Other platforms for novels

[Toastbuster]

Heya fellow writers. Just out of curiosity, have you posted your novels to any other platforms besides Tapas? If so, what are they, and what’s good/bad about them? Tapas is a great platform, easily my favorite of the three I currently use (I’m also on Quotev and Fictionpress) but I’m interested in seeing what else is out there

[mcmx]

I only upload on Tapas but am thinking of uploading on wattpad because of all its hype

[Toastbuster]

@mcmx I’ve heard mixed opinions about Wattpad. I think it was sort of the default back in the day but to my understanding it’s gone downhill in recent years. I think that was one of the first places I considered when I started out, but ultimately decided against it. Can’t remember the exact reason why though

[cherrystark]

Wattpad was the first site that I was on before coming here. It's great for fanfiction and teen-based stuff. The library is HUGE so it's really hard for serious writers to get ahead.

[nostalgicroxas]

puts on a gloom and doom hat

Multiple places, and honestly, none have worked out. The only one to outpace Tapas until recent in views (but not seeming real interaction) was Booksie. Wattpad from all of my experience is "READ FOR READ" and "omg fanficcccc" and "weeee join my group and talk to me who's popular and then you'll be popularrrrrr" coattails and things that don't work for me. As @cherrystark said - Wattpad is great for fanfiction, as are most other sites I've ever looked at or tried to post on.

Sooooo... Yeah. Tapas: actual real interaction with likes and returning readers, no real comments yet
Every other site including Ao3, Wattpad, Figment, fictionpress, ect p.o.s. site: you're better off sending your writing sentence by sentence to someone in a prison who'll be tortured for years to find out what happens next and be mad when it never is more than a sentence.

Also before you upload anywhere, carefully read the ToS to check about copyright and rights being retained by authors. Some of the sites are muddy, murky, and abusive to writers.

[EncryptedWriting]

Wattpad
Royal Roads
Scribble Hub
Inkitt

[Toastbuster]

@nostalgicroxas gloomy as your response is, you make some excellent points. Quotev can have decent interaction if you play your cards right, but it’s mostly fanfic and there’s a lot of kids who just want “sub 4 sub” type deals, which I’m not interested in at all. I’m also 26 and write some pretty dark stuff geared more toward adults, so finding an audience there can be a challenge. As for Fictionpress.... well... you pretty much summed it up with that prison analogy lol

[vapidink]

I have stuff up on Wattpad, been there for years, and it's been great tbh. It's a bit more difficult to get your story out there now that there no more forums. It does help to promote on social media and be active in the site, and there's a lot of stuff to read there. There's some quality stuff too, you just gotta look for it!

I was also on Fictionpress ages ago, and I did alright, but it was harder to get reads and there wasn't much of a community.

[nostalgicroxas]

That's my biggest thing on most other sites : you either have to be a social butterfly and super extrovert, have tons of time, know how to "game" whatever system is in place (ie some places you don't get reads unless you already have 50+ likes on your work), or if none of those, the site is largely dead with viewers just wandering about.

Don't get me wrong - Tapas forums are alive, but it's largely the same "death", where creators who are not looking to consume new works most times. Therefore, posting on the forums themselves, doesn't seem to gain any real attention.

That said. I have no idea how my works on Tapas have thrived past my doom and gloom attitude of expecting the site to be akin to that prison analogy I laid out before. I'm just happy that I have a few readers, silent though they may be

[vapidink]

I'm super introverted and have no time so I dunno how I've managed, lol. Tbh, it's tough to get an audience anywhere, because it's like you said, everyone is looking to be seen instead of looking at others. A lot of it, I think is just luck. You get noticed by the right people, you post the right content at the right time.

I can't speak for Tapas though because I've only ben here a week.

[nostalgicroxas]

Give it time honestly. I thought I was sol when I started on Tapas. I had very minimal views and interaction and went "meh guess this site's dead for me" and then I got sick and forgot about the site for over a month in the spring, and that's when I had the most reads?

Of note, I average like 90-120 views a month. The spikes are binge readers who pop on for a day and then poof.

[vapidink]

Yeah, things always start slow, but it's kinda neat to start over in another site and build things up from scratch. Or mostly scratch, lol. So far I'm happy with the engagement! But I only have three chapters, so, there's that.

[MShadowlawn]

Wattpad is the only site that I've ever outright pulled my works from, it's just that bad. You're not going to get a single goddamn view organically unless you've already got a following or you get lucky enough to end up on Wattpad Featured. Not to mention, it's swarmed with bad werewolf romance stories and k-pop fanfics. Mostly k-pop fanfics, if we're being honest. Perhaps the thing that irks me most about it is that you can end up looking at your own chapters repeatedly, and those will be counted as views. Being a first time author thirsting for recognition, I ended up inflating my view count massively on accident so I couldn't even see what my real view count was.

