Wattpad gets into the Digital Publishing Game
It was inevitable, as Wattpad gets into the digital publishing game.
GoodEReader reported in 2014 that Wattpad, the giant free stories platform, was entering the digital publishing business.
In early May of 2014, it was reported that Wattpad had decided to e-publish two of its most famous stories. My Wattpad Love has over 19 million reads. A Proscriptive Relationship has over 30 million reads on Wattpad.
Perspective on the Digital Publishing Game
To provide some perspective, it’s important to note that Stephen King has sold a total of 350 million books, but this is spread over 49 works, giving him an average of a little over 7 million sales apiece. Of course sales and free reads on a website aren’t the same thing, but these sheer numbers are still rather impressive.
Conversions
But can free readers convert over to paying customers? Just as importantly, Wattpad is a social site. People click, visit, vote up and add stories to their virtual libraries. But how much of that is due to the quality of the prose? Is some of it due to the writer’s personality and following on the site?
Of course that is the case. But the question is, how much? Context, as Avinash Kaushik wrote, is queen. But how can context be accurately (at least as accurately as possible) determined here?
Free vs Not so Free
Millions of clicks are difficult to ignore. But what is the best way to weed out sympathy clicks, friendly clicks, clicks made in error and the like? And that does not take into consideration whether any of these people will convert to a paying model. Why buy these cows, when the milk has been provided for free (and in an easy to digest package, too, I might add) for so long?
But even a one percent conversion rate will turn heads.
Move over traditional publishers. The shelf just got more crowded.