The Wattpad Experiment

day 19 - comparing

The book was on 973 reads when I woke up the next morning, a sign of a flurry of activity overnight. But there were no votes, and that put a dampener on it. I had to remind myself that not all readers voted, and it wasn't a reflection on me. I was now very close to achieving my goal, and with over a week left of the challenge this made me feel very secure.

But the night before I had been reading a book, and in the description it had said this:

'Hit 1 million reads exactly a month after publishing'

I looked at that for a while and wondered why the hell I was so excited about getting 900 reads. Maybe this wasn't impressive at all. Maybe this is what every book did naturally, and I had just aimed too low. Scratching me head, my read count didn't look too impressive anymore.

But this is exactly where I had fallen into a common pitfall - I was comparing my success with the success of a big account which had posted a book to a platform of diehard fans. When you already have an account and a following, it's far easier to gain reads! When you're just starting out, you have to push to get them.

I had become quite invested in a book which had a vaguely similar theme to mine, written by an author who was just starting out like me, and had began writing at a similar time. By this point in the challenge, this book was on 110 reads despite the fact that I was certain they had a better plot and better writing than me. Looking at their account, I realised soon why my reads were higher.

1. I updated far more frequently. I didn't leave readers waiting for weeks for an update.
2. They had 2 followers.
3. Their cover didn't really match the story.

These are fundamental parts of gaining any sort of readers, and I hope that I've stressed them throughout this book! I would not have gotten the reads I did if I hadn't have had followers, a nice cover, and if I didn't update regularly.

Statistics at the end of day nineteen:

1k reads

115 followers.

So I had reached my goal in less than the time I had allocated, and I was ecstatic. I was also on 117 votes, which also made me very happy. I sat and pondered for a while what to the do next - I had reached my goal? Of course I had the rest of the book to write, but I was beginning to question if I would have the motivation to work as quickly now that I didn't have anything to work towards. But I didn't want to set myself a new target, one that I wasn't sure I could meet. So I decided to continue on as I was, trying to update everyday as best as I could.