Right now, Wattpad is available in over 50 languages and around 63% of our registered users are located outside of North America. However, 77% of our content is written in English. To help make these English stories available to a larger part of the community, a number of Wattpadders are volunteering their time to translate stories.

We’ve noticed a growing trend of translations on Wattpad, with enthusiastic readers reaching out to their favorite authors and offering to translate their works for the world to enjoy. Wattpadder LouisYouHottie is the writer of The Accidental Skype Call with over 8.8 million reads. She first found out about translations when a Wattpadder asked if she could translate LouisYouHottie’s story into German, so that people who read in German could enjoy it too. Since then, Wattpadders have begun six translations of The Accidental Skype Call in languages like Turkish, Dutch, and Tagalog.  “I feel simply honored that people from all over the world find my stories interesting and entertaining enough to want other people of their culture to read them,” LouisYouHottie told us. “I’m just a girl who wrote silly stories to pass the time, and so the fact that people from all over the world enjoy them, blows me away.”

Wattpadder Writeitdown_ is one of those passionate translators, and she is at work on four translations. “I believe that these particular stories, the ones that I translate, have such a big market waiting for them.” She’s eager to translate stories with cinematic potential like Body Rock, the series by doeneseya. “By translating [these stories] into as many languages as possible and spreading them around the world, there’s a chance to get them to the big screen.”

For other Wattpadders thinking of getting into translation, Writeitdown_  offered these translations tips: always ask permission from the writer, and make sure you really love the story, since you’ll be spending lots of time with it. The translators we spoke to don’t use Google Translate; many are writers themselves and instead turn to a dictionary, a friend, or Google Search to understand how words are used in context. Translations can take anywhere from a couple of hours to a full month to complete, but there’s still room for creativity. Wattpadder xTranslatorx will occasionally adjust references, jokes, or wordplay to make them more relevant to German readers. If you’d like to do something similar, just remember you’ll need to get express permission from the author to be creative with your translations and to adjust their original words.

It’s not just translators who are making stories more accessible to larger audiences. Many Wattpadders are aware of the international nature of the community, so they are reaching out to multiple audiences at once. Lucas Edel, for example, is posting versions of his novel Queen of Clubs in both German and English on Wattpad.

We’re looking to showcase Wattpad stories from all over the globe, so keep an eye out for more international reading lists soon. If you’d like to help out by guest-curating a list in another language, please message us on the Wattpad profile.

Whether you are a reader or a writer, you want to know the moment something happens around a story you are following. Wattpad’s new iOS and Android update gives you more detailed notifications about stories.

Notifications will let you know when someone comments or votes on one of your stories, or when they add it to a reading list. Now you can see which Wattpadders are fans of your work, and you can connect with them directly. The Notification Center will also let you know when writers have added new Chapters to the stories you’re reading.

The Notification Center makes it easier to use and keep track of the stories you already love on Wattpad. 

To celebrate National Poetry Month (#npm), Wattpad is hosting a haiku contest. Haikus are an easy way to dabble in poetry and explore a new form of the written word.

Haiku is a very short form of Japanese poetry. A haiku consists of maximum 17 syllables (or beats), divided into three lines of 5, then 7, then 5 syllables. So, your first line is 5 syllables, second line 7 syllables and your last line 5 syllables.

What do I write about?

The theme for this contest is open to your imagination, so feel free to be as creative as you like. We welcome both original haikus and haikus about celebrities or fictional characters.

How to submit

To participate, post your haiku in the comments on our News & Updates story, or submit your entry through Twitter. On Twitter, be sure to tag your submission with @wattpad, #haiku, and #npm. The deadline for submissions is Monday April 21st.

Dates & Judges

The contest will run for one week, starting today and ending Monday April 21st. The Wattpad Team will choose three of our favorite haikus, and we will announce the winners on Friday April 25th.

Enter Now!

Imagine if every story you had in your library were printed? Right now, almost half a billion stories are sitting in Wattpadders’ libraries, and it would take tons of natural resources to print, bind, ship, and store those printed books. Wattpad stories reduce paper consumption, save energy in book production, eliminate the need for packaging materials, save fuel used for transportation, and reduce the energy needed to recycle paper books.

By reading on Wattpad, you’re not only benefiting your imagination, you’re helping the planet by saving 7 million trees from being packaged up into printed stories. Happy Earth Day!

