It’s ten a.m. and time to check my progress on Wattpad. Since yesterday’s report, the number of reads has gone up another 75%, and the number of unique readers has gone up 67%. However, what I failed to notice yesterday were the number of readers who added the book to their reading list for later. To date I have 54 additions. Will they actually read it later? Wattpad asks that featured books remain on the site for at least 6 months, and an author whose book is in Featured is allowed to leave it in for as long as the author wishes, so maybe this is the long game.

Yesterday I discovered that Featured books are advertised in a sidebar on the What’s Hot category page. Click on Mysteries/Thrillers in the What’s Hot section and one of the Featured books will display in the sidebar. Which Featured mystery appears also to be rotated at random: yesterday I saw Baby Jane advertised, today it is Taxicab to Wichita.

The age demographic has remained fairly constant, though the number of unspecified readers has increased again. I wonder if this points to an older crowd: younger people tends to be less concerned with privacy. Gender demographic has also remained constant.

I’ve earned readers in 47 countries, up from 28 yesterday.

Note that most, however, are lower-income countries. (I suspect the readers from the wealthy UAE and Saudi Arabia are more likely Filipino workers: the Philippines is Wattpad’s largest demographic, and both these Arab countries have high populations of Filipino domestics. And the high proportion of readers from France may actually be from French Guiana, which is misleadingly included in France’s stats.)

That Wattpad is most popular in lower-income countries is likely attributable to its free status.

Unfortunately for the writer looking for new buyers, the overall quality of the writing on Wattpad is low; readers in higher-income countries who can afford to buy books are not flocking to Wattpad. This has been Wattpad’s challenge from the beginning: attracting good writers. I have said this before and I will say it again now: Wattpad needs to consider revenue sharing. The site makes use of corporate advertising (which has actually slowed down the site’s responsiveness and repelled users); maybe if Wattpad shared the love like YouTube does, Wattpad might attract more professional writers.

Wattpad told me my position on the Featured page would be randomly rotated every 24 hours, but it seems to be done very 12 hours: I started out yesterday in tenth position, ended the day at twentieth, and this morning I am in first position. It will be interesting to see how being in first position for around 12 hours affects the response.

Day two stats are as follows:

Reads 3500
Unique readers: 209
Votes: 123
Sales on Kindle or Kobo: 0

Reader demographic by age:
13–18: 24%     18–25: 23%     25–35: 8%
35–45: 3%     45+: 3%     Unspecified (“private”): 39%

Reader demographic by gender:
Female: 47%     Male: 11%     Unspecified: 42%

Reader demographic by country:
Australia: 1%     Bahamas: .5%     Bangladesh: 1%
Brazil: .5%     Canada: 5%     Chile: 1%
Columbia: .5%     Croatia: 1%     Czech Republic: .5%
France (includes French Guiana): 33%     Germany: .5%
Honduras: .5%     Hungary: .5%     India: 10%
Indonesia: 3%     Ireland: .5%     Italy: 1%
Jamaica: .5%     Kenya: 1%     Korea: .5%
Macedonia: .5%     Malaysia: 2%     Mexico: 14%
Mozambique: .5%     Myanmar: 1%     Namibia: 1%
Nepal: .5%     Netherlands: .5%     New Zealand: 8%
Nigeria: 2%     Pakistan: .5%     Peru: .5%
Philippines: 19%     Puerto Rico: .5%     Saudi Arabia: .5%
Senegal: .5%     South Africa: 1%    Spain: .5%
Suriname: .5%     Tanzania: .5%     Trinidad & Tobago: 1%
Turkey: 1%     Uganda: .5%     UAE: 1%
UK: 4%     US: 36%     Vietnam: 1%