Chasing Wattpad

Recommended Story My Ass!

Note to crybabies: This isn't a post against authors (not entirely, at least, lol). Nor is it really a tirade against those with a "W" by their name. Some of the best writers I know here on WP have a "W" by their name. But having a W by your name does not mean you are a good writer. It does generally mean you will get followed by more people and WP will promote the hell out of you if that is what you are looking for. Especially if you are part of some of their special programs, which again, mean nothing about your writing. Because, as we all know, WP is not about writing well. It's about being popular. And there is nothing wrong with that, as long as you come into Wattpad knowing that. Hell the real world of writing is not much different. 

I have never really paid much attention to the stories recommended to me at the bottom of each chapter I read when I am om Wattpad. I don't think they are geared to me specifically. I'm guessing mostly "sponsored" stuff. And by "sponsored" I have no idea if the author of the book is paying to have their stuff in my recommendations or if Wattpad is doing it on their behalf for some reason. 

Today I decided to go ahead and click on the recommended story. It was not a genre I necessarily love or hate. I have read books in that genre before and have enjoyed them. The author of the book in question had an orange "W" by their name. I have no idea what the orange "W" means in contrast to the other w's of different colors. All I know is they have some special connection to Wattpad somehow. 

This particular story I saw today had over 9 MILLION reads! My first thought is "People are reading this already. It has over 9 million reads. Why does it need recommending? ". I guess it could be such an amazing piece of work that Wattpad thinks that the whole world needs to read it? But then I remembered that Wattpad is not into quality. It's just a numbers game with them.

Not to say that a story cannot be good on WP if it reaches reads in the millions. But as I have mentioned before, "reads" in WP are not like they are in real world. I have a book that has reached 100,000 reads. I cannot say that 100k people have read it. Each chapter in the book counts as a read if it is clicked on. If I had to guess, I would say that maybe somewhere less than 8,000 people have peaked at it. Maybe less.

But if numbers are where it is at then people with the W's are there and have learned that game. If you don't believe me try and find a sponsored story without a W by the author's name. If they are out there they are as rare as the honest Republican. And if you don't believe me just go to Wattpad's twitter, Facebook, and any other social media account they have. It's all just a "W author" love fest in all of them.  You, no matter how good you are, are not invited.  

The recommended piece in question has over 200 chapters so far and is still going. This is even though the actual story ended a long time ago.  If you can find me a real book (not the bible) that has that many chapters that anyone this side of brain damage would sit down and try and read I will give you shout out on my page (or a penny, same value). 

The very first chapter accounts for half a million of those reads and it just spews out about 50 words that say the author is going to write a book. The second chapter accounts for about another half a  million reads and it says the first thing as the same chapter but just adds the fact that "you are really gonna enjoy this". Incidentally that chapter has about 2 thousand comments that say something like "yeah man we are going enjoy this". Ugh. (wow, you made me say ugh). 

After that the next 150 chapters are the book. Here is where it gets weird. Not a single chapter is over a hundred words long. None one of them. I have written texts longer than that. So have you. If I had written that book with the number of words in it I would have written it in maybe 10 chapters. As a matter of fact this person did end up publishing the book and it didn't have more than 30 chapters there. So, about 4 million reads later, you are done with the book. 

But the author isn't done looking for reads. He/she writes about 50 more chapters in which they say absolutely nothing. Nada. Crapola. Just nonsense like "you like this?" , "What do you think?", "I think I'm awesome", "do you think I'm awesome?". These account for about 3 more million reads. And it isn't over. They are still adding chapters and probably will until they reach WP's limit. 

This is intentional. We readers are not stupid. I wrote a book with 8 chapters and it is going to stay 8 chapters because the damn book only needed 8 chapters to tell the story. Anything else would have been nonsense. People do  this to get more reads and try and propel their books in the million reads column just to be able to say they are there. They are not. 

I did go over to Amazon and found that they had put the book there also. It was about 200 chapters shorter now. It had about 50 reviews with an average of about 4 and half stars. I read the reviews and nearly 90% of them had gifs in them. You can't trust a reviewer that can't find words to describe something with words in it. Ugh. (again)

So far, or at least for now (it could change), those millions of reads meant nothing in the publishing world. That is not saying much though. No one really knows what, if anything, ever truly means anything in the world where people have to pay to read your books. I sometimes wonder in "helping" people who want to be authors, whether WP is hurting the industry in which people have to pay money to read. Probably not. We are often not as important as we think we are. But that story if for another time. 

So, when you can, skip the recommended read. Do a little research and find the good stories that you will actually enjoy reading. Don't let WP spoon feed you this crap. Take the time to do that. The ones where the author gave you only the words you needed to read and nothing more. Those are the ones you will remember. 

So, in the end, what does it all mean? I have no idea. Nor, honestly, do I really care. I was just bored today and had nothing else to write about. Plus, well, I needed the reads.