How I (Finally) Got Published

Chapter 16: Feeling A Lot Like Violet Parr?

If you thought I was going to teach you about characterization, plot outlining, dialogue, POV (Point Of View), tense etc, you were wrong. So many other tutorials on and off Wattpad have covered those topics already. Just Google them on your own if you really have no idea.

But to be perfectly honest with you, I think if you're a real author, you should at least have some convictions or instincts of your own about some of the items above. Because, just like with any other skill, there are some things that can't be taught or learned. You have to either possess them innately or internalize them in your own good time, through valuable XP. (Yes, what's true on computer games is also true IRL, including pay-to-win strategies.)

This book is only going to be about the practical matters in using Wattpad, hence the title How I (Finally) Got Published and my cover image of a unicorn doing the dab. A unicorn; a Fantasy genre regular but a very down-to-earth unicorn nevertheless.

To pick up from where we left off in the last chapter, this is my advice to all other Wattpad writers out there who harbor dreams of publication:

Like Dory says in the movie Finding Nemo: Just keep swimming, just keep swimming. For us authors, it's: Just keep writing, just keep writing.

So what if nobody reads your story? When you really think about it, shouldn't recognition come second to the actual act of writing, creating and sharing your talent? Shouldn't practicing yourself and perfecting your craft trump the need for approval from fake readers? If you don't agree with me here, then, as Black Widow said:

There's a chance you might be in the wrong business, Rogers.

Don't care so much about the number of reads. It's good to have many views so go ahead and promote your story to other Wattpadders on and off Wattpad, but please don't be demanding about it. Don't scream in online groups and clubs as though everyone has a civic obligation to read your work. News flash: They don't. No one does.

It's much better to gain actual friends and followers who appreciate your work. As they say, birds of the same feather flock together. This adage has never been truer than on Wattpad. Wattpad does what it does best: provide a community where likeminded authors and readers can find each other.

The flip side of the coin is constant self-improvement. Don't be complacent and don't stop improving – yourself and your book. Tinker with the cover, the title, the genre placement, the tags, the characters, the dialogue etc. If you're not getting any reads at all, it's prolly because you're doing something wrong and something about your book just doesn't jibe.

Lastly, never ever leave a story unfinished. Apart from the fact that completed stories gain extra appeal on Wattpad, you owe that much to your creation, your baby.

You remember Stan Lee's speech in Chapter 10?

"I couldn't get Spider-man out of my system. So we were about to kill a magazine. I think it was called Amazing Fantasy. It wasn't selling well and we were sending the last issue to the press. When you do the last issue of the magazine, nobody cares what you put in it because the book is dying. Just to get it out of my system, I put Spider-man in Amazing Fantasy, featured him on the cover, forgot about it."

This was exactly how I felt about The Boyfriend App. I finished it on November 15, 2017 and I self-published it. Wattpad and I were not on speaking terms at the time, if you remember.

Like my other books, The Boyfriend App was available on the major retailer sites. For a while, it was also available as POD via Ingram Spark and Book Depository. I got in touch with some book bloggers and reviewers. Like I taught you before, marketing or promotion is a very big aspect of indie publishing. This is a big difference between traditional publishing and POD publishing. If you're just a writer and has no skill whatsoever in marketing, chances are you're not gonna make it in the indie field.

I got some downloads and I ran a couple of promotions. I remember I did one on Valentine's Day of the next year, 2018. This was the time I also started to build my mailing list through the help of a read and review program, Voracious Readers Only, and an email marketing service, first Aweber and then Mailchimp.

In June of 2018, The Boyfriend App reached the Amazon Best Sellers Rank of #608 Free in Kindle Store, #6 in Contemporary Romance and #9 in Science Fiction. In case you're curious, the challenge for indie publishers on Kindle is to reach a high rank in your genre and stay there as long as you can, based on the number of daily or even hourly downloads. To do this, authors usually run promotions such as discounts and giveaways and advertise on sites such as BookBub, FB and Amazon itself.

But do you think it was enough? When can we actually call ourselves successful authors?

Up Next: How do you know you're a good writer?

Stay Phenomenal!

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