From Wattpad to Published Author - My Journey

University

It began, as these things so often do, with an email. I was in my flat in Bath, getting ready for an early morning business lecture, when I saw it on my phone. Penguin would be giving a talk exclusively for business students at the University of Bath. I usually ignored these emails as I received them all the time, but this time it intrigued me. 

Publishing was a career choice I had never really considered.  I had dreams of being an author, true, but working in publishing had always seemed like something other people did; a mystical industry that was reserved for the most literary minded. In my mind, publishers were made up of people for whom James Joyce was light, bedtime reading.

In any case, several weeks later, I sat down in a small classroom and the Penguin Digital Sales Director told us about all the changes that were happening to the industry: the rise of Wattpad and the way it was revolutionising how young people read; that the way books were marketed and sold now changed every few months; how we lived in a new world of phenomena: Twilight, The Hunger Games, Fifty Shades of Grey.

In that short half an hour, I knew that I wanted to be part of it. An industry where I loved the product I was selling. Where every book was different, with a campaign tailored to each. Where massive changes were happening and they were looking for people with new ideas, new perspectives. Most importantly, they were recruiting business students for a paid internship in the summer of 2013. I knew that paid internships in publishing were virtually unheard of, such was the demand for the experience alone. It was definitely worth applying.

I went up to the speaker after he had finished and introduced myself, casually mentioning that I was an aspiring writer (at that time, I was working on a book that I had started at the age of fourteen, with no end in sight). He immediately told me that I should put it up on Wattpad, naming three different authors who had been discovered that way. At the time, I didn’t think that much of it. After all, there were millions of users on the site. Surely it couldn’t happen to me.

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If you are enjoying reading this, please don't hesitate to vote! Feel free to comment and ask questions, I'll always try and respond when I can :). Don't forget to look out for Summoner: The Novice in your local bookstores in May or if you're feeling extra excited, you can preorder the book using the links on my profile, or searching for it in your usual online bookstore. 

All the best! 

Taran