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Happy Birthday Wattpad!

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This month we’re celebrating Wattpad’s 10th birthday! It’s an incredible milestone for us at HQ, and a chance to reflect on the impact we’ve made on storytelling around the world.

In many ways, Wattpad has reinvented storytelling for the modern age. Product features like inline commenting, embedded multimedia, and writer analytics are some of the ways we’ve changed how the world engages with stories. In other ways, Wattpad takes people back to the roots of storytelling — community.

Before the advent of the printing press, we shared stories in caves, over campfires, and in town squares. People gathered around stories, and audiences and storytellers were always connected in real-time. More than 500 years after the invention of the printing press, Wattpad creates direct connections between the world’s readers and writers once again. No other company has done this on such a massive, global scale.

Today, Wattpad connects over 45 million people with stories that can’t be found anywhere else. A decade ago, though, Wattpad was just an idea scribbled on the back of a napkin.

In 2006 co-founders Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen met at the Vancouver International Airport to talk about a mobile reading experience they envisioned. They noticed the growing popularity of user-generated content and the rise of social platforms. They saw the increasing capability of mobile devices and the ever-expanding reach of the internet, and believed that in the near future, people would use their phones to read on-the-go.

They were right. Today, more than 90 percent of Wattpad’s traffic comes from mobile devices. Not only do people read on their phones, but they also write novels and design book covers.

Wattpad makes it easy for anyone, anywhere in the world to share a story wherever inspiration strikes. The open nature of the platform encourages diverse voices and views. While the community shares stories that reflect popular culture and common tropes, we also see thousands of stories every day that feature characters and plots that are underrepresented in mainstream media. On Wattpad, people gather around the content and conversations that matter to them and find communities through stories.

Unlike other social platforms where trolling is rampant, we’re proud that Wattpad is recognized for being one of the most positive places on the internet. It’s a supportive environment where storytellers hone their skills, build an audience, and even get paid for doing what they love. For audiences, Wattpad is where they return day after day because they see themselves in the stories they read. People make lifelong friends and create life-changing connections on Wattpad.

With the launch of Wattpad Studios earlier this year, we hope to change even more lives around the world. Wattpad Studios will bring the best, most-engaging Wattpad stories to a larger audience. We’re co-producing movies, television, and digital series, and publishing books with partners in the traditional entertainment industry. Wattpad started as a reading and writing app, but over the last 10 years, we’ve cemented ourselves in the entertainment space. Every day, more people fall in love with Wattpad stories, wherever the discover them through the app, on their bookshelves, or on the screen.

So what does the next 10 years hold for us at HQ and across the global community? Time will tell, but we’re pretty pumped to reveal some exciting announcements and partnerships on this blog very soon. In the meantime, we want to send a heartfelt thank you to every reader, writer, and partner who has supported our incredible journey. Cheers to 10 years, and many, many, more great moments to come!



10 Things To Love About Wattpad

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Wattpad is 10 years old!! To celebrate, we’re highlighting some of the things that helped shape our app and community. Today we’ll look at 10 features on Wattpad that dramatically changed how people around the world discover and share stories.

Inline Commenting

Introduced in 2014, inline commenting took off like a rocket. Today you can react to your favourite prose within a story instantly. Inline comments provide the perfect space for audiences to connect and give storytellers insight into how their words are being received.

With in-line commenting, people call out inspiring passages, help their favourite writers edit stories, and share reactions with other Wattpadders who are reading along.

Inline commenting demo

Multimedia

In 2015, we introduced embedded multimedia to the surprise and delight of the Wattpad community. With this feature, storytellers can enhance their works by adding images, GIFs and videos to their story. Inline multimedia helped bring new kinds of stories to Wattpad and beautified many of the stories already shared.

Today, thousands of multimedia stories, graphic novels, and comics are shared on Wattpad daily. You can check out some great examples, here

Comics on Wattpad

Broadcast Messaging

Behind every smash-hit on Wattpad is an active and engaged audience. With the broadcast messaging feature, at the press of a button you are instantly connected with readers and fans around the world. Wattpad’s broadcast feature helps storytellers share updates, host contests, and, most-importantly, connect with people who are obsessed with their story.

