If you’ve not heard of Wattpad, and you like writing or reading, you’re in for a treat!
Wattpad is an online service where authors can post their works for other people to read – FREE. Simple as that. It’s free to join, free to post your writing, free to read the writing of others, and I thought I’d give it a shot.
Here’s how it works:
First, you have to create an account, but, as with most things these days, this can be done automatically by clicking the Facebook button. It save coming up with another password! Once that’s done, you have immediate access to hundreds (maybe thousands, for all I know) of novels and other works, both fiction and non-fiction. And if you’re a reader, you’re probably done.
However, if you want to put your writing on Wattpad, there’s a bit more to do.
First, click on the CREATE button and enter the title of your story or, if it’s a book, the title of your book. Then copy in the text of the story or first chapter – nothing more fancy than normal text with a bit of bold or italic! – select a category, give it a few tags for ease of searching and click SAVE & PUBLISH. Et voila – it’s live!
For a short story that’s pretty much it, but if you’re shoving a book up there, you have a few more steps to take.
Wattpady – My Works Screen
Firstly, you may want to add your proper book cover on there instead of the automatically generated one. Then you’re going to want to add more chapters. To do this, click on ‘CREATE’ again, which takes you to a list of your works on Wattpad. Against the work in question you’ll see an option to ‘add new part’. Click on this and you’re at a screen you’ll recognise. Put in the chapter title and copy in the text, then selected ‘SAVE & PUBLISH’.
Repeat for all chapters.
Once you’ve done that you can see this full list in the ‘My Works’ section of your profile (see image). And, if you’ve followed these instructions, you’ll notice that the first chapter name is incorrect. The reason we didn’t put this in at the start is that the book is named after whatever you put down as the title of the first file, and you can’t change it easily. Now that it’s set, though, you can click on the little pencil ‘edit’ icon to change the title without affecting the name of the book.
Also in the ‘My Works’ screen, you’ll see there is a ‘Stats’ link, which will show you how many reads, votes and comments each work has received. There’s also a ‘Manage’ link, where you can change the order of chapters if you wish, and add any back cover blurb / copyright info / ISBN number etc.
That’s it – it’s up and ready for people on Wattpad to read.
And there seem to be a lot of readers! This is probably due to Wattpad’s comprehensive app coverage – they have a reading app for iOS, Android, Kindle Fire and Blackberry (do people still have Blackberries??)
Check out my books and short stories free on Wattpad here and other people’s as well, of course.
Wattpad on Mobile Devices
inspiring