[Article originally published in Italian. English translation made by Light Wolf (Psycofeather), with the additional revision of JoSeBach.]

In this article I will tell you about the most known problems in the site in question and I will give you some advice in order to use it efficiently.

PROS and CONS

Wattpad is a platform with virtues and vices.

It gives a great opportunity to communicate with your followers, who can comment on every single sentence of your book. There are contest regularly, both the official ones, called Wattys, and amateur contests organized by other users. There are reading and review exchanges (some are for a fee to join and others are for free) in which you can find some troublemakers but also a lot of skilled and available people.

I cut my teeth on that platform throughcriticism, mistakes and consultations. There are also many people available to listen to you and give you advice, and the ambassadors (staff in direct contact with the community) have always been helpful and friendly.

However, if you wish to become famous... the road is not just uphill: it is confused due to a series of problems. Meanwhile, the algorithm (whose details are unknown) might sometimes make you descend, sometimes fall, or make you disappear from the rankings without any explanation: you can receive your own visuals ten times in the span of a day and yet perform lower compared to a story with one single visual. Since those who are most popular go up, who is already famous gets even more popular (see some of the stories we demolish here).

Do not attempt to exchange votes with others. This method doesn't work!
Winning the Wattys, which isn't an easy feat, won't make you a popular writer: it will only be a personal accomplishment.

On the other hand, you can try to create a discrete fandom and then attempt to self-publish through an ebook.

How can you become popular on Wattpad, if there are so many drawbacks?

Follow my guide: it doesn't focus exclusively on Wattpad, but it occasionally deals with this subject and the writing tips could be helpful for you in general.Subscribe to reading exchanges: you may find people who have a dream similar to yours and establish an exchange of advice through mutual help; at the very least, you will get some comments. Always attempt to finish your part, be honest and do not be arrogant. When possible, try to do it with stories of your own genre. I happened to present the only fantasy amongst four love stories, and in one of them the fantasy lover was the "loser male whose purpose is to make the alpha male stand out".Participate in contests: it will be a fair test.Subscribe to the review services (note: there are judges who specify their degree of severity. If you're new to the game, don't look for ruthless or trolling reviewers: it will only hurt your self-esteem. You should rather wait until you have done a lot of practice with more lenient reviewers).If you want, you can arrange private exchanges between you and other users, but look for reliable people.Also talk about other topics, open collections, write other genres.Have collaborations with other pages concerning themes you love: this will make you well-known.Try to collaborate with some bloggers to advertise your projects.

Whatever you're going to do, remember: whoever offers to work with you is not an employee of yours, but a person who is providing you a service. Therefore, you must be the first to respect themand not be pushy or controversial.

Library and Reading Lists

A novice user couldeasily get confused.

These two types of collection are very different:

library: it is private, therefore, if you add a story to it, the story's author is oblivious;reading list: it's public.

Try not to get confused, I was once disqualified from a contest because I made a mistake because of this!

I don't see any difference!

You may not be able to see the edits authors made to their story and viceversa.

This is a bug, annoying but easy to fix.
All you have to do is:

remove the story in question from your libraryleave that section and wait a minute (as a precaution)submit it again.

Then you will see all the latest version.

How to defend against cyberbullies

On Wattpad, like in all other platforms, you may encounter cyberbullies. They can be troublemakers, reviewers who just insults others and so on.

What to do?

First of all, take a screenshot of the insult and pay attention to include the name, text, date and maybe something else, in case the bully changes their nickname.

If you don't know how to do it, here are step-by-step instructions on how to take a screenshot on a Windows computer:

StartProgramsAccessoriesScreenshot Tools

Now you have tangible proof. The report, in any case, could be a long procedure. You should avoid responding to bullies and trolls and there is nothing wrong with blocking them: they are not people you are debating with when they are just insulting you.

Wattpad should be a positive experience, don't let them ruin it!

Vietnamese mirror site

Since several times questions about the Vietnamese replica have been pointed out, I report the following.

I talked about this with an admin: the mirror site automatically copies published stories, but it doesn't steal your personal data. Consider, moreover, that Wattpad is immense, so it is unlikely that someone will stand there watching and rummaging through the thousand stories that are created or modified every day.

The only thing NOT TO DO is to visit the site. From what I've been told, you'd be flooded with viruses, leading to more than just a few problems.

If it makes you feel safer, consider to add a disclaimer on your account description such as: "this story is owned byXYZ, stealing it is a crime".

Keep in mind that this site must have been active for at least a few years, and how many times have there been reports of theft? None, as far as I've known.

So you don't have to worry about that at all!

ONE-WORDED WALL OF TEXT

You may have copied or pasted the text on Wattpad, but you notice that many words are stuck together. Why is that?

This is a simple bug of the system.

An easy and quick way to get over it is to "paste only as text", not simply "paste", whose shortcut is generally CTRL+Shift+V.

Take this precaution and the text will be clear to you!

Fanwriter91