Quote Art

The Quote Art feature adds a visual layer to the words that resonate with us in Wattpad stories. It gives any fan a quick way to create something inspired by a Wattpad story and share that inspiration with the world.

Voting

Many Wattpad Stars credit fan voting as the reason they keep their stories up-to-date. Votes are like virtual high-fives doled out by the Wattpad community. Every time a story receives a vote, people show appreciation for an update to a Wattpad story and let the storyteller know that their work matters.

Curated Recommendations

Voting also helps the algorithms behind the Wattpad app to better serve you content. The more you participate on Wattpad the better Wattpad gets at suggesting stories you’ll love. Your votes, follows, comments, and reading lists help Wattpad understand your preferences to serve up an endless supply of amazing stories.

Offline Reading

If you’ve ever reached your data-cap within the first week of your billing cycle, or found yourself trapped in a wifi-deadzone, you’re probably a fan of offline reading. The Wattpad app syncs your library to your phone so that you can enjoy stories anywhere, anytime -with or without an internet connection.

Mobile Writing

Speaking of anywhere, anytime, mobile writing helped pull storytellers out of their nooks and into a world of endless inspiration. Today, Wattpad stories are written in line at the grocery store and on public transit. The Wattpad app is there when and wherever creativity happens.

Writer Analytics

Our stories are our children and like any good parent we worry about how they’re doing, constantly. The Writer Analytics Dashboard gives storytellers a quick snapshot of critical information about their story to help ambitious storytellers strategically edit to attract more fans.

Wattpad Futures

Wattpad Futures helps storytellers earn money for doing what they love – writing. By inserting short ads in between the chapters of their story, writers can increase their earning potential.

As we move into our next 10 years, how we improve the experience and increase the success of storytellers who choose the Wattpad app will continue to be a prime focus. After all, It’s the Wattpad community behind our app that brings these features to life.

In that spirit, we’d like to thank our community and ambassadors for telling us what features they want to see as they give us feedback on our mobile and desktop experience. Another big thank you goes out to all the members of our user-obsessed Wattpad team at HQ, past and present. These contributions continue to shape an experience that’s changed storytelling forever.


Changing the Face of Entertainment

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AronLevitz

For Head of Wattpad Studios Aron Levitz, Wattpad was never about reading and writing.

He recalls a conversation he had Wattpad’s Co-Founder and CEO Allen Lau a few years ago. It’s when he realized that Wattpad had more to do with entertainment than it did with books.

“He (Allen) shows me this story based on the band One Direction that had over half a billion minutes of engagement,” Aron recounts. “So, I grab his laptop and go to One Direction’s YouTube page. They had just dropped a new single and their three-minute song on YouTube already had about 400 million views at the time. I did the math. That’s roughly 1.2 billion minutes in total. That’s when it hit me: The most ubiquitous content delivery platform in the world, YouTube, only has twice as much engagement than Wattpad. In that moment I told Allen: ‘You’re not building a reading site, you’re building an entertainment site.’ I joined the company soon after.”

Today, Aron looks at Wattpad and sees a global audience immersed in entertaining stories. He sees a place where an endless amount of original content is supported by passionate communities. He helps entertainment executives zero in on the stories with the biggest built-in audiences and works with them to identify trends, storytellers, and content on the rise.

Wattpad’s massive and engaged community, as well as our data and insights on each of the 300 million stories shared on the platform, has the potential to change how content is developed across the entertainment and publishing industries.

In a world of infinite content, Aron and the Wattpad Studios team help increase the success rate of projects by guiding executives through a fundamentally different development process. “More money is going into projects with no actual change in how development decisions are being made,” says Aron. “That’s where Wattpad Studios shows huge value. We can help executives make better development decisions earlier on in the process by leveraging our understanding of audiences and other insights. If we can prevent shows being canceled and films from flopping in theaters, that’s tens-of-millions not spent in the wrong places.”

