Going Viral

At first I didn’t believe it, but every hour when I checked my account, my novel “Ungloved” currently posted to Wattpad.com kept increasing in number of reads. Yes, people, I have readers! This is why most people write. So people can read their work. Of course, we are shy about how well it will be received, and we worry people will hate us for the opinions espoused in the work, but we do really want people to read what we write.

As I mentioned last post, the folks at Wattpad had agreed to feature my novel, which in simple terms means it goes to the top of their list of recommended works, so people actually notice it. After being there for a mere 5 days, the number of reads the work has garnered went from about 600 to nearly 5000. That’s like going viral.

The extra cool thing Wattpad does, it they provide a map showing where the people who have read the work come from, and a percentage for each place. Suddenly my map for this novel filled up with countries all over the world. How cool is that? Not only did 5000 people read (ok, it doesn’t quite work like that) but they live all over the world. I’ve pasted in the map with today’s pattern so you can see how amazing that looks. The darker the blue, the higher the concentration of readers.

I should also mention that I visited the Wattpad offices last week in Toronto where I live. They are right downtown in a historic building with a real tech startup feel to the place. I was surprised to see how much of the staff were IT folks. Somehow that’s not what I imagined.

It’s been the week for visiting, because I was privileged to be able to visit the head offices of none other than KOBO Inc. My favourite people. I wish they will reign supreme in the digital book world, because they are nice people, think globally, are collaborative,  and best of all, they love books. Who can argue with that? The folks at Kobo Writing Life generously provide my favourite literary award, The Sunburst Awards, with tablets for all of our jurors, so they can read the e-submissions we receive. They are super supportive of self-published authors in so many ways. I plan to publish my work there when I’m ready, and will go through the extra trouble of setting up an account directly with them, rather than going the easy route and use Smashwords or one of the other distributors. It may be more work, but in the long run, it makes for a better working relationship between author and book selling platform.

At the moment you can find my novel, “Ungloved” on wattpad here. And if you like engaging military women, you might enjoy my latest offering, “Unsheathed” also on wattpad here. This work is in the process of being added, with a new chapter going up every week as I review the first draft and make edits. Both of these will end up with nice new covers and a full, professional edit on all the major online bookstores once they are ready, likely some time in 2016. A third novel, “Unravelled” is in the works.

Life is busy!