What’s wrong with Wattpad – or is it just me?

Like thousands of others, I write novels and ‘self-pub’ them on kindle and try to sell them.  A long while ago I also started a couple of my own blogs of short stories, initially hoping they’d act as a way of publicising my novels.

Needless to say like so many things in life it didn’t work out that way.  Some people read the stories but it led to no improved sales of the novels.

The point was though, I found I liked doing it, so continued.  It was enjoyable getting an idea for a short story, putting it out, and although there was never any prospect of earning any money, it was nice to think of people all over the world  reading them, and enjoying them.

A few people read the stories, and then my kind friend Darcia Helle (@DarciaHelle) told me about ‘Readwave’, a website for short stories.  I put my stories on there, and it was great.  Hundreds of people all over the world read them, some commented, and when I put on a new story within minutes I had many readers, some had hundreds of reads, some had over a thousand.  Readwave asked me to read other people stories, it was nice.

Then Readwave ended, just like that.  So I tried Wattpad.

And guess what?

I’m lucky if I get half a dozen readers.  I get more readers just off my own blog generally than from Wattpad.  Yet some of the Wattpad stories get thousands of reads.

So am I doing something wrong?

First let me tell you, I’m a technophobe. I hate learning processes, doing downloads, putting in passwords and generally messing about clicking, clacking and delving all over the place on sites and the far reaches of the Internet.  So it’s quite possible there’s some protocol or process I ought to do that I’m not doing, but I can’t see what it is.

The format seems much the same as Readwave, they seem to have thousands of writers, yet it seems like a strange confusing muddle to me.  A fellow short story writer on Readwave, who is absolutely superlative story teller, is also on Wattpad, and even he doesn’t seem to have many readers, and on readwave he was certainly a star, in my opinion, deservedly so.

So, presumably, I’m not on my own.

Oddly, Wattpad seems to have the facility for letting you do a story and then adding to the same story in parts progressively.  What for?  Surely if you do that, it’s a novel, not a short story.  Surely a short story, even if it’s in a series with the same characters, is complete on its own?

So am I doing something wrong?

Is Wattpad working for you?

And if there’s another site like Readwave that works for you, please let me know about it.

Wattpad isn’t doing it for me.

I only wish it was.