Wattpad Blog

Reading on Wattpad is a dynamic experience; following stories while they’re being written and making lists of your favorites means you’re building a personalized library chapter by chapter. So we’ve updated our apps to make managing this even easier.

The completely redesigned library screen now gives you a bigger and clearer look at the stories you’re reading. Swipe a book cover to reveal the title, author, and number of parts to that story. Reference the progress bar below every book cover for a quick look at how much you’ve read and if story has been updated.

This is a new way to keep track of your reads on the go and we hope you enjoy watching your library grow with each new update from your favorite writers.

It’s Whodunit Month at Wattpad and our Mystery-Thriller page is oozing with dozens of stories that will make you cringe, make you gasp, and make goosebumps crawl up your back.

Tune in every #MysteryMonday as we release a new chapter of Covert, a thriller by Natasha Preston. That’s right - a serialized story about a serial killer!

By adding Covert to your library, you’ll be instantly notified right on your phone when a new update is posted. Curious about “Whodunnit?”, then start reading Covert now and watch this bloody mystery unfold.

Wattpad is growing fast. With over 10 million uploads and 15 million monthly users, a big part of our focus is building the team to make our product even better. So, today is a big day as we announce three new hires: Candice, Charles, and Ashleigh.

Candice Faktor is coming onboard in the newly created role of General Manager. Candice arrives by way of Torstar Digital where she was both a co-founder and the VP of Corporate Development & New Ventures. Her experience is too lengthy for this short blog post, but let’s just say that at Wattpad Candice will be leading our content, community, marketing and BD teams, as well as driving our corporate development efforts.

Charles Chan, formerly the Director of Core Systems at Kobo is Wattpad’s new Head of Engineering. We’re extremely excited to have Charles leading up our rapidly growing dev team. He will be jumping in with his extensive R&D management experience to continue scaling our engineering organization.

We’re also incredibly pleased to have Ashleigh Gardner taking over as Head of Content. Ashleigh will be a real asset helping authors to connect with readers through the millions stories uploaded on Wattpad. As the former Director of Content Management at Kobo, Ashleigh has extensive publishing know-how, and she’s excited to continue working with writers through our net-native community.

Besides those great additions, we’re still hiring for plenty of other positions and would love to have you join our hardworking team: www.wattpad.com/jobs!

Reading and connecting with others is Wattpad’s specialty, and today we’ve updated our mobile apps so that’s even easier. The new design focuses on 3 things: helping you get to know other Wattpad readers and writers, making it easier to browse and share reading lists, and letting you quickly post feedback on your favourite stories. Today we are rolling out this new profile view to 5% of our iOS and Android users, with remaining users getting access throughout the month. So, keep an eye out for this fun visual update.

We’re excited to announce that on April 2nd we’ll be combining the Mystery and Thriller categories into one larger genre called “Mystery/Thriller”. It’s all about simplifying the way readers find their next great story. To celebrate this new genre, we’re going to be showcasing awesome Mystery and Thriller works already on Wattpad, and we’ll need your help to find them. Tell us about your favourite Mystery-Thriller story on Wattpad or share your own stories with us through whodunit@wattpad.com. Stay tuned for some goosebumps and some gasps…

For more questions about Whodunnit month, check out our FAQ.

Science fiction author, blogger and journalist, Cory Doctorow is well known for promoting open copyright. And, we’re happy to announce that he’s brought his books to our open platform. Even though his stories Homeland, Little Brother, and Pirate Cinema talk about a future where managing digital rights is tricky, and file sharing is prevented - at Wattpad you can feel free to read and share Cory Doctorow’s greatest works. So go ahead and explore these featured stories from Cory Doctorow.

Lilian Carmine (pen name) joined Wattpad hoping some people might enjoy her story idea. And, it turns out they did! Her hit The Lost Boys didn’t just engage a few readers, it was poured over more than 20 million times - making it one of our most read stories ever. So when a UK publisher asked if Lilian could come by to meet them, they were surprised to find out that she lived in Brazil. Lilian speaks Portuguese, writes in English, lives in Brazil, and has connected with millions of fans all over the world. It turns out a great story knows no borders! Congratulations to Lilian on her unique path to success and to all her readers for discovering this rising talent.

This week we’ve made it even easier to write, publish, and go, without the stress of feeling like you have to be a cover artist too. The new Wattpad default cover design showcases you; your Wattpad profile picture is now the basis for some nifty algorithmic artwork that creates a clean visual icon for your work.

Of course you can always use a custom design of your own, or create one using Wattpad’s friendly cover generator when you’re uploading your stories. So keep writing and reading, and let the cover art take care of itself.

If you’re staying in this Valentine’s day, you’ll definitely want to snuggle up with our brand new lineup of ChickLit stories! This week, we partnered with globally renowned author Marian Keyes to officially welcome the ChickLit genre to Wattpad. You can read Marian’s stories for free, connect with hundreds of other heartfelt plots, or even start writing some ChickLit yourself. So forget the chocolates, the flowers, and the dining - all you need is a good story.

Wattpad is a place where readers and writers can build personal connections through great stories. With these connections, our users find out when new stories are posted, when someone puts a story in their reading list, or when users invite each other to keep in touch. 

This social concept of subscribing to another person’s activity is becoming more familiar to users of online services as “Following”. Since we are continually working to make your experience as intuitive as possible, we’re changing the term on Wattpad from “Fan” to “Follower”. This allows for a clearer representation of what our users are doing online, and it’s also a term that works better for our international community who are reading and writing in over 24 languages.

The nature of your relationships on Wattpad won’t change. You’ll follow your friends, favourite writers, and people you want to support. You’ll continue to get instant notifications from people you follow. So keep reading, keep connecting, and follow those you want to get to know better!

Have questions or feedback for us? Submit a request at support.wattpad.com.