According to Aron, soon people around the world will consume “more Wattpad not on Wattpad. Over the next year, Wattpad Studios will co-produce more books, television shows, films, and digital series. People who may never have downloaded the Wattpad app will discover Wattpad stories across multiple platforms.

The possibilities are endless. In the future, perhaps Wattpad will be behind the camera as well as producing. Maybe the title of Wattpad Star will become as ubiquitous as New-York Times Bestselling author. Regardless of what the future holds, as we celebrate 10 years of stories, we’re sure of one thing: Wattpad is entertainment.


From The Mobile Screen to the Television Screen: Wattpad and Universal Cable Productions Team Up To Develop Original Content for TV

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As we celebrate 10 years as a company, we’re thrilled to announce our latest partnership with Universal Cable Productions, a division of NBCUniversal Cable Entertainment. We’ve teamed up with UCP to develop original content for television. Today’s news means the global Wattpad community will have a hand in deciding what people watch on TV.

The creative Wattpad community has shared over 300 million original stories over the past decade. Not only do these stories reflect pop culture, but they also represent diverse voices and experiences. The traditional entertainment industry is increasingly turning to Wattpad to help them understand content trends and identify popular online creators. Our partnership with UCP is just one more example of how Wattpad Studios can help connect entertainment executives with fresh voices and original content with built-in audiences.

“At UCP we’re always looking for ways to find untapped, unsigned, talent and budding writers from around the U.S. and world. Enter Wattpad – an amazing global storytelling platform that not only allows us access to great stories, but also real time data on what is trending, shared, reviewed and resonating with readers,” said Dawn Olmstead, Executive Vice President of Development for Universal Cable Productions. “Aron and his team manage a virtual fountain of story with great aplomb and we’re excited to dive into their content.”

UCP is focused on developing breakthrough stories that entertain global audiences. The studio has escalated efforts to innovate its development slate and mine for fresh content through unique sources such as Wattpad. Under the partnership, projects will be determined by custom data and insights that Wattpad will provide to UCP across multiple categories including: mystery/thriller, teen, science fiction, action, and general fiction.

“Ivan (Yuen) and I launched Wattpad a decade ago so people could read on their mobile devices and share their stories with each other easily,” said Wattpad Co-founder and CEO Allen Lau. “As we celebrate 10 years as a company, our initial idea has grown into something far greater. Today, Wattpad is one of the most-engaged global communities online. More importantly, we’re a new entertainment company that provides considerable value to traditional industry players like studios, production companies, and publishers.”


Popular Fantasy Trilogy White Stag to be Published by St. Martin’s Press

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We’re thrilled to share that Wattpadder Kara Barbieri is the latest storyteller to have their work acquired by a major publisher! Twenty-year-old Kara – or Pandean as she’s known in the Wattpad community – has written the wildly popular White Stag trilogy, which some people have described as “Twilight meets Game of Thrones.” Wednesday Books, an imprint of St. Martin’s Press, announced yesterday that they acquired the world rights to the trilogy and publication is planned for Fall 2018.

“I think I’m still in shock,” says Kara of the life-changing news. “I’ve been a writer for most of my life, and always wanted to be a published author. I can’t believe it’s finally happening, all because I shared my story on Wattpad.”

White Stag follows a seventeen-year-old girl who was captured from her village to live in the brutally beautiful Permafrost as a servant to Goblins. Outliving most, she finds herself becoming more monster than human and must uncover secrets to find the truth about who she is and the world that has become her home. The Permafrost Series has accumulated over 375,000 reads and Kara is currently serializing the second book in the series, Goblin King.

“White Stag is the story of someone who learns that being vulnerable doesn’t make you less strong. The main character goes through a series of traumatic events, but learns how to heal and overcome her past by letting people into her life,” explains Kara. “The story’s resonated with so many people, in so many different ways. And that’s exactly why I write – to reach others with my words.”

