Your thoughts on Wattpad and/or Tablo?

[Greetings]

Hey, guys!

I'm interested in branching out a bit more this year and trying sites that are specifically targeted towards people looking for novels. I haven't posted to any of these platforms asides from Tapas, and I was wondering if you had any experiences with Wattpad, Tablo, or any other websites; be it negative or positive, I'd love to hear your opinions!
Was the community nice? Were your novels well protected? Which genres were the most popular? How difficult was it to grow as a writer on there? Anything else you'd like to add?

Thanks a lot in advance for your replies and have a great day!

[silverraven0]

The community I've ever been is actually very nice, but the majority of the community, especially the fanfic one might be toxic, according to a lot of users.

Spam and troll exist, and so plagiarist and copyists. You can get the account and works to be taken down by reporting them, or for direct result, contact the ambassador (of the corresponding country and language). They works well and kind enough.

I haven't been here for some time but I still believe that BL, fanfic (of popular things), and romance is still popular.

Growing on wattpad is slow, except you enter the right fanfic community.

So far I'm pretty much good with wattpad bit maybe I'm just in the right community. I also lurking on the ambassador page a lot too in the past, to see information of some very troublesome troll and toxic users that git reported. OwO

[KRWright]

Wattpad is a mixed bag - it's the largest platform for sure - but it also doesn't have very good monetization options and it can take years to get noticed unless you somehow get lucky, get featured, or get nominated for a Watty. The community for LGBT writers and readers is very very awesome and I love all the friends I made there, but since the tagging system overtook the genres system, fanfic has become king over there. It can be hard to establish a fanbase and promotions in the clubs (i.e. the forums) is basically banned outside a few threads so you have to rely on luck and word -of-mouth/previously established author platform.

That being said - if you manage to crack the Wattpad Code, as it were, there's tons of opportunities for writers over there and there can be tons of exposure. Plenty of writers have gone on to be published from Wattpad an the big 5 do trawl the site looking for the Next Big Thing.

But yeah... Mixed bag I'd say.

[ISNEKO]

Over a few months I posted every book I wrote to both this site and Wattpad and couldn't get a single soul to follow me over there. When I started nearing 1k on Tapas and still zero in Wattpad, I decided to just stop altogether and just post here.

[YaoiParadise]

I started on wattpad back in high school and stuck with it for 7years, and I would never go back.

In my experience the community has grown extremely toxic and i saw some of the most disgusting hate messages. The site is overpopulated with tweens living their fantasies through fanfic, and stories are chalk full of romanticized abuse and rape.

You can find some original stories few and far between, but unless you're a BL writer finding an audience is going to me hard.
3 years on my newest account (shut down three others due to hateful people including one who thought she was doing me a favor by rewriting my book for me) got me up to about 3k followers. I've been on tapas for 1.5 years and have already reached that again.

I really wouldn't recommend wattpad unless you're casually posting works you aren't interested in doing anything with, and are just looking to build a fanbase of children and teens who will demand updates every ten minutes and complain if the story doesn't go exactly how they want it

[lil-sea-salt]

I think everyone has said basically everything I feel about Wattpad @ISNEKO has essentially the same experiences as me.

I have tried this new site called Webnovel tho and OMG I got like 1k views in a couple days. That takes about 4-5 months for me usually on Tapas. It's a little niche though but there are a lot more readers than authors so it's a lot easier to get views than it is here.

But my novel is still pretty fresh on there so I don't want to give a glowing recommendation as I haven't felt out the whole community and readers yet. My views have stagnated to about 200 per day after 5 days on the site. Maybe the algorithm will drop recommending me soon, but it is nice for now.

If you haven't checked it out . . . I would recommend it as I have had some nice experiences.

[ISNEKO]

Very interesting. Will give this website a look. Thanks for the info.

[spicy_sweets]

I mainly go to wattpad for criticism via the forums tbh. I used to be in multiple book clubs, but I didn't like the idea of forcing people to read my works. Now I don't advertise as much.

[Maps]

I posted my novel to Wattpad for a while and I felt like I didn't get anything from it. The community seems younger (so if you're looking for mature stories, I don't know if they're as popular there). I also tried A03 which I got more hits with but it still was a ton of fanfiction and I am writing an original story.
So I came to Tapas and it's been the best move. I've got readers, I've got a great community and I've even started comics.
I do wish there was a site to post more mature novels to though. Sometimes I feel like my novel can feel a little out of place here still. (I'm not just talking about smut. My story has an actual plot, but it's dark and has violence and sex so, you know. I just want to find the proper audience I guess).

[Maps]

Exactly what happened to me!

[DasIstWunderblyat]

You're a big writer here, so maybe you'll get it easier as your audience follows.

My opinion on Wattpad is very low; the audience is wack, the drama is wack, and they're strongly biased to one or two types of genre/theme. I have no subscriber gain in that site; I find the forum less helpful, and there are less opportunity to promote yourself whatsoever. In short, I don't recommend it; it's a site that no longer can be saved and more polluted than earth.

Following this thread to look for recommendation, I feel dissatisfied here and want a refreshment.

[raekitano]

I start publishing over at Wattpad back in 2012. And boy was it a kick back then.
The people were awesome, there was Meebo (only the originals will remember this- it was instant messenger before Google purchased it and had to be removed - you could see your followers online and chat with them directly - those were the days).
Then around 2015 it went to shit. Algorithms changed and only those Wattpad were supporting starting doing well. I went from having top stories and lots of subs to nothing overnight. I only keep my account because of the number of subs I still have (and occasionally get) and my LGBT Beta Reader book, which people still are part of.
The sites extremely toxic now and I would never go back.

Now for Tablo. I'm actually the mod there for the LGBT community (surprise). Tablo is based in Melbourne and Ash (the creator) is a great guy whom I've had contact with. Tablo is a little different in that it offers writers the opportunity to publish their story to Amazon when complete. Tablo (for a fee) will assist with editing, covers, and publishing. The platform is easy to use and I'd recommend any writer join and look around the site and get a better understanding as to how it works. Images can be added to chapters very easily and the platform could be used for comics but it's not. I mentioned the community, which isn't very active, I just don't think there are enough people on the site to make it work at the moment. But there is a lot of potential for Tablo.

Edit: It was Google who purchase Meebo not Facebook.

[JamesBrown]

Wattpad and Tablo are nice communities. Where you can read novel books.

[Greetings]

Thanks a lot for all your replies, it was very interesting to read!
After giving it some thought, I don't think I'm feeling adventurous enough to give Wattpad a go yet. Though I will try Tablo as it seems like a nice platform from what @raekitano had to say about it, while continuing to post on Tapas!
Thank you!!