A rant book of things that Wattpad writers do that I find annoying and pointless. Plus topics that need to be spoken about and brought to people's attention.
I have very very little filter, so if you're someone easily offended, my rant book isn't f...
Well, I've been MIA since March. I've created a graphics community, joined a community, made some very cool new friends, had a birthday, powered through some writing for my book only to take a very long hiatus, developed a not-so-mild Zelda addiction, and moved to a new place, and so on.
Add to that, a combination of lost motivation due to a lack of interesting new topics + shifting my focus to other things + needing a break from boring little Wattpad = this book fucking died :)
But, I'm here typing once again. Anyway, let's get to the point and discuss the title of this post.
Ever notice how Paid Stories get new covers by specialized designers when they enter the PS program? This is because Wattpad scouts graphic designers from their community and contacts them. Thanks to a Reddit post on r/Wattpad, here is a glimpse of that process:
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This seems like a positive on Wattpad's part, right? Taking talented yet underrated graphic designers from their community and giving them a chance to have their work showcased for paid books, and getting paid themselves.
However, what if I told you those designers only get paid $60 dollars to do these book covers? The amount of money you'd spend on a full-course meal at an average steakhouse. I'm not going to name names on how I learned this, but if the information is true, I'm even more disappointed in Wattpad. Not surprised, but disappointed.
As a graphic artist myself, the amount of work it takes to make a cover is a lot more than most people know and you can easily spend days if not longer working on a book cover. Finding images that suit the client's request, editing them which requires a variety of different things, finding a font to use, formatting the texts, and styling the text is the cover creation process.
And that is why the average cost for a book cover is 2x the chump-change Wattpad is allegedly paying out:
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Now yes, Wattpad does cover the cost of stock images for their designers. Wattpad isn't a small company, they could afford to pay standard market prices to their designers. But, just like how the Ambassador's program is pretty much free site moderation instead of having a regular moderation department at HQ like every other major platform, they won't because it cuts corners.
I know I've mentioned them preying upon people's lack of knowledge before, and this seems like another example of that: taking designers who have most likely never been offered monetary payment (Let alone an offer coming from the very platform they're on, for books going on the front page), and paying them an undercharged price because they don't know any better.
No offense to those designers because they do what they can within the requests given and their limits, but no wonder some paid story covers look extremely minimal effort, I wouldn't do shit for that low of a price either.
(Also, PS authors don't have much say in their covers. They give a request to their assigned designer and will receive a few different options back they get to pick from. So if they get low-quality covers, they just have to deal with it.)
I don't know how Wattpad determines someone is a good fit for doing designs, though they have very very inconsistent quality in PS book covers in my opinion. A book cover is a large contribution to an author getting clicks on their content, if their cover looks like PNGs pasted together vs. another PS story that has a very detailed cover, who do you think is probably making more money?