Kara joined Wattpad in October of last year and began sharing White Stag with the global community immediately. Soon after, the story became one of the most popular works in the Fantasy category. In fact, the Wattpad community has spent 6.5 times more hours reading White Stag than they have spent reading any of the other top 1000 fantasy stories on Wattpad! Like all popular writers on Wattpad, Kara regularly engages with readers on Wattpad and has even hosted a White Stag contest for die-hard fans.

If you just can’t wait to read White Stag in print, read it now on Wattpad and see for yourself why so many people around the world have fallen in love with Kara’s fantastical story.

For over a decade, Wattpad has inspired and connected people through stories. Along the way, we’ve changed the lives of people in the community, and Kara is the latest example. Congratulations, Kara – we’re so excited for you!


The Master Plan

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The following post is written by Wattpad Co-founder and CEO Allen Lau.

I wish I had written a blog post like the one you’re about to read when Ivan and I first started Wattpad 10 years ago. Although we shared our plan numerous times in bits and pieces, it was scattered across the internet, and very few people outside of the company had the complete picture.  

The First 10 Years

Our plan was actually quite simple. We wanted to revolutionize how people discover, share, and connect through stories. Here’s how we did it:

  1. We created a reading app for the RAZR and other feature phones using public domain classic books to attract our first group of users.
  2. We leveraged the growing audience to attract our first group of writers who would share original stories on Wattpad. We created direct connections between these writers and readers around the world.
  3. We established new, disruptive ways for writers to earn money, and for Wattpad to generate revenue, once the community reached critical mass.

Ivan and I believed people would read and write on devices that they would carry with them all the time. But when we launched Wattpad in 2006, we were missing two crucial elements that didn’t quite exist at the time: smartphones and the mobile internet. Serendipitously, the iPhone launched in 2007, the App Store followed in 2008, and soon after Android devices grew in popularity. Decreasing data costs allowed more people to access the mobile internet, and the rest is history.

Ten years later, the Wattpad community has over 45 million monthly users, with over 2.3 million writers who’ve shared 15 million chapters in the last 30 days alone. If we print these stories on paper, every two weeks we would create a stack of stories as tall as Mount Everest. Today, Wattpad has more writers and content than the entire publishing industry.

Wattpad is one of the fastest-growing and most-engaging platforms in the world. Because of Wattpad, people are reading and writing more than ever. Reports of the death of reading are grossly exaggerated. Reading just looks a lot different today. It’s a social and interactive experience, not the solitary pursuit it once was.

But at its core, Wattpad is more than reading and writing — it’s entertainment. Wattpad Studios brings popular stories to life in other formats. Hundreds of Wattpad stories have become blockbuster movies, hit TV series, and bestselling books. Our native ads help brands reach consumers around the world with entertaining and engaging stories that don’t interrupt the experience they’ve come to know and love on Wattpad.

What’s more, we’ve established programs like Wattpad Stars and Wattpad Futures to help creators make money. And we’ve changed millions of lives in the process.

For the most part, we have achieved what we set out to do 10 years ago. So what’s next?

Wattpad is Entertainment

A decade after we launched, it’s obvious that we’re not just building an app or a community. We’re building a global, multiplatform entertainment company. We have ambitious – and achievable – goals for the next 10 years. Before I share our plans for the future, let’s take a look at how the entertainment industry operates right now.

When it comes to making a movie, here are the steps it would likely take:

  1. A producer or studio executive finds a story they like. They will run it by one or two more people before they spend the money to turn it into a script.
  2. After a whole lot of back and forth between script writers, producers, and executives, the studio ends up with a script they like. They show it to a few more people before the story gets a thumbs up. Initial production begins.
  3. A sizzle reel is created and gets shown to a few more people at the studio. Sometimes, it’s also shown to a focus group of 20 people. If the outcome is good, the movie and its million dollar budget is green-lit.

The process above is inherently inefficient. Only a handful of people need to buy into an idea before millions of dollars are invested into a project. No one really knows if people will show up at the theater and actually enjoy the movie. There’s no solid evidence to show that the movie will be a success. Right now, the entertainment industry operates on hunches and gut instincts.  

