Wattpad
Wattpad is a website for reading and publishing original fiction and connecting with fellow writers and readers. Its most popular genres are romance, teen fiction, and fan fiction. As of September 2023, Wattpad has a global audience of more than 90 million users, the majority of whom are younger women. There are over 665 million story uploads in total.
Some stories originally published on Wattpad have been adapted into mainstream novels, TV series, and films, including After and The Kissing Booth series. In January 2019, Wattpad launched its own publishing division, Wattpad Books, to simplify publishing for authors. In January 2021, Naver Corporation announced that it would acquire Wattpad, and the deal was completed in May 2021.
History
Growth and funding
Wattpad was developed in 2006 as the result of a collaboration between Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen. The company is based in Toronto, Ontario. As of January 2018, Wattpad had received almost $117.8M in funding from investors. In 2011, Wattpad announced that it received $3.5M in total funding from its current investors, and from W Media Ventures, Golden Venture Partners, and Union Square Ventures. Then in June 2012, Wattpad raised $17.3M from a group of venture funds led by Khosla Ventures. In April 2014, they announced a $46M Series C of funding led by OMERS ventures. In January 2018, Wattpad announced $51M in funding from Tencent Holdings Limited, BDC, Globe Telecom's Kickstart Ventures, Peterson Group, Canso, and existing investor Raine.Awards
In December 2011, Wattpad was selected as the hottest digital media company in the country at the Canadian Innovation Exchange. In the same year, co-founder and CEO Ivan Yuen was recognized as a top Canadian entrepreneur at the Impact Infused Awards, sponsored by Deloitte.In March 2014, Wattpad partnered with Pop Fiction, an imprint of Summit Media, to market Filipino Wattpad stories. Other publishers from the Philippines also publish stories from Wattpad.Since then, some Wattpad stories have also been adapted into teleseryes. Filipino television network TV5, in partnership with Wattpad and Life is Beautiful Publishing Company, launched Wattpad Presents, a series of Wattpad stories turned into TV dramas. Wattpad stories aired on the show are usually those that were published by LIB Publishing.
ABS-CBN also made several adaptations of Wattpad stories such as "My App Boyfie" by Noreen Capili, starring James Reid and Nadine Lustre, and the coming-of-age series Bagito starring Nash Aguas, Alexa Ilacad, and Ella Cruz. Pop Fiction's best-selling book, She's Dating the Gangster, written by Bianca Bernardino as a Wattpad original, became the first Wattpad story adapted into a full-length motion picture starring Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla. The movie adaptation was produced by ABS-CBN's film production arm, Star Cinema. Liza Soberano and Enrique Gil also starred in the film Just The Way You Are, based on the Wattpad story "The Bet" by Ilurvbooks. "Chasing Red" was published by isabelleronin, a Filipino-Canadian writer who got more than 200 million views. In 2021, He's Into Her, a novel written by Maxinejiji, will premiere on iWant TFC, starring Belle Mariano and Donny Pangilinan. GMA Network has also started making adaptations of Wattpad stories via Luv Is, a series of stories turned into dramas similar to that of TV5 but the stories are longer.
Competitors
and the long-established and popular sites FanFiction.Net and Fiction Press also serve as hubs for online prose. Archive of Our Own or AO3 is another free and open source alternative site. Monogatary.com is named after a stylized romanization of. It is also a novel-centered social networking service about creative writing and illustrations, founded in October 2017. RoyalRoad hosts LitRPG and isekai/portal fantasy novels primarily, but also a wide range of other fiction. Scribble Hub primarily hosts LitRPG, isekai, and xianxia, with a significant minority of transgender and other queer fiction.Acquisition by Naver
In January 2021, Wattpad announced that it would be acquired by Naver Corporation in a $600 million cash-and-stock deal. Together with Naver's other platform, WEBTOON.com, the acquisition of Wattpad has extended the company's global reach to 166 million people worldwide. In an interview, Lau states: "It's also been very clear from Naver, and we agree, that we should operate as independently as possible." Wattpad will remain headquartered in Canada and under its current leadership.Platform Overview
According to a June 2009 Wattpad press release, the application had been downloaded over 5 million times. In March 2009, an iPhone version was released. This was followed by the launch of BlackBerry App World in April 2009, on Android in June 2009, and on Apple in April 2010. In December 2015, a Windows version was also released. Currently, Wattpad has more than 90 million users who collectively spend 15 billion minutes each month using Wattpad. As of 2018, there are more than 400 million fan fiction uploads.Sister apps
In February 2015, Wattpad launched a second standalone app called "After Dark". The app focuses on the romance genre and is intended for adult readers.In February 2017, Wattpad launched a chat stories app called Tap, which offers stories in the form of text messages as if reading a private conversation on someone else's phone. The app was an early success, with over 240 million taps in the first few weeks after the launch. On July 28, 2017, Tap launched "Tap Originals." This was a series of original stories produced by writers every week, with some of these series working on an episode-by-episode basis.
