Four Seasons Announcements

A Renewed Mission

Hi everyone! For those of you are who reading this right now and have been following this page since its inception last year, thank you for still being here and for not unfollowing us during the long period of silence. I know a lot of you were upset by our unprofessionalism when it came to the Four Seasons Awards. We never got around to judging all the entries and announcing the winners. Somewhere along the way, we lost some of our reviewers, and then the admins (including myself for a while) went silent on our Discord server and no longer responded to messages.

I would like to apologize sincerely to those of you who were awaiting the results of the contest. We will definitely be having more contests in the near future, though they might be on a smaller scale to avoid what happened with the larger awards contest where we had about 100 slots open. I hope you guys are not too upset and that you would be willing to give the Four Seasons Club another shot. As of now, I (Jackie M), am the only admin left on this page--but I will be looking for more in the future. 

So you may have noticed that the title of this chapter is "A Renewed Mission." This is not just because we've returned from the void after months of silence. It is also because we've returned with a new sense of purpose (and I say we because new people will eventually join me on staff). It is no secret that Wattpad has changed drastically over the years. With the incorporation of Premium Subscriptions, Paid Stories, Wattpad Stars, Wattpad Books, Wattpad Coins, Advertisements, tailored suggestions, and other kinds of marketing and monetization, Wattpad is an entirely different landscape than what it was six to eight years ago-- even one year ago, when Four Seasons Club first started. 

When we started, Wattpad had already begun its steady decline into intense monetization and biased advertising, and these had already begun to cripple new and undiscovered voices on the platform. We had a mission back then to create a community where writers could come to get discovered. We couldn't promise them thousands of new readers for their books, but we could offer them their very first reader, or just a few consistent readers. It's hard to believe that the situation could've gotten worse so quickly, but now that it has, we feel as though there is a renewed need for the Four Seasons Club. 

With the removal of the Forums and the News Feed feature, Wattpad can feel like an isolating bubble to those who have not already established a fanbase. We hope that by reopening and rebuilding the Four Seasons Club, we can help to mitigate the feelings of discouragement and futility that writers, especially new ones, tend to feel on the new Wattpad. 

There are lots of other clubs like ours with the same mission, but what makes the Four Seasons Club different is our emphasis on active initiatives to bring about a change in the way people read, write, and interact on Wattpad. One good example of this was our First Readers' Project, which we fully intend to bring back. I have been away from the platform for a while, so I am unsure whether or not anyone has adapted our model for that project, but the basic idea was that we challenged those who took the pledge to read a book that had between 0-10 reads, tag that author in the project book, leave a lovely, detailed review for that author, and from there Four Seasons Club would also read and promote that book. 

Going forward, we hope to create more projects like that-- projects that aren't limited to people who know about our club, but that also extend toward the greater Wattpad community. 

These small book clubs are kind of all we have left now that the Forums and the News Feeds are gone; so I hope that you guys will continue to support us as we strive to support you as best we can. 

If you are interested in helping to achieve our renewed mission and create a wholesome community determined to inspire change and inspire writers and readers alike, reach out to us via PM. We are looking for new admins and staff.

More announcements to come. Thank you so much for reading and participating!