It’s the same for new media companies like Netflix. Sure, they have a lot of data about content already produced so they know what genres work. But creating new content? It’s the same old process. Similarly, other forms of storytelling – television shows, web series, books, narrative-driven games, fiction podcasts, etc. – all follow the same linear process that’s been around for a century.

Entertainment is a hit-based industry, and most projects fail because the process is broken.

Reinventing the Industry

Wattpad is where the world’s stories live. With over 300 million original stories already shared, and over a million more added each week, Wattpad has the largest collection of original content. Not only do we have a ton of stories, we have a lot of amazing stories with built-in fan bases.

I can guarantee the next big hit is already on Wattpad. Every day we collect over 1 billion data events based on what the global Wattpad community is searching for, reading, and engaging with. Our data tells us which parts of a story generate the most intense reaction from the community and the specific genres certain demographics prefer. With our data we can significantly improve the success rate of projects as Wattpad stories are brought to life on other platforms. We can do this because we’ve put the control back in the hands of the audience. They decide what’s popular and what resonates.

That’s why major entertainment companies around the world have partnered with Wattpad to co-produce popular stories for other platforms. We’ve worked with leading companies like Turner, Universal Cable Productions (a division of NBCUniversal), Paramount Pictures, Simon & Schuster, and many others. This year alone three New York Times bestsellers originated on Wattpad. We helped our partner TV5 in the Philippines increase their ratings by 30 percent with Wattpad Presents, the No. 1 teen television show in the country. We have many more exciting partnerships to announce shortly.

What’s Next for Wattpad?

But back to the original question: What’s next?

We are going to leverage our data, technology, and community to revolutionize how content is created and how people are entertained.

Without giving it all away, here’s what we plan to do.

#1 – Leverage machine learning to discover more great stories

Millions of new stories are shared on Wattpad every month. The community does an incredible job of finding the stories they love. As machine learning advances, we will be able to identify the next Harry Potter before anyone else and even help the story gain traction among the community. Machine learning can also help writers improve the quality of their stories. The community will teach the machine, and in turn, the machine will help us accelerate the success of creators in the community.  

#2 – Revolutionize how traditional entertainment is produced

It’s getting harder and harder to manufacture original mega-hits. While gross box office revenue in the U.S. was up by five percent last year, only two out of 20 movies made were original stories. On the TV side, Hollywood produced more shows than ever last year, but a whopping 75 percent were canceled after the first season. That’s a lot of money and effort wasted.

It’s a challenging time for the entertainment industry. There’s an endless supply of content available, both user-generated and professionally produced. Streaming services with personalized content continue to grow. The control of distribution channels is rapidly changing, too. The entire industry is under a lot of pressure to remain competitive and limit declining sales and tune-in. Wattpad will revolutionize the traditional production model by leveraging our proprietary data and community insights. This will enable us to zero-in on stories with the highest engagements much faster to ultimately co-produce the next big hit.

#3 – Create new forms of entertainment

In the past few years, smartphones have become even more capable and mobile internet has become affordable, lightning-fast, and ubiquitous. Today everyone has a powerful entertainment device that they carry with them all the time that can stream content across all formats – video, audio, images, and of course, text. Similarly, with the help of Apple TV and Chromecast, the television itself has become a streaming device where producers can distribute their content directly. Next generation entertainment devices such as Amazon Echo, VR, Spectacles by Snap, and others, create multiple opportunities for us. We will expand the Wattpad experience to platforms likes these to create new ways for the world to share stories and discover original entertainment.

#4 – Distribute Wattpad stories across all formats, on multiple platforms

As we build up a library of content across multiple formats, we will distribute this library of content both directly on Wattpad and indirectly through various partnerships. This will build on what we’re already doing through Wattpad Studios. Soon, even more Wattpad stories will be available in multiple media formats and distributed and monetized across multiple platforms.

With our technology, data, and community-driven approach to entertainment, we represent the future of the multi-billion dollar industry.  Our vision is to entertain and connect the world through stories, and we are well on our way.