In honor of National Poetry Month, Wattpad held a week long haiku contest. We had more than 1,200 submissions, and we were blown away by the quality of all of your poetry. It was a real struggle to choose winners from so many quality submissions, but our team of judges eventually whittled down the entries to the following three favorites:

What a Twist!
Wattpadder Kuronoshio exposes the bitter secret behind paper postage:

Dry tongue licking stamps
Dead horses and vinegar
I prefer email

Hilarious Haiku
Brady Glass went for haiku humor with his poem, “Tasty Food”:

Pigs are so tasty
Bacon, pork chops, ribs and ham
Oink, chop, sizzle, yum

はいくです。
Anastasia Clarke incorporated themes from traditional haiku by referencing nature in her poem:

Life in the forest.
Every line tells a story.
Humans cut it short.

Congratulations to the winners and thanks to all the Wattpadders who participated!
Check out all the submissions and share your own favorites.

Two very popular Wattpad stories are coming to a digital bookstore near you. A Proscriptive Relationship, which has been read over 33 million times, and My Wattpad Love, which won a Watty Award in 2012, are now available to buy online in print and ebook form through Amazon, iBooks, and Kobo.

A Proscriptive Relationship by Jordan Lynde: Holly finds herself inexplicably drawn to her young teacher, Mr. Heywood, who is a mysterious man with dark and dangerous secrets. Jordan Lynde’s prolific writing boasts more than 100 million reads on Wattpad, with A Proscriptive Relationship alone having more that 30 million reads. Available on Amazon • Kindle • Kobo • iBooks

My Wattpad Love by Ariana Godoy: Julie discovers far more than reading and writing in Wattpad’s online community. My Wattpad Love has been read more than 19 million times, and it was the recipient of the 2012 Watty Award. Available on Amazon • Kindle • Kobo • iBooks

Both books have grown from the stories you know: they’ve been updated with input from the writers and professionally edited thanks to the support of fans as part of our Fan Funding initiative. The original stories on which the books were based can still be found on Wattpad.

She read to you every night before bedtime. Rain or shine, she took you to the library when you were bored, or heartbroken, or just needed a little escape. You were such a wild child she rarely got the chance to curl up quietly with a book and a warm cup of coffee.

This Mother’s Day, Wattpad is hosting a reading list contest to celebrate all the moms out there who inspired a love of reading. Is your mom she a total romantic, who can’t get enough sappy love stories? Is she an adrenaline junkie, with a passion for action and kick-ass female protagonists? You know her best, so we’re inviting you to create some perfectly-tailored recommendations for her.

How To Enter:

To participate, create a reading list on your profile and call it Stories4Mom. Post a link to your reading list in the comments on our News & Updates story, or submit your entry through Twitter (tag your submission with @wattpad, #stories4mom, and #mothersday). The deadline for submissions is 6pm on Friday, May 9th.

On Mother’s Day, we’ll announce our favorite lists and share them with the community.

Photo credit: Edi Wibowo

Last week we suggested that Wattpadders give their moms the best present of all: stories. We asked you to share the reading list you’d recommend to your mom, and Wattpadders responded with reading lists as diverse as the women who raised them.

One of our favorites was a list by sixteen year-old Kayla, aka Wattpadder whisperrrmyname100x, who selected a mix of mystery/thrillers and romance for her mother,  who she says “has always been there for me through thick and through thin.” YoungAuthor02 opted for a mix of time-tested classics and historical fiction. Another favorite was Wattpad Ambassador WhisperingWater, who curated a list of romantic comedies for all the humorous moms out there.

Thank you to all those who submitted to this contest. Be sure to read the comments for many more #stories4mom.

In addition to contributing reading lists, we were blown away by how many of you shared heartfelt testimonials about your mothers. Here are three testimonials that we found really moving:

My mum has read to me since I was only three months old! She says she read to me when I was in her tummy too. She developed the love of reading in me and never discouraged me from buying a book, or reading all day. Now my mum does not get the time to read, but I know that these are the stories she will enjoy, because my mum is the sappiest person I know.

-Afu, aka Wattpadder Booksrbestfriends

I know that deep inside my mom also loves romance novels. She just hides it. She might say she doesn’t feel those butterflies when reading or watching but I know she does! I know that when my mom reads this reading list she will definitely fall in love with them just like I did!

- Samantha, aka AwkardDreamer

I used to spend a lot of time with my dad. He was a strict math person, wanting to know how everything would turn out before it did. My brother was the same way.

But my mom… well she liked a different way of thinking. She was the voice of reason, the “let’s evaluate all the options” type. She was the only person would could get me to read.

