Ask the Author: Should I write my book somewhere other than Wattpad?

Dear Mandy,

I’m currently writing my book on Wattpad and it’s public. If it’s something I eventually want to get published and sell copies of, should I be writing it somewhere else so it’s not “free?” Where does everyone write their books?

Answer: The first thing I would point out is that it sounds like you’re using Wattpad as a word processor, and I don’t think that’s really what Wattpad is intended to be. Wattpad is a publishing platform, not a word processor. You can certainly write your novel there, but when you make those chapters public, you aren’t simply saving your work somewhere online. You are publishing it. This is an important distinction to make if your ultimate goal is to have the novel traditionally published.

Personally, I write my novels in Microsoft Word. I keep the manuscript on my computer and make sure I have backups in the cloud (I like Dropbox) so that losing my laptop doesn’t mean losing my novel. If you want a free option, Google Docs works perfectly well for writing a book. There are also programs specifically designed for novelists, such as Scrivener, which gives you tools for organizing chapters, scenes, research, notes, and other pieces of a large writing project.

There isn’t one place where “everyone” writes their books. Some writers use Word. Others use Google Docs. Some swear by Scrivener. Still others use other writing programs. The important thing is that you have a reliable place to keep the actual manuscript that isn’t dependent on the manuscript being publicly available online.

And that brings us back to Wattpad. If you eventually want to submit your novel to a traditional publisher, putting the entire book on Wattpad can create a problem. Traditional publishers generally want to acquire books that haven’t already been published elsewhere. When you put your novel online (either parts of it or the entire thing) and make it available to the public, you have essentially published it yourself, even though you aren’t charging anyone to read it.

That doesn’t mean a publisher will never touch a book that has appeared on Wattpad. There are exceptions. In fact, there have been writers who built enormous audiences on Wattpad and subsequently attracted publishers because of that success. But those are unusual cases, not something you should count on as a publishing strategy. A handful of Wattpad success stories doesn’t mean that posting your novel there is the normal path to a traditional publishing contract.

There are other reasons I wouldn’t recommend using Wattpad as the primary place where you write a novel you hope to publish someday. For one thing, you don’t want the only copy of your manuscript to live on somebody else’s platform. Even if Wattpad is perfectly reliable, you’re still putting your work somewhere you don’t control. Your writing should exist as a file that you own and can back up, move, revise, and save in multiple locations. I would never want my only copy of a novel to be somewhere that requires me to log into a website to access it.

There’s also the practical problem of revising a novel once you’ve started to publish parts of it. A story can change considerably between the first draft and the finished manuscript. You might realize a character isn’t necessary, decide that an early chapter belongs much later in the story, or discover that the ending you’ve been working toward no longer makes sense. Making those kinds of changes is much easier when you’re working privately on a manuscript than when readers have already seen the earlier version.

There’s another psychological issue, too. Once you have readers following your story on Wattpad, you may be tempted to start to write for those readers rather than writing the book you actually want to write. You might find yourself worrying about whether your readers liked the latest chapter, whether they’re going to be disappointed by a character’s decision, or whether you need to hurry up and post the next installment. None of those things are necessarily bad, but they can make it harder to step back and make the larger decisions a complete novel manuscript needs.

And then there’s the matter of having an audience see the book before it’s finished. That’s not necessarily a problem if your goal is specifically to write for Wattpad. But if your goal is to produce a polished manuscript that you can eventually submit to agents and publishers, I’d rather see you give yourself the freedom to write a terrible first draft in private. Because your first draft is probably going to be terrible. Hey, mine are, too. That’s what first drafts are for.

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You need to be able to write the messy version, realize something isn’t working, delete 20,000 words, rewrite the middle, change the ending, and generally make a giant mess of the manuscript before you ever start to worry about what anyone else thinks of it. A private manuscript gives you considerably more freedom to do that.

So if your long-term goal is traditional publication, I would move the novel into a Word document, Google Doc, Scrivener project, or another writing program and keep your master copy there. Back it up somewhere else, too. Cloud storage, an external drive, or both are good options. Do not let your computer be the only place your novel exists, either.

You don’t have to stop using Wattpad altogether. If you enjoy the community, want to share short pieces, or specifically want to write a story for a Wattpad audience, that’s a different situation. Wattpad can be a perfectly legitimate place to publish work when publishing it there is part of your plan. But if you’re thinking, “I’m going to write my future novel on Wattpad now, and someday I’m going to take that exact published novel to a traditional publisher,” I’d reconsider that plan.

Think of it this way: Word, Google Docs, Scrivener, and similar programs are places where you write your book. Wattpad is a place where you publish your book. Those are two very different stages of the novel writing process and keeping them separate can give you a lot more options later.

And if you’re already writing your novel on Wattpad, don’t panic. You haven’t necessarily destroyed your publishing prospects. Download or copy your manuscript into a private document, stop making future chapters public if traditional publication is your goal, and start treating that private document as your master manuscript.

The most important thing is to decide what you want Wattpad to be for you. If it’s where you want to publish and build an audience, use it intentionally for that purpose. If it’s simply the place you’ve been typing because you didn’t realize it was a publishing platform, it’s probably time to move your novel somewhere else.

Have you ever written a novel on Wattpad or another online platform? Where do you prefer to write your books, and has your approach changed as you’ve learned more about the publishing process? Share your experiences in the comments. I’d love to hear what works for other writers.

This column is part of an ongoing Ask the Author series, where I answer questions from writers and readers about reading, writing, storytelling, and the creative process. If you have a question you’d like me to tackle in a future post, you can submit it through my contact page.

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