers to comment on different sections of your story, you can see how your readers reacted to specific parts of the story and what stuck out to them. Your reader’s opinions can also offer you some insight into what your readers may like and dislike once you publish it, so you can refine your work to make sure it is perfect. Although this may seem like added work you do not want to do, adding or removing something can be beneficial for your novel. If you don’t believe this, let me share some of my personal experience. Before I first published my book, Weapons of an Empress, on Kindle, I learned that the beginning of the story was initially fast-paced, causing me to add another chapter to give my readers some time to breathe, as well as gain a further understanding of the character. I am also particularly happy with adding that chapter since it helped show character development, including the damage done to the protagonist’s emotional and mental state after the trauma she endured. Overall, I have to thank my readers for helping me find how I can improve my story while staying true to the plot, simply because they commented on their reactions and opinions.
Another way to gain some perspective of your novel, you can ask fellow Wattpad users that do book reviews, to read over your book and share their opinion. These opinions will most likely be public, meaning they will add their critique of your story in their book for book reviews. Although knowing their critique may seem daunting as they make it public for everyone to see, this can act as a marketing tool if you get an excellent review. On the other side, if the reviewers find your book unentertaining, it can give you an early warning that your book could be a flop and could tarnish your image and future prospects. Hence, with their advice and elements they noted that could use some refining, you will write a novel that will intrigue your readers rather than bore them before they can finish the chapter.
You can Enter Contests to See How Your Books Fare
Although these are not official contests, having your story entered in a couple of contests hosted by fellow Wattpad users can help you see how your book fares against other stories. As these competitions have their specific categories according to the genres provided by Wattpad, you can see what elements make your novel unique compared to other books and what it needs to improve on. The more competitions you win, the more attractive your book will be to potential readers and they may consider reading your books after publication. And the best part is it costs you no money. All the hosts request is a simple follow on the sight, a shout out about their contest on your message board and a few things that take only seconds of your time.
Can Get Reviews on Goodreads
One major factor that affects a person’s willingness to read your novel is the critique others leave for your work. As you start as an author, few people will know about the quality of your book. Hence, if you have people who have read your book before, they can write their opinion for your work and hopefully give it a 5-star rating on Goodreads. As the Wattpad community is friendly, most of them will happily give your book a stellar rating, especially if you establish a good relationship with them. Having these individuals write your review will be far better than having your friends and family do so, as they will know what parts of the book will interest future readers along with anything that readers find important when choosing their next novel to read.
Other Things to Note
As running a test-run for your book on Wattpad can be a tremendous asset to your book’s journey to success, here are a few things to keep in mind.
If you publish on Wattpad, this will prevent you from publishing with a traditional publisher.
You may get messages on the reading platform to sign your work with them. Do not accept until you have done thorough research, as they can be scams.
Upon publishing your book, unpublish the rest of your chapters while keeping 10% or less of your book available to readers to avoid more users from reading your book for free. Kindle Publishing will expect this as well.
Conclusion
Wattpad has offered me so much help in offering me guidance to improve my book for publication. Without my readers, my stories would not be as great as they are today. I also would not have made the connections and friends who have supported me and by doing me small favours giving my book a great ranking. For future authors, take advantage of this platform as I am sure this will be one of the greatest choices you made for your book.