It’s been a few weeks now since I posted my first chapter on Wattpad.com. I’ve had a spotty posting record, but every week I manage to get a new chapter up at some point. That’s really part of the goal. I’ve made this commitment to edit my work so I can get it ready to post. It isn’t a final draft, that will need a professional editor’s touch, but this is the important pass where I make crap look like something worthwhile. It’s important for me to feel that the work has some merit if I’m going to put hours of my time into it.
Let’s face it. So many people are writing these days. I found out my dentist was doing his memoir, and one of the moms at the violin school has a couple of works kicking around. Authors are a dime a dozen, but very few see the light of day. I think most people get discouraged when nobody cares about their work but them.
Wattpad is going to change that for me. My goal, apart from editing my manuscript into shape, is to try and acquire some readers. Perhaps a few people will even comment. Every week I check my statistics to see how many people of looked at the chapters. So far I have 63 reads, although no one seems to have read until the end of the chapter. I suspect a few of my friends are peaking in but not reading. That’s nice. Saturday appears to be the day everyone reads, so I must try harder to be ready for then.
Based on the stats and my own opinion, I decided my first chapter was still too weak and revised it to have more action, less musings. It’s stronger now, but it probably still needs some work.
How did I get those first reads? I can probably thank my friends who saw my Facebook post on the subject or my tweet, and also a good friend who is also on Wattpad who mentioned my work to her followers there and tweeted about it as well. I loved her teaser so much I got her permission to use it and added up top on my description of the novel.
I also started to follow some other writers on Wattpad who work in similar genres and who have already blazed a trail of sorts. I think it works a little bit like twitter, where if you follow someone, they might follow you. It’s worth a try. I have some more work to do in this area to understand how to attract readers, and there are advice posts on the site that give suggestions for this.
One thing that might really work is that when I complete the full edit of this work, I can submit my manuscript to be ‘featured’. It has to be finished or they won’t do it. Obviously, this helps the novel to rank on their lists, which makes it easier to get people to notice it. I will post again to share how my project is going.
