By the time I joined Wattpad in 2015, I only had 1.5 self-published book. Soul City was out while I was working on my second ever book, Zombie Arc.

Every indie author knows that the first book is always the crappiest. It's sort of the schooling stage when an indie author becomes better by making mistakes. As you can imagine, it's a natural and inevitable part of "writing adulting" but it still doesn't make it any less awkward. It's like this ugly-duckling, pimply adolescence phase. Brr! I get goosebumps just thinking about it.

At first, I thought Soul City was this Paranormal / Urban Fantasy / YA Romance a la Twilight. I was that deluded about my masterpiece, my baby. Little did I know it was actually an R-18 Stephen King-inspired horror gore-fest, which, in hindsight, made a lot of sense because Stephen King is one of the writers I read a lot when I was young.

Soul City wasn't called Soul City either. It actually underwent I think around 5 title changes and, in parallel, 5 cover changes. First, I called it "Ghost Light" and then "Serrated" and then "Reapers and Crows" and then "Spirit Wars" and then, finally, "Soul City." If you take a look at my book covers arranged in chronological order above, you'd glimpse the changes that were happening inside me as an author; how my sense was evolving. 

Like I said, the reason I quit Wattpad before was because my works just weren't getting enough love. Worse, I couldn't pinpoint what the exact problem was. One reason was my covers. I went through 3 different categories of cover sophistication. Category 1 absolutely screamed amateur writer. Category 2 was better than most or above average (I knew because some people told me). Category 3 made people want to add my book, open it, try it and, as soon as they did, the cover tied a perfect bow around the content. In other words, the content met the reader's expectations, which had been based both on the cover and their preconceived notions of what a good story should be. Or at least, the cover and the content came close to their approximation of a good story.

It sounds so easy now that I say it in hindsight but, the truth was, improving my covers involved a whole lot of trial-and-error. I transitioned from a Grabber (grab whatever you can find on the Net and slap it on your book) to a Do-It-Yourselfer (who bought premium stock images and edited them on Paint) to a Self-servicer (who had a paid subscription to a templated cover designer software) to a Pre-made Coverer (who scoured for affordable pre-made covers whose design coincided with the book I had in mind).

The improvement of my covers were in direct proportion to my improvement as an indie author. I literally was gaining the know-how by picking up bits and pieces of advice from other indie authors, putting them together in my head and testing them out. I was also evolving as an author from an I-Can-Do-Everything attitude to There-Are-Some-Things-I-Can't-Do to There-Are-Some-Things-I-Shouldn't-Do.

Mind you, nowadays I just outsource all cover design work to cover designers and pay them a reasonable amount, which is why, like I told you in Chapter 1, having a source of income other than writing is almost indispensable.

Still, it's not just your cover. It's a complex interplay of your title, genre, story's placement, theme, plot, writing style, characters and a host of other things. The point is, whether it's "just on Wattpad," there's always the unspoken bond between you and your reader and you always have to make good first impressions by improving your work to the most polished version it can be. Like hygiene and good grooming, this is just a gesture of respect to your reader and potential follower. You're basically telling them: "I value your time as my reader and I don't want to waste it."

Before you know it, Likes, Comments and Follows are going to come and you don't need to ask for them anymore.

Sure, just like IRL, there are shortcuts and cheats on Wattpad. Here I'm referring to flood Votes, Vote-trading, Follow-for-Follow, read-for-read or what have you. But these techniques do more harm than good, especially in the long term. Think about it, if the people who Voted or interacted with your story didn't actually like it, they're not gonna be loyal followers so what's the point? But, if you had devoted the same amount of time and energy in perfecting your story, you stand a better chance of gaining at least one true supporter. Am I right or what?

To be honest I used to also think that Wattpad was all about popularity, how many people have viewed your book and how many followers you have. But my perspective changed when The Boyfriend App won the Wattys. You know what category it won? Hidden Gems.

To this day, if you look at my WP profile, you can see I have less than a thousand Followers. Before I won the Wattys, I think I had less than a hundred. And even today, if you look at the stats of The Boyfriend App, it's just around 200K views and 13K votes. I'm a real lightweight compared to the Rockstars of WP.

If you ask me, I think popularity is important but it's only one of the ingredients of a good WP story. Popularity helps you get a foot in the door, so to speak, but it's still other traits that would get your whole body through. It's just like beauty pageants in a way, I guess. It helps catch the judges' attention if you're the crowd favorite but you still need to have other things like talent, intelligence, beauty, elegance and so on.

In a word, you need to have substance.

Up Next: More on what actually makes a good story on Wattpad

Stay Phenomenal!

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To those who are tuning in late, The Boyfriend App has been published! Yay! 

If you're familiar with the version here on Wattpad, I revised it and added 6 never-before-read chapters plus 1 juicy bonus fan service that reveals what really happened to our beloved leading guy (bot?) Ecto. Plus, the book has a gorgeous new cover designed by the publisher. 

If you'd like to have a copy shipped to your place and sitting on your shelf, just visit my website www.phenomenalpen.com.

Thanks!