Margaret Atwood stunned the literary world by defending Wattpad this week. For those who have not heard of it, it is an online story sharing community that has a reputation for being full of YA romance fiction and thinly-dressed-as-original-yet-clearly-fanfic. It has not been considered a viable vessel for spreading your written work, until now.
I discovered it when I got my first smartphone (BlackBerry) and downloaded it. I had it for a few weeks and saw that the quality of work was pretty poor. I didn’t have the patience to give it more of a shot than that.
That was over two years ago now and I haven’t looked at the site since. If I were where I was at a year ago when the plea for a rescuer went out to Elfwood members, I might possibly have considered it. As it is, I feel I am at the stage now where I no longer wish to give away my work for free. As I’m editing most of my older work for content, I don’t feel I would benefit from having such an archive any more anyway (Red Room will most certainly stay open until I can decide what to do with it).
Is anybody using Wattpad or used it in the past? Is its previous reputation no longer deserved?
I don’t know anything about Wattpad, but I see you’re into Red Room? I checked it out; but what are your thoughts on it?
It is ok, at the moment I’m using it to showcase my most recent work (all I have at the moment is two short stories and an essay). I don’t use it as much as I should or would like to and in future I want to make better use of it.
That’s an amazing article by Ms. Atwood. I, too, am surprised. Guess where I’ll be posting some of my fiction next…
Have I used it? As in uploaded content? No. I have the app on my phone, but I’ve never even created an account, so I haven’t read anything on it either. I’ll try it out this weekend and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted.
Awesome, thank you!
Hey,
I work for Wattpad so what I say may not count for much, but Wattpad has grown a lot in the past couple of years. If you check out the Featured List, you’ll see that more and more professional authors with well-written novels are willing to give it a try. I think that it’s been a cycle of writers going where the readers are, and readers finding new undiscovered high-quality stuff on Wattpad. Sometimes, things change – and it’s definitely been for the better!
Ok, maybe I will give it a try. Elfwood is no longer the force it once was and Red Room doesn’t seem to get enough traffic. If Wattpad is growing, could be our answer to promoting our work.