So, in short, our master plan is:

  1. Discover more great stories
  2. Turn these stories into great movies, TV shows, print books, etc.
  3. Create new forms of entertainment based on these stories
  4. Distribute and monetize them on and off Wattpad, earn money for storytellers

One more thing. Although not part of this master plan, at some point we will build theme parks in Orlando, Anaheim, Tokyo, Paris, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Toronto and Mars. Hey, Mickey Mouse: The next Disney is coming.


Meet The Wattpad Stars: Rachel Meinke

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Today’s featured Wattpad Star is Rachel Meinke. In 2011, Rachel joined Wattpad on the hunt for free stories. After about a month, she gained the courage to post some stories of her own.

Rachel believes that social media has taken writing to a new level by allowing anyone to share their work instantly. Her active imagination and knack for audience engagement have led to 28 stories accumulating almost a 250 million reads and 5 million votes on Wattpad!

She offers up this advice to people who want to build their audience on Wattpad: “Tag your stories appropriately, make sure you take full advantage of that feature. [Also] be active in the clubs, interact with other readers and writers to put yourself out there. Don’t spam people to read your story. Instead, make friends and be genuine. That’s what’s going to get you somewhere.”

That genuine connection between storyteller and audience is often the factor that sets Wattpad Stars apart. “Remember why you write in the first place. Don’t do it for the fame and the attention. Do it because it’s your passion, because it’s what you love to do.”

Today, Rachel is commissioned by major international brands like Mondelez and Lenovo to write Brand Stories. With Mondelez, Rachel created stories to promote the Sour Patch Kids’ playful identity on Valentine’s Day and Halloween.

“Getting asked to work on these projects really means a lot to me as a writer because it means that these companies trust me to represent their brand,” says Rachel about her work with brands on Wattpad. “They’ve all been such pleasant experiences!”

Though all these experiences on Wattpad have been life changing, Rachel’s love for reading remains strong as ever. She still makes the time to check out new stories and is currently reading Paper Cuts and Bad Boy Bakers on Wattpad.

Stay tuned for more installments of Meet The Wattpad Stars!


Generosity is The Key To Community Development

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Last month marked 10 years of Wattpad. We celebrated this journey with our global community and released our plans to change the face of entertainment in the years to come.

Wattpad’s Head of Creators Melissa Nightingale and Head of Audience Jeanne Lam understand that for any of these plans to work, they’ll need to help foster and scale Wattpad’s global audience while they maintain a positive space for storytellers.

Together, the dynamic duo work to attract new storytellers and audiences to Wattpad’s community of 45 million and growing. It’s a monumental task, but one they carry out with trailblazing vision and genuine care.

“We have the mission of touching the lives of billions of people,” says Jeanne about her role. “Our goal is to get the stories that are on Wattpad in front of as many people as humanly possible.”

For Melissa, her pitch to storytellers on Wattpad is a simple one: “Wattpad makes it possible to share a story and find that readers halfway across the world have fallen in love with your characters. How cool is that?”

The work of their teams builds on the work that was laid down by Wattpad’s co-founders Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen. They aim to grow a community that facilitates positive interactions between creators and audiences.“Wattpad is a uniquely positive place that stands in contrast to so many of the large, social platforms on the internet today,” explains Melissa. “It’s a safe space for creative expression, where storytellers are able to tell the stories that are meaningful to them and have them resonate with a global community.”

Jeanne adds,“…when I think about what’s so unique about this positivity, there’s a level of generosity that I haven’t seen anywhere else. Ever. Sharing your story is an inherently generous act. But giving feedback, voting, commenting, creating reading lists, participating in movements, these are all acts of generosity that fuel the positivity among the Wattpad community.”

She’s referring to movements like #FreeYourBody, #TalkThePoc, and empowered social advocates like Emily Linden. For the two, the generosity behind sharing stories on Wattpad is the key to growth. It’s the small acts that can make a big difference.

