Storytelling platform Wattpad is introducing a brand new creator program for writers that may earn them as much as $25,000 in compensation. The corporate can be debuting a brand new metric known as “Engaged Readers,” to assist writers gauge readers’ curiosity of their tales, and Wattpad Creator Portal, a brand new web site for writers to get suggestions and tips about bettering their content material for the platform.
After introducing its Paid Tales mission in 2019, Wattpad has paid greater than $3 million to writers on the platform thus far. With its new creator program, it plans to pay $2.6 million to writers simply this yr.
There are strict pointers to be eligible for the payout program. Writers will need to have had a accomplished novel-length story (50,000 phrases or extra) they usually will need to have printed at the very least one story chapter within the final three months.
Writes should even have at the very least one story in eligible genres like basic fiction, romance, vampire, motion, teen fiction, and horror, with a minimal variety of Engaged Readers for that style. The factors for Engaged Readers differ from 9,000 for basic fiction to 100 for horror. Whereas authors can tag genres for his or her tales by themselves, a staff of specialists vets these tags for the brand new program so the story could be categorized as one of many eligible genres.
The corporate counts an Engaged Reader as somebody who has spent greater than 5 minutes on a narrative within the final 12 months. Wattpad additionally has different metrics like Whole Reads, which is to measure the variety of all-time non-unique reads on a narrative, and Distinctive Reads, which is the every day learn or view by a novel person over 30 days.
Picture Credit: Wattpad
Wattpad just isn’t the primary platform to attempt this sort of metric for paying creators. In 2019, Medium launched an identical technique by measuring learn time on a put up and paying writers accordingly.
The corporate has been testing the Engaged Readers characteristic with a couple of writers to gauge what sort of readers from its 94 million month-to-month lively customers are studying tales for an extended time. It claims that customers spend greater than 23 million minutes on the platform studying varied tales, so this new characteristic will give it extra insights into the place readers are spending extra time.
“As webnovels proceed to develop in recognition around the globe, we’re going to proceed constructing new instruments for writers to do their finest work, develop their fandoms, and in the end earn more money from their tales. Engaged Readers is step one in numerous new initiatives we’re planning for 2022 and past. We’re serving to develop the worldwide webnovel market alongside our authors, creating extra alternatives for writers to develop their fandoms and monetize their work.” the corporate mentioned in an announcement.
Wattpad president Jeanne Lam advised TechCrunch that once you evaluate this to conventional publishing, a bookstore can let you know what number of copies are offered, however they’ll’t let you know if the client learn that e-book.
“The Engaged Readers characteristic provides writers a brand new metric to truly perceive how persons are interacting with their tales up to now yr,” she mentioned.
The Wattpad Creators Program is presently rolling out to English-language writers, with the Philippines and Spanish-language markets arriving subsequent. The corporate is focusing on to incorporate as much as 3,000 writers in this system this yr.
Lam specified that each one writers included in this system will get editorial assist, teaching for advertising and marketing and viewers constructing, entry to particular author instruments and partnership reductions, and alternatives to work with manufacturers. Wattpad additionally needs to offer extra insights to writers as to what sort of tales and plots are working properly on the platform. Nonetheless, not all writers will earn stipends, and there are completely different ranges to achieve the determine of $25,000.
“We’re constructing a creator economic system, for authors, and investing in numerous writers from all around the world. And one of many issues that we all know to be true is how a lot our creators need to thrive on Wattpad. So probably the most beneficial issues we are able to do is assist them via a big funding throughout their complete writing journey, which is one thing that we could be pleased with with this program that we’re launching,” Lam mentioned.
She talked about that even when a author doesn’t qualify for this system, they’ll be taught extra about completely different alternatives and methods to enhance their writing via the brand new Wattpad creator Portal.
Together with this, to make its platform extra engaging for readers, Wattpad will launch unique tales from some marquee writers. These writers embrace romance writer Tamara Lush, who wrote Drive and Crash; Jessica Cunsolo, writer of the With Me sequence — which has over 1 billion reads on the platform with a TV sequence adaptation in works; Kate Marchant, author of the novel and upcoming Robbie Amell-produced movie Float; Sondi Warner, the writer of fantasy novel Lead Me Astray with greater than 260,000 reads; and Claudia Tan, writer of Good Dependancy, one other novel that’s being transformed right into a characteristic movie by Wattpad Webtoon Studios.
The corporate claims that it has transformed 1,500 tales on the platform into completely different sorts of flicks and printed books.
Final yr, Medium revamped its creator program with referral bonuses, aside from counting on how a lot time a reader spent on the story. Different rival platforms like Ghost, Scribd, and Substack deal with the variety of paying subscribers to distribute the cash amongst writers after taking a reduce. Fb additionally launched a brand new platform to assist unbiased writers known as Bulletin final yr.
Nonetheless, Wattpad needs to face out by supporting webnovel writers by providing them a number of methods to become profitable: paid tales, model partnership, potential e-book and film offers, and now, a brand new creator program.