I hated the smell of books and how quiet libraries were. She wouldn’t make me go, simply bring home small picture books and encourage me to inspect them. Slowly, I began to look at the pictures and then the words. Soon, I was able to immerse myself in a new language. It was overwhelming at first, but together we worked through the Adventures of Amanda and Dino’s Disaster. Words had new meaning and they were exciting!

What made the experience special, however, wasn’t that my mother was teaching me something, it was that she was learning alongside me.

Reading and now writing has blossomed from the feat and this mother’s day is a day to celebrate that. Thank you so much, mom for this and everything you’ve done. You inspire me when you cradle your novels and google translate the words you don’t know.

-Ronnie, aka RonDuberstein

Photo Credit: Beatrix Boros

This May we’ve decided to recognize the Memoir. All month, Wattpad will be celebrating your true stories. Whether it’s a roadtrip journal, a military memoir, or personal tales of first and last loves, we are eager to hear your story.

Share your own real stories and tag them #memoirmonth to be featured. In June, we will showcase some of our favorites.

Happy writing!
Photo credit: Sara Saretta

What better way to understand the symptoms and risks of a disorder than to put yourself in the shoes of someone suffering from it? On the surface, A Negative is a new adult romance about a young woman named Ashley. What Ashley doesn’t know in the story is that she’s suffering from a serious bleeding disorder—von Willebrand’s disease.

According to the Canadian Hemophilia Society, Ashley’s situation is one common to women who suffer from bleeding disorders but may go for years without having them diagnosed. The CHS worked with Wattpad writer L.D. Crichton to create A Negative with the goals of increasing awareness of inherited bleeding disorders and their symptoms.

To learn more about how these conditions can impact someone’s life, read A Negative.

Seven years ago, Ivan and I started Wattpad because we love to read. We shared our passion with the world, and we watched Wattpad grow into the global community it is today, 25-million strong with users in nearly every country in the world.

 This would not have been possible without a free and open Internet.

Tomorrow, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote on a proposal that would change how you connect to content on the internet.  If it passes, companies will be able to pay for faster delivery of their services via the Internet. This unfairly benefits big corporations while hurting small startups like ours.

You might have heard about this, and you might think it doesn’t affect you, but it does. It affects each and every one of us. To understand more about net neutrality, check out Vi Hart’s excellent video:

We all benefit from a free and open Internet. If you live in the United States, and you support net neutrality, make sure your voice is heard. If you live outside the United States, your voice still matters. Tell your local government that you won’t stand for anything less than a free and open Internet.

- Allen Lau
CEO and Co-Founder of Wattpad

Wattpadder Anna Todd (Imaginator1D) has warned fans of her After series that there are only a few chapters left before the story’s conclusion, and those fans must be wondering “what’s next?”. Well, they need no longer wonder. Regardless of what happens to Tessa and Harry, fans of the series will be living happily ever After. (or “the series has a happy ending.”)

That’s because After, which is the most-talked-about story online, and the most-read story on Wattpad, will be getting a book adaptation. As announced today, Gallery Books, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, will be publishing the story as a series of books, with the first book set to arrive by the end of this year.

Best of all, the version of After that fans have come to know and love won’t be going anywhere. Wattpadders will continue to be able to read (and re-read) Anna’s first version of the story of Tessa and Harry on Wattpad long after the books have been released.

Today we have a post from Emily Lindin, who created the Unslut Project: an organization dedicated to promoting gender equality and sex positivity by raising awareness about sexual bullying and slut shaming. She’s also a Wattpadder and has shared her own experiences with sexual bullying in her story The Unslut Project. 

Hash tags can be fun, but they can also be incredibly powerful. One example of a particularly important hash tag is #YesAllWomen, which emerged this past weekend in response to the horrific killing spree that took place near the University of Santa Barbara. Women all over the world are using #YesAllWomen to share their personal experiences with misogyny, from everyday street harassment, to slut shaming and even rape. All of us, regardless of gender, can gain some really valuable insight about the lived experiences of others by reading these tweets. Here, I’ve collected some of the #YesAllWomen tweets that are most relevant to the message of The UnSlut Project.

#yesallwomen because apparently the clothes I wear is a more valid form of consent than the words I say

— nita belegu (@nitabelegu) May 26, 2014

Because I've hooked up with guys for the sole reason that I was afraid to say no to them, then been called a slut. #YesAllWomen

— Kate Wood (@smallandgreat) May 24, 2014

Because a woman is a slut if has sex with a man, and a slut if she refuses to have sex with a man who demands it. #YesAllWomen

— Not All Miches (@micheinnz) May 24, 2014

#yesallwomen because in the 7th grade, a boy bullied me because "he liked me"–why was that the only way he knew to approach me?

