Wattpad, long an iconic name among fanfiction, up there with the greats, Fanfiction.net, AO3, even Deviant art. But its also been a gathering place for authors striving to show their own creativity, despite this its not a perfect system. None of them are, but lets get started with 5 big reasons Wattpad has long been broken. Don't get me wrong I love Wattpad, it was my start, but I've moved away from it to AO3 for the most part.
1. Its where authors get their start, most authors now start off here, want to know why? Wattpad is good at marketing, and that draws people here when they're still new to this whole writing thing, which means they're still practicing and their stories aren't the greatest, don't believe me? Take a look at mine. The fact is a lot of people start off here and none of us start perfect. I'm not saying there aren't people who don't write fantastic stories right off the bat, but a lot of us don't, and I'm also not saying there aren't great stories on Wattpad, it's just difficult to find them, but that's another issue I'll get to later.
Additionally to the newer less developed writers, there's just flat out a lot of crack writing here and it can actually be hard to sort between the two.
(There's also a lot of NSFW, but, if you enjoy that... I mean, ok, that's not as much of a problem)
To be honest this one isn't really Wattpad's fault, every one has to start somewhere, it just happens to be Wattpad's unfortunate luck of the draw to be the most inviting to new authors.
Why is this? Well there are three reasons that Wattpad is so attractive to new authors.
1, is obviously Wattpad is all bright colors, its a well made website (and app) its specifically made to draw the eye. Consider AO3, Fanfiction.net, and Quotev, while all homes for writing none of them have a bright colorful home page full of colorful covers of stories with enticing summaries. Whereas Fanfiction.net boasts a simplistic white and blue AO3 does the same with white and red, and heck, AO3 doesn't even have covers, you have to post a cover in the actual story if you want something like that (and it cant be seen in the description.)
2 is Wattpad boasts a bunch of small communities, and most authors are looking for a place to belong. While this one may not call all that many authors it still brings in a decent amount of people.
3 and possibly the biggest of these reasons is some people are really successful on Wattpad. There are competitions and the welcome page boasts mostly winners, which only draws the attention of writers thinking hey I could do that! We see all these authors with hundreds of thousands of subscribers and ignore all the people with only 7 or 8. This has only worsened with the fact that some stories are paid now and lots of people come thinking, hey, I could actually get paid for this! (Not to mention this is probably a huge let down to tons of people who don't actually make it big here)
2. Wattpad is a business. This one is actually a minor annoyance of mine, Wattpad has profited off of us readers and writers without ever giving us a share of this, don't believe me, remember every add you scroll past is money in Wattpad's pocket. Recently we've been able to support certain authors but let me point out that's US who are paying them, sure Wattpad might chip in, but Wattpad takes most of the money.
It's not bad to run a website like a business, people who run it need to eat, they need to keep the site up, but it's weird to have an option to pay authors when as far as I can tell, they're not paying anyone.
I'm not saying any of us necessarily need or deserve to be paid, I mean, my work is hot garbage.
This one is more just something that makes me feel weird, not to mention the fact there are just straight up brands on Wattpad. Its not actually a problem with Wattpad.
3. Wattpad's algorithms are terrible. Wattpad pushes stories that are new, and then when stories get hot Wattpad pushes those stories more than smaller ones. Want an example? Click out of this really quick and take a glance at The Devil's price, and absolutely crap story of mine, riddled with errors, plot holes, and with a terrible plot to boot. (If you did enjoy it, thank you, it still has some serious faults.) My first story, one I worked hard on, and you can see me growing as an author as you read, you might notice that story has a very large amount of views and likes.
Let me explain why.
When I wrote the first chapter Cup Head wasn't really very old, and I wrote a ship which would blossom, Devil Dice, Snake Eyes whatever you want to call it. It was one of the only stories on this site or many others, there were at most 70 other stories anywhere I looked, so understand people latched onto anything that was semi-decent at that time.
I, for lack of a better term, unintentionally struck while the iron was hot. Then I wrote 1-2 chapters a week for around 38 weeks for a span of 50. It was a constant upload source and people had looked at it when it came out. This is entirely why the algorithm pushed my story. Whereas a whole lot of stories that are entirely like mine struggle for solid ground now, Wattpad pushes stories that strike while there's interest, and I was lucky. I wrote long and hard and people came and enjoyed. It was a big story, held 4th place in the tag Devil Dice, did it deserve to be there? No. No it did not. There were other stories that deserved it more. And that's the thing with Wattpad, good stories slip between the cracks and genuinely good authors are left in obscurity, some get pushed but some don't. The thing is, not everyone gets a fair shot here regardless of talent. Now, Wattpad could have remedied this with a wonderful search system to find stories, but they didn't, which brings us to four.
4. Wattpad has a terrible search function.
Now I might be a little spoiled by AO3's search system but let me tell you, it is stupidly hard to find a story on this website. You have to nail the title, as far as I can tell, tags are nearly completely useless when it comes to finding a story and descriptions and vague outlines of stories are worthless. Now, if you don't use archive of our own, open it in a tab, click search. Once every story is loaded click refine search. You're give every single field, remember a certain tag? or two? put them in. Looking for a certain language? Go right ahead! Looking for an author? Shoot! Just type it in and hit search. Only remember a specific line from the description? Type it in! Your story will show up. Just in the mood for something with dragons in it? Search. Looking for a certain ship? There's an input for that too!! Honestly, its the best search function I've ever used.
Wattpad is just... I can't figure out how you're supposed to navigate it.
Maybe there's a trick, but I can't find anything when I'm looking for it.
(I went through and edited this after Wattpad went through a major revamp, and its actually worse now. I cant find stories that I know exist no matter what I do unless I remember the author.)
5. Wattpad is made for mobile (Also sometimes things just straight up don't work). Why is this a problem? It's incredibly difficult to use on a computer, the text is in one column with empty space on the other. No attempt has been made to remedy this, yet the writing element fits in a computer screen relatively well. It's generally annoying and makes it quite clear Wattpad's desired audience. Also while on mobile I have so much trouble making certain buttons obey me. I'll click My stories and it wont go anywhere. Lag and unresponsiveness on mobile, but unfriendly formatting on computer. No perfect middle ground. Yay.
This is it for today, maybe I'll point out a couple places Wattpad is pretty good later, but the sight has its problems, and while some of them just seem to be things I need to get over or things that wattpad really cant be faulted for (1&2), PLEASE I BEG YOU, PLEASE, GET A BETTER SEARCH SYSTEM. Honestly I love this site, but it has its flaws. If you disagree that's fine, I really don't mind.
