How to Rise From the Dead on Wattpad - A practical guide to getting noticed

Tip 6: Understand the Hot Lists

When you click on Browse and then select a genre, the stories displayed there are part of the "hot list". These top 1000 stories are selected by an algorithm designed by Wattpad to calculate which books are trending. This algorithm is not public, so no one outside of Wattpad knows exactly what determines a story's "hotness", but it does include the following in its calculations:

- Reads

- Votes

- Comments

- Adds to reading lists

- Chapter posting activity

- Chapter updating activity (maybe?)

This is important to know because the hot lists are a big part of your story getting discovered. Readers don't always know what they want to search for, so they'll go browse what's available by clicking around.

I'll go over how to boost some of these stats in future chapters. There are some strategies involved, so stay tuned! For now, I want you to have this basic understanding because the future chapters will build on this knowledge.

What determines the "hotness" of a book under a specific tag?

Wattpad's algorithm determines rankings based on current activity, not just the number of total reads and votes. This is how books with much lower stats can outrank books with millions of reads. This means books that were once hot but have lost activity due to neglect will fall off the hot lists. This is good news for you! You don't have to be a big fish to rank well. In future chapters we'll go over what sorts of activity and strategies will help boost rankings.

Everything is in flux

Just like how Facebook is always tweaking how their post algorithms work, Wattpad is always tweaking their algorithms as well. Most of my knowledge is from before they began tag rankings, so some of the specifics may be out of date (for example, how tags actually work, or how frequently you need to post in order to rank well), but the advice is still sound because regardless of how things are calculated, you still need story activity to get ranked by the machine. Most of the advice that follows will be about increasing your story activity.

FUN FACT: My story, Siena, began getting a lot of readers when it showed up in the top 50 of the Fantasy hot list. Then I switched it to Adventure (less competition) and it managed to hit #1! It really soared then. I was so excited I spent a lot of time dancing around my desk like I was at a rave. Now it's all tags, so switching categories won't matter. (Maybe? I could be wrong. Tags are weird now. Feel free to share your experiences!)