— Cindy C. (@cindysaysalot) May 25, 2014

Bc teen girls are never warned of double standards regarding sexuality, & can wind up suicidal bc slut-shaming is so toxic #YesAllWomen

— Roxanne Vicente (@RoxyV3000) May 25, 2014

Because I when I ask my male peers to please stop using the words 'slut' and 'whore', they call me crazy and over sensitive #YesAllWomen

— Megan Mattes (@meganjanetta) May 25, 2014

#YesAllWomen because when I was raped, I wouldn't report it because I feared the slut label even more and couldn't take the "You wanted it"

— lori (@LoriGualandri) May 25, 2014

because when I was raped at 13, I was blamed; labelled as a trashy slut and have lived with that reputation since. #YesAllWomen

— aliyah (@alitavanpollo) May 26, 2014

Because when my daughter was being bullied both the teacher and the boy's dad say it was just 'boys being boys' #yesallwomen

— suzanne lazear (@suzannelazear) May 25, 2014

This week the Oxford English Dictionary announced its latest entry: a new definition of shipping, made popular by online fanfiction. To ship is to wish for an imagined relationship between two characters or people. It is often signified by creating a portmanteau of two names; the example the OED gives is that many people ship Molly and Sherlock, or Sherlolly. Wattpad has over 2,000 shipped Sherlock stories.

A glance at Wattpad’s Hot List today reveals at least four stories of shipped love, from YouTube stars to band mates. Some of our favorite ships over time have been Jumeo (Romeo and Juliet), Kathniel (Filipino stars Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla), and our own invention, Alleva (Wattpad CEO Allen Lau and his wife, Eva).

So, who do you ship?

You’ve got brilliantly curated reading lists, funny inline comments, and amazing stories. So of course we want to help you get more followers and more reads. Today Wattpad launched a new discovery tool to make it easy for people to find your Wattpad profile. Place them on your blog, Tumblr, or website and let others know where to find you.

Step 1: Login to your account at www.wattpad.com

Step 2: Go to your Profile and hit Edit

Step 3: Choose a Button type

Step 4: Paste the code into your website or blog

Step 5: Get more Followers and Reads

May was Memoir Month at Wattpad, so we asked for your true stories, and you recorded them in droves. We heard tales of heartbreak, accounts of summer camp catastrophes, stories of overcoming adversity and ill health, travelogues from around the world, and even a possible UFO sighting. We have collected some of our favorites in this Memoir Month reading list on the Wattpad profile.

We’ll keep adding to the list through the month of June, so continue crafting your memoirs. Be sure to categorize them as Non-Fiction and tag them “memoirmonth.”

If you’re looking to share a memoir, but you’re not sure where to start, get acquainted with the memoir genre with these great tips:

Step 1: Lay Out Your Turning Points
Make a list of the 10-15 most significant moments that changed your life’s direction. Some will be moments of ecstatic joy or soaring happiness; others will be moments of profound sadness, confusion, or grief.

Step 2: Find The Thread
Pick one life event that stands out, or the theme that ties all of these events together.

Step 3: Go Deep
Choose three, five, or seven vivid memories from a short, intense period in your life—like the months when your mother battled cancer, or the time you were bullied in high school.

Step 4: Visualize Your Life
Look back on your memories, and picture yourself in them using the first person—”I”—to record what you saw and felt. Try to capture as many of your senses as you can, including sounds and smells to make the experience even more real to readers.

Step 5: Write it down
Tie all the elements that you identified in the previous steps into one story. Be creative in size and format: try writing your story as a series of letters or chat logs or texts, or compose micro-memoirs that are only a paragraph long. Feel free to experiment with names, places, and language (maybe you are in the mood to try writing in a Shakespearean voice or the third person). The only limit is your imagination, so have some fun with your memoir.

Step 6: Share it on Wattpad
Once you’ve written your memoir, be sure to share it on Wattpad. Set the category to Non-Fiction, tag it “#memoirmonth,” and post away.

Some dads can fix a toilet; some can help with your math homework. There are fathers who can give legal advice, or perform brain surgery, or can do 100 pushups. These small acts, in the eyes of children, can make many fathers seem like superheroes. But if they really were superheroes, magically thrown into your favorite blockbuster, what kind of masked defender would your father be?