As for the other sites I'm still posted on?
RoyalRoad-Not the greatest experience, if we're being honest. At first, I was taking it super seriously, but looking back I see so many problems that it's not even funny. On paper, it had the best viewership/engagement, but that took several review swaps to accomplish. Without those review swaps, I really wasn't getting anywhere in particular compared to some other sites. Personally, I'd be okay with relying on review swaps if the swaps themselves felt reasonably fair, but I've had some really bad review swaps with criticism that ranged from nitpicks(which don't bother me that much, to be honest) to being outright unfair or exaggerated(a great example of this is tense shifting), and then infer that I can't take criticism out on the forums when I quite rightly point out how ridiculous they're being in response. Perhaps it's mostly a fundamental mismatch between Urban Wolf's genre/style and the platform, but I've quickly realized that I don't value that platform's feedback anymore. For those reasons, I'm not even bothering to publish my third act on that platform.

It's likely to be a much better fit if your story could be described as isekai, gamelit/LitRPG, Xianxia, or similar. But, for my purposes I found the community to be not that friendly and engaging, as everyone was just out for a review swap for the most part(I say this, knowing I have found at least one good colleague among my over a dozen review swaps).

Scribblehub-Pretty solid website, good viewership, but very, VERY little engagement outside of a lot of favorites I have received on individual chapters. Analytics are also somewhat confusing to me. Beware: On this website, covers matter even more than usual. Addendum: I'd describe it as "Wattpad but not actually trash" in terms of the style of sorting categories/tags used to sort posts and in some part the general feel of the place.

Inkitt- Don't even bother. Their highly intrusive and totalitarian cover art system couldn't even get the cover of my book right, and their analytics are some of the most obtuse and confusing I've ever seen. Perhaps more aggravatingly, they go out of their way to tell you that you should do your own marketing on the forums if you want any views at all(To my knowledge, organic views of my story there were completely nonexistent). To be honest, I should go pull my content from them once I'm done with this post.

There's also been a lot of drama and nasty stuff regarding Inkitt, if you're willing to dig some dirt. Overall, it just looks like Wattpad to me with even more drama, despite their wonderful premise of taking those few stories worthy to legit publishing (even though their actual KDP publishing program is a complete farce to say the least).

MoonQuill-Of all the sites, I feel Moonquill has had the most consistent viewership overall. On my RoyalRoad release less than a third of my reads on my first chapter are reflected in the final chapter of the first act, while on MoonQuill 75% of views on my opening chapters are reflected in the last chapter of act one. The problem is, I have not even once gotten any form of special engagement aside from just the views. Regardless, since they have a very nice publishing program, I'm treating Moonquill as my stronghold and I'm publishing my third act there. Maybe Tapas can earn its spot as my second stronghold, though!

[Toastbuster]

@MShadowlawn this was very helpful. Thank you! Regarding the infiltrating your own views thing, do you have any idea if this is a thing that happens on Tapas too? I haven’t been able to tell tbh

[MShadowlawn]

It's definitely a thing for at least one view(At least, I think), but that might actually be normal procedure for websites like this. With Wattpad, you can end up racking up multiple views on your own chapter, even on the same day, and that's a big part of what drove me fucking ballistic about it. I just did a little stress test and I don't think that happens on Tapas, though, which is amazing to hear for me.

The main thing that really draws me to Tapas is that the entire energy of the community feels so much different; it's not just a bunch of starving artists in rags searching for review swaps (to put this in perspective, RoyalRoad has an entire forum section dedicated to review swaps), people ask questions that are actually interesting, and the general atmosphere somehow feels better. Maybe it's just my view that has changed on review swaps(I'm now deeply cynical about them), if I'm being completely honest, but that's my impression of Tapas so far.

[CarltonIsaac]

Amazon (KDP) and GoodReads.

[MShadowlawn]

That's my biggest thing on most other sites : you either have to be a social butterfly and super extrovert, have tons of time, know how to "game" whatever system is in place (ie some places you don't get reads unless you already have 50+ likes on your work), or if none of those, the site is largely dead with viewers just wandering about.

Don't get me wrong - Tapas forums are alive, but it's largely the same "death", where creators who are not looking to consume new works most times. Therefore, posting on the forums themselves, doesn't seem to gain any real attention.

That said. I have no idea how my works on Tapas have thrived past my doom and gloom attitude of expecting the site to be akin to that prison analogy I laid out before. I'm just happy that I have a few readers, silent though they may be

Honestly... Y E S . The amount of review swaps I felt the need to do on RoyalRoad completely changed my perspective on the practice. I've been trying to gain ground and publicity posting on all these websites and whatnot, but I've sort of realized that roaming around and trying to drum up publicity is basically pointless when I could just be writing instead.

And not gonna lie, but your stance on how most websites are like sounds almost Kafkaesque (and I dig it).

