Wattpad and the forest of unlimited stories

Any writer who is serious about creating, building and maintaining an audience is constantly on the lookout for new ways to connect with and cultivate their reader community. That's me, and if it's you as well, I encourage you to check out the amazing ecosystem that Wattpad is building.

The idea is simple: Create a place where writers can publish stories, and equally a place where readers can discover new stories. It sounds ideal for anyone with a love for reading, and not unlike the Internet as a whole, when you think about it. But Wattpad has two big things going for it.

1) Focus on stories: The site is built for and caters to the discovery of stories, not just writing. Their slogan is even "Discover a World of Unlimited Stories." A big claim that could just be aspirational, if it wasn't backed up by reality. But it is.

2) Millions of views: The site has been going strong and growing for a few years, and they now get millions of visitors a month. That's good news for anyone who wants to do some serious reading, and even better news for an author looking for a new way to reach new readers. They've already been called "The YouTube of writing" because of the ease of their interface and the success of their outreach.  

Thinking of Wattpad as a YouTube for writing is a good conceptual framework for understanding how the site works. It's basically a repository for anyone who wants to to go and write a story. At the same time, it's a destination for those who just love reading to go and find new stories.

As an author, here are the three biggest advantages:

1) New readers: If you have a story you are writing, this is a place where you can go and post a draft and allow people to find your writing. The big advantage here is that these are people who love stories who are looking for new stories to read.

2) Community feedback: Wattpad is set up for people to give feedback on what they read. As a writer, you can get great access to what people like and dislike about your writing, and use that information to refine that story or build on new story ideas.

3) Ongoing interaction: One of the challenges for authors is to find places where people are focused on reading and talking about what they read. Wattpad makes it easy, and in fact makes it the point of the website for that kind of interaction to happen.

Have any of you used Wattpad, either as a writer or a reader?

Image courtesy of screenshot via Wattpad.com