By Arya D’Cruz
In 2013, the now bestselling author, Anna Todd wrote After, a Harry Styles fanfiction on the online writing platform, Wattpad. Currently, After is a five-book and movie series starring Josephine Langford and Hero Fiennes. Anna Todd is not the only one to realise an author’s ultimate dreams because of online writing platforms. Many authors are often discovered by publishing agents on Wattpad, Inkitt and Inkitt’s sister company, Galatea.
Being a small writer often comes with the preconceived notion of not being a sophisticated writer, and these writers often have to work harder to be taken as seriously as published authors. Jessica Leigh has been writing fantasy stories on Inkitt since 2023. “I’m a big planner. I even go as far as to drawing. I thoroughly plan it out. I want the reading experience to be good from start to finish. The amount of planning I put into it is a lot, just to make sure it’s a good story. I will daydream these stories when I’m driving, when I’m going to bed. Just to kind of play it out and try to get the best reading experience,” said Jessica about her writing process.
Authors pour their heart and soul into the works they put out on these platforms. A free writing platform for the author where readers can find them for free sounds like a dream come true for any writer trying to find a foothold in a cutthroat industry. But the world of free writing and reading can be more complicated than that. Writer who wishes to stay anonymous and goes by the alias Fromhereonout on Wattpad says that “Another struggle is the deflation from a lack of engagement. When you put your work out there it’s a part of you, your heart and your soul, and when it doesn’t gain the views or readers that you want it to – you wonder why? You reread your work over and over again, second guessing and questioning things, wondering what to change to gain some involvement. This is another trap of online writing – you can constantly change and edit if you are unhappy with something, whereas if traditionally published it’s out there and can’t be changed so you have to accept what you’ve written and be happy with it. Online you can fall into the trap of constantly rewording or changing your work until you are that unsatisfied with the continued lack of engagement despite your changes that you can give up on your work.”
When Wattpad originally began, it was a fully free app for both readers and writers. Eventually, ads were introduced, and in 2019, Wattpad introduced its paid books. A few selected books that are wildly popular amongst readers would be put into their paid stories program, where readers now have to subscribe to read these stories. The paid program helps small authors who can now receive incentives for their hard work, but it also seems to be pushing readers out of the app, which reverts to harming independent authors. “I’ve noticed with Wattpad that, compared to when I initially joined, when reading was completely free, there is now paid books and adverts – which you can purchase a subscription for to avoid. This, I do not agree with. I feel that reading should be readily available to everyone and if a book is not part of the paid programme then readers shouldn’t have to watch an advert after every chapter which can be jarring, off putting and ultimately lead to frustration and a lack of interest in continuing to read online work – which harms authors, too!” said Wattpad writer Fromhereonout.
Inkitt functions slightly differently from Wattpad; they do not have ads on the app, and even though they do give the option of having subscription-based stories, the writers retain 100% of the earnings from these. Jessica Leigh feels that Inkitt makes up for this with their sister app, Galatea, a mainly payment-based reading app. Jessica said that she feels the percentages the authors make on that app are “laughable”. “You would get 6% of the royalties if the reader just went to Galatea and found your book randomly or you get 70% if they go through your link. So you either get 6% or 70%. It’s a big difference, plus you’re paying German taxes and whatever country’s taxes where you live, because Galatea is based out of Germany,” said Jessica. Jessica, who lives in the U.S, said that hypothetically if her book made 100 dollars on Galatea, she would get a whopping 3 dollars out of that.
Witch of Hellridge, who wishes to stay anonymous, is another author who publishes mainly on Inkitt and was offered a WebNovel contract but declined due to its “foggy” conditions. Witch of Hellridge said that they did not have an actual percentage presented to her, and had no way of checking how much she would make from her books if she were to publish them on the platform. “So they could say that they spend in your story more money than it actually earned and they won’t give you any money from it”, said the writer.
A lot of readers have often gone to different online reading platforms for easier accessibility to a wide variety of books without having to pay for them. But it is not often that readers wonder how much effort an independent writer puts into their books, and the struggles of keeping up with these platforms that are constantly changing.
