Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Wattpad's Ranking System Revealed!!!

Warning: Since this chapter was written, the ranking system was overhauled and changed and not everything written still holds true. However, I'm leaving it because for the most part, it's accurate. Check out my ranking system update chapter for explanation of newer features. 

For once, I actually went out of my way to do a little bit of research before coming up with a chapter. That is to say I sent an email asking how the ranking system for Wattpad works. I'm so industrius. We know that every genre has ranks that go from #1-1000. These ranks are used when you click any genre in Discover. The first 10 or so will show up and as you descend the list, they will be ordered from the hottest to the less hot.

Naturally, what genre your story is will reflect how well you rank. An oversaturated genre like Romance or Teen Fiction might be incredibly difficult for you to ever see yourself on the list at all, let alone in the top #20. Meanwhile, Nonfiction and Science Fiction might be way easier to list on. It's no wonder this book has made it to the top 10 for weeks at a time.

This might be one of those things you have to ask yourself when you write a romance story about a ghost in a fantasy world who fights pirate werewolves. Labeling it romance, paranormal, werewolf, fantasy, adventure, action, or even teen fiction can be the difference between a story that is never noticed and a story that jumps to the #1 in its genre. Then again, oversaturated genres are oversaturated exactly because there are a lot of people who want to read them, so keep that in mind as well. You may be #500 in paranormal, but if everyone is reading teen fictions, your story might get left in the dust.

Not everyone on Wattpad cares about popularity, but if you do, getting your story on the ranking list is one of the main ways to get you noticed, your account follows, and your story read by people who may actually comment and tell you what they think.

So the question becomes, what goes into the Wattpad ranking system? Well, Wattpad's FAQ simply says it uses a "complex algorithm" that calculates the amount of "community support" a novel receives. The more community support your novel gets, the higher your novel will show in rankings. I won't comment on how backwards "rewarding popularity by making it even easier to be more popular" is. The philosophy of the "rich getting richer" goes well outside the scope of my expertise in all facets of life. However, that aside, the FAQ makes a pretty vague statement. I thought I could give you better, and after a few email exchanges with Wattpad support, I found some answers.

First things first, the Wattpad ranking system is updated once a day. I can't tell you what time it's updated, but I'm sure a savvy person can narrow it down just by pressing F5 every hour until they see a difference. However, your score isn't just calculated by your daily performance. Your rank is influenced by your performance from previous days as well. How many previous days? If I really got a lot of "community support" on the first of the month, will it still affect my rank on the last day of the month?

According to my source (I just always wanted to say that), your book's activity is only logged for about a week. I will state that he wasn't 100% on this, so don't take it as fact. However, it seems like every day your rank is calculated, that calculation is not just on yesterday's activity, but on the activity of every day that week.

This has certain implications. First off, the frequency you release does affect your rank. For the best results, it's recommended you publish 1-2 times a week. I'll leave it to you to connect that with the weekly ranking calculations. Also, the time since your last release will also factor into the ranking system. The longer it's been since you last posted a chapter, the harder it will be to maintain a rank. I wasn't able to get an answer on whether there is any exception for novels marked as "completed", but it looks like there is at least some truth to the belief that wattpad encourages continuous publication while penalizing finished works.

How can you get around this system with regards to ranking? When editing a chapter, you can delete it, and then release your new draft of the chapter as a new chapter. Yes, you will lose the record of all of the stars/comments you've received thus far. Considering it's a new draft and you want new opinions, I'm not sure if this really matters. When it comes to rank, it doesn't seem to matter how many total stars you have (I believe, I don't know for certain), just how much activity you have. So by deleting and re-hosting chapters, you can prolong the continuous releasing of your book. Other methods include releasing chapters in bite-size "parts" and keeping the side stories and sequel of your story in the same book. This is purely conjecture, however, and I can't guarantee that deleting chapters won't penalize your rank as much as adding new chapters will improve it.

There is some limitations on what my source could explain. For example, when talking about "community support", I can't tell you what ranks as more or less community support. But at the very least, I can tell you what factors constitute as community support. Community support is determined by your most recent reads, stars, and comments, although I'm sure you already guessed that. But what does that mean?

First off, reads matter, so even though your readers might not give you stars, if they are clicking, they are increasing your rank. Naturally, stars matter too, and the more stars you get, the better off you are. Interestingly, quality does not trump quantity. In other words, ten stars from one guy is equal to ten stars from ten different guys.

In fact, ten stars from one guy might actually be "preferable' to ten stars from ten different guys. The reason for this is that there is a slight bonus given to newer chapters. So if your newest chapters are starred, this contributes more to the ranking than if your previous chapters are starred. As he put it, they "(slightly) measure story drop off". So while this may affect ranking a little, it probably isn't a main contributor.

This can also have another implication. In the current manifestation of Wattpad, completed reads are measured by part. Therefore, it is likely that the amount of unique readers who not only click on a chapter, but scroll down to the last page, also affect a rank. So keep that in mind next time you decide to a stop scrolling to the bottom before you click for the next chapter. You might be affecting someone's rank.

Of course, comments also factor into your rank, and follow the same pattern as stars. Your reader's comments will help your rank, your comments do not. So, if you want to lead a commenter into a conversation under one of your chapters, it may just help you out. However, your own comments and your own stars do NOT factor into the ranking system, so star all you want, it won't help you there. I wasn't able to answer on whether multiple comments in the same chapter, as one might experience with a longer than 2000 character review, would continue to affect the rank past the first one. You can assume there is a diminishing return on subsequent comments from the same reader on the same chapter, but this is purely conjecture.

Putting books in your private or public reading lists do NOT affect the ranking, so encouraging people to put your book in their library, as I've seen some do, won't help you directly. However, it has an indirect affect in the sense that anyone who goes to their page may see your book listed in their public reading lists. I'd need to mention this was another uncertain answer, but the general concensus was that the algorithm did not factor in reading lists.

How about edits? After all, after you edit something, it shows up at the top just like when you post a new chapter. The answer to that is one you probably already guessed. No, recently editing a chapter does not change your ranking.

So what does that mean for someone who wants to be ranked? Release reliably, covet your readers, and appreciate stars and comments. Basically, what you already knew. Nothing here is anything we haven't all already guessed. Encourage people to star/comment on your most recent chapters, and more importantly, do the same for others.

Not every book you write is going to be ranked. Appreciate it when they are, but don't get frustrated or angry when things don't turn out the way you want. It's meant to be there as a fun little addition to help works get noticed, not to mock or make people feel inferior. No book is going to stay at #1 for long, and the list is constantly updating and changing, so just appreciate it for what it is and appreciate the people who do read your story and comment, because that is really what matters!