In some cases, a popular writer adding a story to a reading list is all it takes to propel that story into the public eye. Jeanne recounts meeting Wattpadder Alex Karola at an event hosted by influencers in the community. According to Alex, Wattpad Star Lindsey Summers felt the need to share her story that examines the complex issue of bulimia. The simple act of sharing When You Fall connected Alex to a passionate community that flooded her story with touching comments and messages of support. The event would change Alex’s course in life inspiring a path toward a master’s degree scholarship to further a career in education.

It’s now Alex’s mission to reveal the power of narratives as a tool to deal with disorders.

Stories like this inspire the vision that drives both teams. “We get to help people be heard, find their audience, and go on to achieve amazing things both on and off of Wattpad,” says Melissa.

Many people in the Wattpad community have shared their own stories of personal development achieved in part through the power of Wattpad stories. To some, Wattpad is a safe space. To others, it’s a way to meet new friends and develop as a storyteller.

Melissa and Jeanne understand the appeal of Wattpad stories is their power to change lives. As more audiences and storytellers join Wattpad’s global community, new voices and diverse points of view will continue connect people on a global level. The generosity of storytellers is a pivotal factor that will shape the future of the Wattpad community.

Can you be a part of that movement?



A Look Into the Guadalajara Book Fair

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Around the world, people love to connect with, share, and discover great stories. It’s why over 45 million people spend more than 15 billion minutes on Wattpad every month.

Of the many communities on Wattpad, Mexico is one of the largest and most engaged. It’s no surprise then that one of the most important book fairs in Ibero-America is hosted in Guadalajara.

The Guadalajara International Book Fair was created 30 years ago by the University of Guadalajara. It is an amazing cultural festival where storytellers and audiences connect in person.

At last year’s event we were proud to have had three Wattpad authors, published by Nova Casa Editorial, signing books at the fair:

Check out the photos taken by Wattpad Ambassador Natalia A. Hatt for a look into the fun event

Wattpad Ambassador Natalia and Wattpad Star Ana Coello

Wattpad Star Ana Coello

Fans rock I ❤ Ana Coello T-Shirts

Wattpad Fans at The Guadalajara book fair

Wattpadders of All Ages Attend the Book Fair!

Wattpad fans pose for photo

From Wattpad Stories to Published Novels

Collection of published Wattpad stories

Niky Moliavitis, Author of Provócame

Niky Moliavitis


Meet The Wattpad Stars: Brittany Geragotelis

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After 10 years of pounding the pavement with publishers and agents, Brittany Geragotelis decided to break free from gatekeepers by posting an original story on Wattpad for free. “I loved the concept of Wattpad—the fact that anyone could post their material and that it gave the power back to readers by letting them decide what they wanted to read.” says Brittany about the decision.

For her, it was a bold move that would ultimately pay off with a three-book publishing deal and an invitation to join the Wattpad Stars program.

Brittany’s original story, Life’s a Witch, gained over 19 million reads in under a year. The instant recognition rekindled her love of writing and changed her perception of online communities.

As a former magazine editor, Brittany is no stranger to the rush of popularity that comes with rising stardom. The interviews she conducted over the course of her career helped her find out how other writers started in the industry and gave her insight into their creative process.

Now that the tables have turned, here are a few pro-tips Brittany shares about getting started as a writer:

Sit down to write every day: Even if it’s just a page. The habit of writing is what will help you finish your first story.

Tell the story you want to read: This will help shape your writing as a journey and give you the experience of creating something you’re interested in.

Don’t start a story until you have an outline: Everyone’s process differs, but outlines can really help with writer’s block.

Read, read, read:  You can learn a lot about writing by studying those that do it well. Bonus: reading is a great way to fuel inspiration and creativity.

Don’t listen to nay-sayers: Says Brittany, “You should never let someone else dictate your dreams! I say this because I went through 10 years of rejection from a lot of people whose opinion I thought mattered. If I’d listened to them, I would have given up (which I almost did). But I didn’t and now, here I am. So, if you love to write, write. If you feel compelled to tell stories, then tell them. THAT should be what you’re focused on…not whether someone else thinks your writing’s worth being out there. Put it up on Wattpad and let readers decide for themselves.”






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