Friday, September 22, 2023

Closing My Account on Wattpad

I never thought I would do this.  I never thought I would close my account on Wattpad.  I never, ever, ever thought that I'd close it.  I'm going to close it.  Once I finish typing this out, I'm going to visit my account on Wattpad and close the account.  Here's why:

I don't have any readers.  

Some of the places I post are hotter than others.  I have tons of hits on Fictionpress, but current readers are few.  The reason I still happily post there is that they list their submissions based on WHEN they were submitted.  That means that if you click on Romance, if I have uploaded a new chapter of my story in the last few days, it will be on the first two pages.  If someone is cruising for something to read, they'll see my story.  

It's the same on Vocal.Media.  They list their submissions by date... and a little bit by popularity, but the biggest point is that the story has a chance to be noticed, if only for a few hours.  Sometimes things get whipped out of sight pretty fast if there have been a lot of submissions.

I mention Fictionpress and Vocal.Media because they are the places where my work is noticed the least.  And I'm still satisfied with them.  I don't need much... just a little traction.

On Wattpad, they highlight only their best and brightest... like stuff that has been made into movies or TV shows because everyone and their dog has read it.  For this reason, I don't think there is the foggiest chance in hell of my getting noticed on Wattpad.  No one will ever even see my stories even if they go digging.  My biggest story there has under 400 hits.  Most of my other stories have under a hundred hits.  Some have under fifty.  I've had my stuff there for years because my trying for years has been rewarded elsewhere.  I keep track of my hits and often a month goes by and I get under five hits for my stories on Wattpad.  On other sites, I get thousands of hits to Wattpad's five.  It's horrific.

It's a shame.

But I have been reforming the way I do my writing and I think saying goodbye to Wattpad makes sense for me.  I'm giving up the stuff that doesn't make me happy and licking the floor on Wattpad has NOT made me happy.  

Cheers to you all!  Read my work elsewhere... which means there's no change.  My best readers are already reading elsewhere.


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