3/15/2018
So you've made the decision to be a reader on Wattpad. Congratulations! The first step to recovery is admitting you have a problem . . . wait that's a line for something else. Never mind. There are two kinds of readers on Wattpad: Silent and active.
Silent is just that, they're silent when they read. They might add a writers book to a reading list, but that's all you'll ever hear from them.
Active readers will vote and comment. Voting is usually every chapter, commenting is when they have something to say. Either way, they engage with the writer in some way. At the end of the finding books to read guide, I'll do a quick run down on how to vote, comments, and add a book to your library.
As a writer I will fully admit I love active readers. Yes every reader is a good reader, but active readers are a little more special. That could be because of the smile that comes to my face when I see someone having a fan boy/girl moment in my book or because of the votes, they're just special to me. Plus votes and comments help a book hit the hot lists of the genres which shoots the writer to stardom. Okay maybe not stardom, but they do help the story get out there. Either because of how the algorithm works or because that activity shows up on a persons profile so others might cross it and decide to check it out, it helps promote that story. So when you decide to be a reader, do consider being an active reader. It's okay either way, just wanted to suggest why being active matters.
Now, how do you find good books on here? There are those that will say there are no good books, only crap. I don't agree with that. Are there some rough books on here? Sure. I include mine in that statement since all I do prior to posting is run through spellcheck. But there's also some real gems out there.
Finding those gem . . . well that can be a challenge. There are multiple ways to discover books. Since I'm not a reader, I'm just a writer on here, I may not be able to cover them all. But I'll at least cover what I know.
The first, and most obvious one, is via wattpad.com and those endless reading lists that generate. Since that one is so obvious I probably don't need to go over that one, but if you'd like me to just speak up.
Next is under the discover tab. Click on discover and you'll get this drop down menu of goodies.
In the drop down menu you'll see multiple columns of stuff. Recently Wattpad has started mixing popular tags within the genres. Personally I'd like to see them add the # before the tags that way they can be distinguished from the genres. I've already had to help a couple people who didn't know that LGBT+ isn't a genre, it's just a trending tag because they see it on this list and think that means it's a genre for them to put their story into. I digress again.
Clicking on one of the genre's will give you options like: Explore, which is a list of popular tags that go with books in that genre. Hot, which are the stories in the top 1K of that genre. Rising and New are the other two options but honestly . . . those are useless. Ignore those.
The hot list is probably the only one truly functional place to find a book in these lists, but even then the downside to the algorithm is it doesn't factor in how long a book has been on the list. So in the past three months the same books have been in the top ten. Their position may change, but it's still the same basic books. It doesn't have the same kind of refresh you might see on something like the New York Times best sellers or even on Amazon where new books might have a chance to crack it.
As a reader that may not cause you problems except if you've read all the books on the list, as a writer it can drive us nuts. We know it's slim to crack the top 100, but seeing the same books all the time can also be a kick in the pants. But I'm starting to digress again. Ahem.
Scrolling through the hot list will give you what are currently the most popular stories in that genre. Each genre has a hot list, each tag has a hot list, so if popularity is what you crave to read, the hot list is your go to!
Back to the discover tab, you'll see a blue section called Wattpad Picks. These are the featured lists.
The main list, The Featured List, will always be there. But the lists under that will change depending on the theme of the time. The featured lists are basically what Wattpad considers the cream of the crop. They're a hodge podge of stories from different genres with high quality writing, characters, and story telling. If quality is what you want, the featured list is where you'll find it. It'll have both discovered and undiscovered writers.
The other way to find a book to read is through the search bar. You can search for key phrases like fluffy bunny, and all books with fluffy bunny in the title will show up. It'll also give you some user profiles suggestions if you care to stalk a random profile for reads.
See. I told you fluffy bunny will come up.
Next is searching for tags. So if there's a tag you want to look for, but it's not a popular trending tag to show up on the discover tab, then you can do a search for that tag and exclude tags you don't want. If you want to find a story tagged about dogs, but you don't want those evil horrible puppies to show up then your search would be #dog -puppy. That search would include everything tagged with dog, but exclude anything tagged with puppy. If they have both, because let's face it a puppy is a dog, then you're screwed. Because evil puppies win!
It'll also give you a few other tags that they think you might want to be looking for. You can click on those to include them in your search and refine the stories given to you until you find what you're looking for.
On top of those searches, you can additionally refine that search by clicking on filters and adjusting from there. Don't want Mature? Uncheck it. Want Completed only? Check it. Completed only will cut out any ongoing books so you'll only get, you guessed it, books marked complete. Mature will get rid of the smut on Wattpad. Well at least the smut that's properly marked as it should. If someone slipped it through then you could still come across it.
Another way to find books is by visiting someones profile and either randomly picking their books, or browsing their reading lists. On their profile you'd scroll past their books to get to their public reading lists. You might be able to find a good book to read there.
While you're reading a chapter of a book, you'll notice on the right hand side there is a column of suggestions.
Often times this includes other books by the author you're currently reading, other times it's different authors with similar books. Wattpad likes to recommend I read myself. Thank you, Wattpad!
Lastly, you could go into the clubs and visit each genre club. Each of them will have a "Share Your Story" thread. AKA SYS. The SYS thread is typically pinned up at the top. I'll give the clubs their own chapter so for now I won't say how to get to them.
Each thread is refreshed every week and inside you'll find writers who are advertising their work for that genre. More popular genres, like fantasy, will have longer SYS threads while the less popular ones could be only a couple pages. The posts are typically an image of the cover, a blurb, and the ability to click to visit that book. Some will make cute little advertisements for their stories, others will be more basic, but you can read through those blurbs and see if one catches your eye.
Well I think that's it as far as trying to find books to read. Can it be a challenge to find something that fits your tastes? Of course. There are thousands and thousands of books on Wattpad, the quality will range as much as a readers tastes will range. What is crap to one person might not be crap to another. It can test your patience to find stories that interest you, but they can be found. So dive right in and get your feet wet. There are books to be read!
Now that you've found a book, here's a quick run down on how to be an active reader and how to add it to your library. In the upper right hand side, you'll see a plus sign and a star with vote by it. The plus is how you add to a library and the star is how you vote.
So click on that plus sign and you'll get a drop down menu.
There you can select My Library, which is a private library only you can see. Or you can create new libraries everyone can see. I've seen some people with some really great names for their libraries so you can be creative!
Voting is just as easy. Click the star next to the library and bam, you've voted. That's it. That's all there is to it.
Now commenting there are two ways to do it. You can do inline comments, this is where you make a comment in reaction to a paragraph. This one can be a little hard to see because the plus sign is so tiny. But to the right of the text of the paragraph you'll see these little balloon things. Ones with numbers in it mean there are that many comments tied to the paragraph. The plus sign means currently nobody commented on that paragraph. Click on the balloon beside the paragraph you want to comment on.
Doing this will bring up another dialogue box to the side. If there are any other comments tied to that paragraph then those comments will show up
Type your comment in the area where it says leave a comment, and click post. Congratulations, you just told the author how much you love that part . . . or hate it. Whatever you decided to put there.
Finally the last way to comment is at the end of the chapter. This is also where you can stalk all the comments other users have made.
As you can see there is also another button to add the story to the library, another vote star, the ability to share the book on various social medias, and more recommendations for reading.
So I think that's it for being a reader on Wattpad and the tools available to you as both a silent or active reader. Bon appetit!