It’s day four on Wattpad and things seem to be devolving: the number of reads has increased to 6000, but my readership has declined from 255 to 237, confirming my earlier suspicion that the increase in reads is people making their way through the book then moving on. There are certainly a few who seemed to have devoured it, voting on each next section as they finished it. There’s also a lot of people who have added it to their reading list, but counting them requires me to scroll through pages of notifications, and I couldn’t be bothered: at the end of the day it’s the actual readers who count, not the maybe-later ones who might have hundreds or even thousands of such books on their lists.

The demographic has remained essentially constant, as has the gender division.

I’ve gained readers in another three countries — Algeria, Greece, and Russia — but at .151% each I’m pretty sure that amounts to exactly one reader in each country.

I have noticed that the list is shaken up more often than every twelve hours as I initially ascertained. How often the list is scrambled I have no idea because I do not check every hour, but I did notice yesterday when I checked after about five hours that the list had changed from earlier. (I was initially told the list changes daily, and I read that to mean once every 24 hours; apparently “daily” was ambiguous and I read it wrongly.)

This morning I awoke to a private message from Wattpad warning me that:

Sometimes our writers get noticed – whether on Wattpad, through coverage in the press, or through comments on social media. This can lead to approaches by 3rd party companies not affiliated with Wattpad. While exciting, we want to caution you that they may not all be legitimate. Please get in touch with me if you have any questions about anyone who contacts you. We have close contacts with the industry, and are always happy to talk.

Apparently Wattpad is trolling territory for vanity publishing companies

such as Dog Ear Publishing, mentioned by name in one of forums. Do well on Wattpad and you will eventually get a scam email complimenting you on your success, asking to “publish” you, then hitting you with the fees. Somehow I think I won’t get fooled. Should I get such an email, I will instead suggest they read the final chapter of The Global Indie Author, which dissects vanity publishers.

Why I received such an email is uncertain: do they send it out to all Featured authors, or only those whose book seems to be doing well? If so, does this really count as doing well? Wattpad allegedly has over 35,000,000 subscribers and signs on a new user every second; can 255 readers out of 35M really be considered good, even if it has only been four days? Or am I actually doing well considering there are now 100 million uploads on the site, which is an enormously huge haystack to be a needle in? For authors, Wattpad’s success is a double-edged sword: sure the potential audience is huge, but with 24-hours worth of reading material posted to Wattpad’s app every minute, the haystack also literally gets bigger with each second.

This same article states that “the company is now experimenting with how to pay its investors back and turn its users into profit. It’s looking at a revenue sharing model that would mean asking popular writers to create extra stories that fans could buy.” While on the surface of things that sounds great for writers, I don’t want a single source of revenue for a story, which is exactly what I expect Wattpad would want to be here. And if they are “asking” for stories, does this amount to commissioning? Will these be works-for-hire and Wattpad owns or shares the copyright?

Wattpad CEO Allen Lau also states that “advertising efforts are also going well.”

Now this is, as I have stated before, really where the money is. Share that, Lau, and you might reach the YouTube proportions you have repeatedly mentioned is your goal. In the What’s Hot section of Wattpad can be found works with over eight million reads, and every time a user clicks on a story part another ad pops up. That’s over eight million ads sold on a single work — and not one dime going to the author!

Day four stats:

Reads 6000
Unique readers: 218
Votes: 237
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:
Algeria: .151%     Argentina: .151%     Australia: 1.357%
Bahamas: .151%     Bangladesh: .603%     Belize: .151%
Brazil: .302%     Canada: 3.922%     Chile: .603%
Columbia: .452%     Croatia: .302%     Czech Republic: .151%
France (includes French Guiana): 33.333%     Germany: .151%
Ghana: .302%     Greece: .151%     Honduras: .151%
Hungary: .452%     India: 10.256%     Indonesia: 1.961%
Iraq: .151%     Ireland: .302%     Italy: .452%
Jamaica: .452%     Kenya: 1.056%     Korea: .151%
Kuwait: .452%     Macedonia: .302%     Malaysia: 1.961%
Mexico: .302%     Mozambique: .302%     Myanmar: .302%
Namibia: .452%     Nepal: .302%     Netherlands: .151%
New Zealand: .452%     Nigeria: 1.357%     Pakistan: .302%
Panama: .151%     Peru: .151%     Philippines: 17.949%
Puerto Rico: .302%     Qatar: .151%     Romania: .452%
Russia: .151%     Saudi Arabia: .754%     Senegal: .302%
Serbia: .151%     South Africa: .905%     Spain: .452%
Suriname: .302%     Sweden: .151%     Tanzania: .151%
Trinidad & Tobago: .452%     Turkey: 1.056%     Uganda: .151%
UAE: .905%     UK: 3.469%     US: 37.225%
Vietnam: .452%     Zimbabwe: .151%