[skyfarron]

Inkitt didn't like my first novel, but they liked its sequel. So they only accepted the sequel. Seeing that, I just took them both down. They weren't looking for people to show them what we can do, they were looking for what they already wanted and just grabbing things that looked shiny.

Amazon is run by Lex Luthor's real-life counterpart, so I try not to use it.

Wattpad got me a lot of views but zero engagement. It feels less like a place to thrive on your own terms and more like a share-engine for movie producers to swoop down and snatch your story, then butcher it before presenting its bones in front of an audience.

Tapas was willing to restore my works after a horrible experiment of mine in vulgarity went wrong, and I took it down. They may not actively promote my comics or novels, but just by updating frequently I always find my work in the Fresh or Popular section of my genre, so if someone wanted to go looking, they could still find it. That's good enough for me, the rest should be my job anyway.

I quit Twitter cause it's dusty, but I recently hopped back on Tumblr for self-promotion because their tone (after the porn ban) fits my novels pretty well, and imo fits most Tapas content in the PG-13 rating. If your story is mature, though, better stick to Twitter.

[ratscout]

Here's my personal experience with these platforms:

I'll start with duh-duh-duh-duh! Tapas!: From my experience, this is a fantastic site to get to know other authors and build bridges. Most people are super polite on the forums, and doing read-for-reads on this site has been pretty nifty. I appreciate that there is no rating system on this site, either, so a person has to actually read a work to gauge whether they like it. I also appreciate that Tapas occasionally features smaller creators--that's how I got a decent following on this site. The only real drawback I can think of is that you really have to commit to the romance umbrella if you want a consistent following, and that novels really get stuck in the shadow of comics. Additionally, Tapas just doesn't feature smaller creators to the same degree they used to.

Next, I will go over my experience with Wattpad: Holy smokes, for such a popular website, I have never felt more invisible as an author than I do on this site right here. No views, no comments, no likes, no nothing! Again, this site seems to favor romance... and not the kind of romance I like. XD I'm spacing right now on whether the site does ratings--I don't think they do?--which is kinda nice, I guess. I do want to say however: You should probably at least TRY putting your story up on here, because if it gets featured, well... you've got an audience.

Next I will go over my early experience with Fictionate.me: Honestly, I like this site a lot so far. I think the readers there actually appreciate the most underappreciated genre of all: sci-fi, and I also appreciate that you can put your story up on there for some mon if you so choose. Haven't been on there long at all, but I got some engagement, and I also really like that your story automatically gets like, an audiobook version when you throw it up. XD It's like a robot voice reading it, but it's still relaxing and good if you haven't got time on your hands to actually read. The drawback is that the interface is a little bit hard to get a handle on. Also, I don't think this site does ratings either, which is nice. The front page of the site looks a little messy, but I do like the fact that they lots of different rows like: Consistent writers (my favorite), new books, trending, and top paid books.

Next I will go over my early experience with Neonovel: I really, really like this site so far. I think the overall design is really appealing and you get a share of the revenue from your story. Additionally, I think the interface is really easy to get a handle on, and I really like that the site has a specific row on the front page for new stories, popular stories, fresh trends of the month, etc. it feels like they give everyone a chance in the sun, which is awesome. The site does do ratings (which I don't like) but it also does reviews! (which I do like!). I encourage everyone to give it a shot! My story was also featured as a fresh trend and a sensational arrival, which I really appreciate. <3

Moonquill: This is a pretty good site, too! I got on the featured novels list, and I have gotten quite a few views on the site. There's not really much engagement, but at least I know people are looking at the darned thing, you know. XD I think the design of the site and the interface is pretty self explanatory, and I love, love, love, how you can separate your book into volumes on this site! <3 The site unfortunately does ratings, but it also does reviews, so it balances out. They also have a spot on the front page for stories that have just updated! This site has a variety of different popular genres, which is really nice.

RoyalRoad: To be honest, this might have been my favorite site of the bunch for these reasons--it has an awesome interface, it features authors who have just updated right on the front page, and I got a lot of engagement even without doing review exchanges. The interface and design of the site is also gorgeous. However, I found the readers to be, like... incredibly picky and kind of rude? XD I also hate the ratings and reviews system. Like, someone can just come by and leave a bad rating on your story, but not a review, and you'll never know what bothered them about it. And people do this A LOT on this site. A variety of stories are also popular on this site (even though it does lean shivers Isekai). I do plan to continue uploading there again eventually, but man, I needed a break. XD

Last but not least: Smashwords: Not a bad site at all! You can price your book however you like, and you get part of the cut. Engagement is okay, and I've actually had a few sales on the site (even though most of the stuff is up there for free). The biggest pain about this site is that it's a pain to get into the premium catalog. XD Romance seems popular here, too, which kinda sucks for me.

And that is my longwinded review of each of them. I hope you enjoy. XD

[skyfarron]

Whoah, I've never heard of half of these! Thanks, @ratscout!