Prisimpad: A Guide to Wattpad, Writing, and Whatever

ON WATTPAD: Oh my Wattys

3/23/18

What to say about this wonderful hellish competition. They are both simultaneously good and bad. Good because contests are always nice when you can win exposure, bad because they can bring out the worst in even the nicest of people.

The Watty's are the yearly competition Wattpad has. The rules tend to change every year, but generally they give you a time frame in which you need to have X amount of chapters posted for a story to be eligible. For example, they might say to enter the 2018 Watty's you need to have 5 chapters posted between the months of September and December or three chapters posted in 2018. And no, before anyone asks, I don't know if these are the 2018 guidelines. At the time of this posting those haven't been announced.

It used to be that the Watty's were a popularity contest. In many ways it might still be, but it's a lot better than the first year I entered. That first year it was a public vote so you really had to have an active fan base to have a chance. And oh lord was it easy to cheat. So. Many. Cheaters. That year brought out some of the worst from me and I swore I'd never enter again. The next year I didn't enter. I believe that was the last year of the public vote, then Wattpad HQ took over the judging.

You're still going to find people who complain. Every year I see something about how ambassadors get an unfair advantage or how Wattpad only picks their darlings. But I'd still take this way over how it was the first year I entered. About the only change I don't like is the fact that it's open to incomplete stories now, it used to be entering the Wattys was an incentive to finish a story because only complete stories could enter. However, given how many people I saw who lied about their story being complete just so they could enter, I can kind of understand why Wattpad took away that rule.

How you enter the Wattys is simple. You tag it in the books tags. That's it. So in the case of 2018 the tag will be #wattys2018. But as I mentioned in a previous chapter, that tag won't work until submissions are open. Go ahead and try it, you'll find that when you hit save the tag vanishes.

What do you win if you win a Watty? Not much, at least not compared to what you used to get. Before you'd get some kind of prize. Now it's really just the prestige and warm fuzzies of winning a watty. Which don't get me wrong, they're really great warm fuzzies. You'd have every right to be proud of a win because you would be the cream of the crop. The cat's meow. The champion. And any other fancy way of saying winner. Out of thousands and thousands of stories, you'd be one of the few to stand out and say you're a Watty winner.

So now you're probably asking if it's worth entering or not given how many stories enter each year. We're talking thousands and thousands of stories. That's some stiff competition.

The answer to that is . . . what do you have to lose? All you do is tag it, that's it, so why not enter?

I think I've entered 5 out of my 6 years on Wattpad and every year after winners are announced I tell myself I'm not going to enter again. I mean after all the definition of insanity is to do the same thing repeatedly while expecting a different result, right? So why put myself through the Watty's if I know I won't win?

Because all you have to do is tag it. Seriously. That's it. In the immortal words of Wayne Gretzky, you miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

If your story is eligible, why wouldn't you enter? Just please, when Wattpad posts the rules, read them. Make sure your books is eligible before you waste Wattpad's time by tagging it. An external link tied to this chapter will take you to the official profile of the Wattys. Once 2018 opens up, that's where you'll find the rules.