Jess Wesley: Wattpad & Publishing: Opportunities for Emerging Writers

Jess Wesley

As one born in the early eighties, I didn’t grow up using a computer—unless you count time spent at school playing Oregon Trail. In fact, I am a late adopter of most technology; I held off on getting the Internet at home for years, and I balked at joining TikTok. But I did create an account on Wattpad in 2014, and it was a moment that would later shape the course of my writing career.

Available as a mobile app or on the web, Wattpad is a “social storytelling” platform. Writers can upload their works chapter by chapter, and readers can then vote or leave comments. The audience is enormous: ninety million users spend an average of fifty-two minutes per day on the app.

Writing contests abound, from the platform’s largest yearly writing awards, The Wattys, to smaller, user-led initiatives. A sense of community pervades the online writing experience. I have met incredibly generous, talented writers on Wattpad. For me, it is equal parts social media platform, publishing channel, and critique group.

Some would hesitate to give away original content for free, but when I uploaded my first novella to Wattpad in 2017, I was just trying to finish my story. I hoped serializing it online would create a sense of urgency. (It did.) To my surprise, Wattpad chose to feature my work, and I watched the reads—you can think of them as page views— grow from the hundreds to the tens of thousands over the next year. In 2018, I uploaded Girl Under Construction, a romantic comedy loosely inspired by my experience as a woman working in trades. Serializing the novel took several months. At the same time, I became obsessed with all things Wattpad. I volunteered on the site and even flew to New York City to attend WattCon, a three-day writing conference in Times Square. In 2019, I became a Wattpad Star, which is a sort of influencer program for Wattpad writers. To me, online publishing seemed like the way of the future. I wasn’t sure it would ever make me any money, but I loved the community that had grown up around the big orange W, and I was constantly improving my craft based on the feedback I received. Meanwhile, my stories continued to find a readership.

In 2020, I received an email from Wattpad HQ. They were interested in adding Girl Under Construction to their Paid Stories catalogue, a program that allows readers to pay to unlock chapters. I accepted the invitation and received coaching on how to edit my work. The marketing team created a gorgeous illustrated cover, and I got to give feedback during the process. When I received my first royalty payment, I felt like a legitimate writer. To my amazement, Girl Under Construction has garnered more than 325,000 reads to date.

Over the years, Wattpad has grown from a social storytelling site to a “global multi-platform entertainment company” with new opportunities arising often. Some stories’ read counts number into the millions. In 2019, the company debuted a new traditional publishing division, Wattpad Books. A number of writers have even found their works adapted for film or television. You may remember Netflix’s smash teen comedy, The Kissing Booth. The original story was written and posted to Wattpad by Beth Reekles when she was a teenager.

I am constantly amazed by the talent, skill, and generosity of Wattpadders, who are a diverse group hailing from all parts of the globe. Their bravery in sharing their work encourages me to experiment with genre and voice, and I have learned a lot about pacing and hooking a reader’s attention as a result. The real-time reader feedback is instrumental to my growth, and I continue to post new content. At its heart, Wattpad is a community, and I count myself lucky to be a part of it.