This Father’s Day we’ve collected stories of supernatural abilities to prove that Superheroes Exist. There are men who take the form of masked vigilantes (no capes, please), other “elites” of the future just trying to act normal, and the occasional detective charged with investigating costumed crime fighters who don’t exactly follow the laws. We have heroes who received their powers from lab experiments gone awry, or by accidentally sticking their fingers in a light socket.

This Father’s Day, write dad into his own comic-worthy story. What crazy accident resulted in his superhuman strength? What costume would he wear? Who is your father’s arch-enemy, and how will he defeat the threat to humanity?

Write your story on Wattpad and tag it “superdads” for the chance to be added to our reading list. And happy Father’s Day to all those real-life heroes, whether they’re hiding out in Gotham City, or in the workshop down the hall.

Today marks the beginning of World Pride, which is being hosted in Toronto this year. Toronto is also the home of Wattpad HQ, and we couldn’t be more happy for our city to be hosting such a prestigious event.

In honour of World Pride, we’d like to celebrate the very vibrant LGBTQ community that has come together on Wattpad by sharing the words and experiences of some Wattpadders who are most active in the community.

Wattpad has over 60,000 stories dealing with LGBTQ themes, and many of those stories have inspired people who were questioning their sexuality. “When I first signed up with Wattpad, I was still questioning, and it was this site that helped me come to realize who I really was,” said Tristan-Walker who helps run the WattPride account, “I just hope I can return the favour for someone, some day.”

Writers and readers from the community described Wattpad’s LGBTQ family as vast, vibrant, tight-knit, uplifting, and overwhelmingly positive. “Nowhere else have I seen such strong convictions for the LGBTQ community,” Wattpad user RaeKitano says. “The writers and the readers I have been involved with have been supportive, encouraging and often given strength when needed to those who might struggle in their real life situations. I’ve never met with any hostility or negativity. On a whole the community is one I am very proud of.”

Another Wattpadder explains how fiction can be a bridge to awareness and acceptance. “If I had been a reader of LGBTQ fiction when I was younger, my coming out to myself experience would have been much easier,” Wattpadder rigor_samsa explained. “As readers take in the characters and allow themselves to see them for what they are (human beings), it builds acceptance in many people from around the world.”

And that acceptance can be rare on the Internet. “It’s one of the few places where I feel safe being openly gay on the internet,” says writer Woowoowriting. “Plus I met my lovely girlfriend on this site, so I’d say that the community is pretty nice.”

Many of our writers take their mission to promote LGBTQ acceptance on Wattpad seriously. Railene wants to normalize LGBTQ stories and take the focus away from the characters’ sexuality: “In my writing, I’ve always wanted to reverse that: to write about a real person, with a life, and a career, and friends, and family, and responsibilities, and problems, and feelings, and objectives – who just happens to be gay or bisexual. In real life, that’s what it’s like. Our sexuality is only one small part of the amazing, complex people that each one of us is.”

We asked the community for some of their favorite LGBTQ reads and collected them into this World Pride reading list. Tweet us your own coming out stories and your favorite Pride stories @wattpad with the tag #worldpride.

Special thanks to the following Wattpadders who contributed to this post: TheAlias, AnjelBobeck, LauraWarby, chokingcrayons, queercutie, grin–, Autumn_Breeze, rei226, ParadoxicalWhim, lydiarse, moira_, murphybyrne, waterfalIs, elveloy, and kuraigirl.

Wattpadders have noticed that we’ve been experimenting with some new content and features lately. If you’ve seen some of these experiments, you may have also noticed that some of the new offerings are paid, unlike the rest of Wattpad’s free content.

To eliminate any doubt, we wanted to make one thing clear: these experiments do not signal a new, paid version of Wattpad.

There are millions of writers on Wattpad who dedicate a lot of time and effort to writing the stories that Wattpadders read for free.

Wattpad is running these experiments to find new and innovative ways to give value back to the writers, while keeping the stories that they write available for free. We believe in the connections between readers and writers, and we are eager to give readers a way to support the writers that they love.

If you’re looking for your next quality read on Wattpad, you now have ten more to choose from. After some tough deliberation, our panel of judges from the Wattpad community have chosen the winners of the first-ever Wattpad Prize. The stories are all original works of fiction and non-fiction that have been recognized by theme, and you can read your way through the complete list on the Wattpad Prize winners page.

The Wattpad Prize is our first juried contest to celebrate the achievements of both readers and writers in the community.