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Wattpad seems to be experiencing issues.

I’d like to be able to report that all is well with Wattpad, and a couple days ago I would have said just that. The number of reads for each new posting were higher than the previous posting. That seemed counterintuitive to me, but somehow people were finding more story. No complaints.

All that ended on Thursday. The story I posted on Thursday received 20 something reads compared to 140 for the previous installment, and that despite more retweets of the Twitter announcement than any other installment so far.

I let it sit for a couple days, feeling that Wattpad would eventually sort itself out.

Other anomalies have occurred while I’ve been Wattpad. For instance, about a week ago, all the most popular books dropped off the Fantasy genre hot list for several hours to be replaced by books with much less popularity. The same happened for some other genres. At that time, my book moved into the 300s in the rankings. Once things were restored to order, my book landed back at #807 where it had been before and where it remains.

Today there still hadn’t been much of an improvement in the number of reads. It made no sense that the story just stopped garnering reads.

Then I noticed that all the tags had been removed from my story. While that may not seem like a significant problem, many of the search functions in Wattpad rely on tags. Without them, there was little chance that the story would be seen by anyone other my followers. The silver lining in all this is that I now understand a little better how readers find my story on Wattpad.

The user interface on Wattpad also received a reworking in the past few days. Maybe that has something to do with all the flukiness I’ve seen recently. I can’t imagine how that could cause the missing tags. However, if you are an author on Wattpad, you should check to make sure your story still has any tags you set up.

The biggest frustration has been finding announcements from Wattpad of any problems on the site. I’ve checked the clubs, the help pages on the website, the blog, the Wattpad Twitter feed, and Facebook. It seems that Wattpad very rarely communicates with its users about problems. A notice saying that they are resolving issues would have gone a long way to allay my concerns. Absent that, a forum where interface and server issues are discussed could help. If you know of such a place that I overlooked, please let me know in the comments.

Today’s post is taken mainly from a conversation I had with a writer/friend I met on Wattpad. He wanted to know how my book was doing so well, so quickly.

First, it was news to me that my book was doing well in comparison to another author’s book, one which I am truly enjoying reading and consider to be well written and entertaining.

How is it that a story with such strong hooks, interesting characters, compelling ideas, and plenty of action could languish unnoticed on Wattpad for the better part of a year?

This made me think a little more deeply on the matter. I wish I knew the answer to his question, which at it’s root was “what I had done differently?” As I’ve said here before, I announce each update on Twitter and sometimes on Facebook, but I don’t get many people clicking through from there (if any).

At first I thought linking to the story from this website, FB, and Twitter might have contributed to the read count. Then, the one time I had the most reads, I forgot to tweet about the update for several hours and still had a jump in reads. Another time, I tweeted and had almost no reads.

The very first part of my story published received over a hundred reads within the first few hours. I don’t know why. I’ve seen stories that have been on much longer with fewer than 50 reads.

My best guess is most reads come from inside Wattpad. I’ve been exploring the site and commenting in the forums. I followed a few people other writers whose books interested me. I read the first chapters and commented and voted if I enjoyed the reading. That’s about it.

The biggest contribution to the number of reads probably came from posting the story/cover on the Fantasy forum’s self-promotion board, followed closely by just being helpful when people ask questions I can answer.

In the process, I’ve also caught a glimpse of the dark underbelly of Wattpad: someone asked me to do a vote for a vote program. The requester called it her “help a wattpadian campaign.” In essence, I should vote for her story installments and she would vote for mine. Gaming the system like that is wrong and I’m pretty sure it’s against the terms of service. I personally wouldn’t vote for or comment on works that I don’t like anyway; votes and comments are personal endorsements. I didn’t respond to the request.

If personal integrity isn’t enough to keep authors honest on Wattpad, here’s another thought:

By not gaming the system, when our stories get reads and votes, we know it’s because they appealed to a reader, not because someone wanted something from us.

To me, that is very important. Wattpad is a personal challenge: “How can I write that will engage readers?”

I want to be able to see how readers respond to each installment that I post. The bottom line questions are, “was the last installment compelling enough for readers to come back?” and, “was the current installment engaging enough to garner a few comments and votes?” Vote trading would undermine the utility of Wattpad in answering those questions and devalue the amazing metrics Wattpad provides.

If you post a story on Wattpad, my best recommendation is to become active in the Wattpad community. Read other works and vote and comment if you like something. Take part in the clubs. Not only will readers be more likely to notice your work but you may become friends with other Wattpad authors and readers, people who will enrich your experience and your life.