Paid stories
On November 13, 2018, Wattpad introduced "Next Beta" to a few select countries for early testing. The launch of the Next Beta featured over 50 stories that were to be paid for with Watt Coins, which could be earned by having readers spend coins to unlock participating Next Beta stories. This offered writers the chance to earn money through their work and to provide support for readers. Wattpad planned a fast-follow launch for Next Beta in Spanish-speaking regions and to expand the program. The program was available in Latin America and Spain beginning May 27, 2019, before expanding worldwide on July 11 of the same year. On September 17, 2019, the Wattpad Team announced the ending of the Next Beta program after results from the program showed that "Wattpadders are ready for a program that funds writers". The program was later rebranded to "Paid Stories".Wattpad Books
On January 24, 2019, Wattpad launched the publishing division Wattpad Books led by Wattpad Studios' Publishing Deputy Manager Ashleigh Gardner, with operations managed by Wattpad Studios' Publishing Director Deanna McFadden. According to CEO Allen Lau, this project was in an effort to take the "guesswork" out of publishing.The Wattpad Books acquisitions team uses a mix of machine learning algorithms and human editors. The acquisitions team looks to Wattpad's large and existing digital library in order to select notable material for publication. According to Wattpad Books leader Ashleigh Gardner, this is in an effort to combat bias inherent in human editors. Gardner says that this technology analyses the data behind each title, looking at story structure and word use in addition to levels of reader engagement per title. This data is then compared to analyses of other books on Wattpad and in the public domain. Once all the data has been collected and engagement has been looked at, human staffers read the titles and create their lists.
All published titles are a combination of international hits and notable but known material from their digital library. These titles are distributed by Macmillan, Raincoast Books, and Penguin Random House in India and the United Kingdom, with their Fall 2019 list available in leading North American retailers. Outside North America, Gardner has sold the rights to Hachette for Deanna Cameron's What Happened Last Night. Additionally, Lauren Palphreyman's rights to Cupid's Match have been sold in French and German.
Wattpad's first list consisted of six young adult novels. The QB Bad Boy & Me by Tay Marley will be their lead title and was slated for release on August 13, 2019. The remaining five books will be released between September and October 2019 and include: Trapeze by Leigh Ansell, What Happened That Night by Deanna Cameron, Saving Everest by Sky Reads, Cupid's Match by Lauren Palphreyman, and I'm a Gay Wizard by V.S. Santoni. Wattpad hopes to publish 18 titles in their 2020 list.
Besides Wattpad Books, Wattpad announced a partnership with Anvil Publishing, Inc., one of the Philippines' leading publishers, to create Bliss Books, a YA imprint with Filipino young adults and romance fanatics as their target market. In February 2007, Wattpad announced the addition of over 17,000 e-books from Project Gutenberg, making them available to mobile users.
Statistics
As of September 2020:- More than 80% of its traffic and usage comes from mobile devices
- The site has 90 million monthly users
- There were over 665 million story uploads in total
- 70% of users are female, 80% of whom are millennials or Gen Z
Platform usage
Publishing
Famous authors such as Margaret Atwood and R. L. Stine have also joined Wattpad. Atwood has posted poetry and judged a poetry contest on the platform. Stine has used Wattpad to post chapters of his books and has done interactive events with readers.Wattpad has formed ties with publishing houses to try to help Wattpad authors receive compensation for their works. A new branch, Wattpad Studios, was developed to connect popular writers to both the publishing and film industries. Wattpad has, in the past, teamed up with publishing groups such as Sourcebooks to help Wattpad authors receive book deals and get their work into hard copies. More traditional publishing houses such as Random House and HarperCollins have approached popular Wattpad writers to negotiate publishing deals, allowing the website to serve as a springboard into the more traditional publishing industry.
Author Anna Todd, whose work After has received over a billion reads on the site, was given a publishing deal with Simon & Schuster to turn her online work into a multiple-book published saga. A film version starring Josephine Langford, Hero Fiennes Tiffin, Selma Blair, Jennifer Beals, Peter Gallagher, and Shane Paul McGhie was released by Aviron Pictures on April 12, 2019.