Wattpad 101: Your guide to the world of Wattpad

Please Star and Comment on This Chapter

After contemplating my last chapter, which let's face it, was written partially just to advertise the fact I had finished another book and, oh hey, have you guys read that book, because you totally should. And also donate on my Patreon. And visit my blog! Also, look at my pictures of my children and my pet cat. Hey, why are you leaving? You haven't stared and commented yet! Pay attention to me. NOTICE ME, SENPAI!

If you haven't figured it out, this chapter is about the lifeblood of Wattpad, stars and comments. If you read books on here, you ought to know that stars and comments are vital to writers. Not only does it make them feel good and build up their drive to write more, but it is also necessary based on the wattpad system for their books to be seen and thus get even more stars. When you star and comment on someone's book, you not only give them a star... you make their book more likely to be seen by other readers so that it can be stared even more.

This need for stars and comments on Wattpad has created a community of writers desperate to consume every star they can shovel into their writing holes. In the absolute worst of cases, this has created a community of people on the forums that beg for stars and reads in the hopes that their account can take off and become "famous". Not necessarily "real" famous, but at least "Wattpad" famous.

This had led to the infamous star trading and comment trading that clearly exists in the Wattpad forums. Wattpad's official stance is that star trading is bad, but that doesn't make the fact that star trading is a very real part of Wattpad a reality. They turn a blind eye to it, encouraging people to keep their nefarious actions to their private message boards, but if you look carefully you can usually tell that people who have engaged in these acts versus the people who haven't.

The telltale signs of a trader include having an absurd level of follows roughly equal to the number of followers, having an extremely large star/comment count on the first chapter that complete trails off in the later chapters, having similar numbers of stars to comments, and other such obvious attempts at pandering. Not all of this is "pure" star trading. It's often hidden behind critiques for critiques, follows for follows, and sloppy edit jobs.

Of course, I've done it myself in the past, so even while I look at the acts with disdain, I'll never be too critical. The temptation to want a couple extra stars, to see if you can get your book acknowledged, is always going to be there. Truthfully, a lot of stories on newer accounts won't take off until you hit just enough of the threshold to start attracting new readers.

I mentioned the taking off of Vampire's Kiss on my profile starting is steady climb to the 1000+ follower club, but what I didn't mention is that this story was on my profile for a month and it only took off after I requested 5-6 critiques back to back. Did I need 5-6 critiques on a one-shot? Probably not. But I did need 5-6 comments and 5-6 stars done in a single day in order to get my story to move up on the list and ultimately be featured.

That is the unfortunate reality. It's like playing the lottery, and truth be known if you don't put any of your own chips on the table, you're very unlikely to win big. It seems unfair. It seems like cheating. However, this is Wattpad's harsh reality.

And maybe you've never seen it that way. Maybe you've convinced yourself that you "just" wanted 3 back-to-back reviews on this chapter so you knew how it was received, and maybe you just gave them a star to be nice, and maybe you only kind-of expected them to give a star in return and only feel slightly annoyed when they didn't star you back even though your story is totally better than their story. Well, even if you do the mental math to feel guilt free, the outcome is the same. It might be unspoken, but the comment for comment and star for star almost seems like an expectation.