Wattpad is a platform for those who like to read. But, unlike other social networks that allow you to discuss known works by popular authors, Wattpad has a different proposal. In it, you can publish your stories, read other people's and discuss and debate other users and authors, and all this for free, versions for web, Android and iOS.
While social networks for reading lovers usually offer space for debate about well-known books and works, Wattpad is a platform for those who want to write and also read other people's stories. You can follow your favorite authors and catch the publication of new chapters of works, in addition to the possibility of being “discovered” by publishers and companies interested in transforming published texts into books or even multimedia productions.
Check out the special produced by Technology Refugee Below is everything you need to know about Wattpad: what does it work for, who is it for, what are the main features, and even what is the possibility of using it to develop a writing career.
Table of contents
- What is Wattpad?
- Who founded Wattpad?
- What is Wattpad for?
- Who is Wattpad's audience?
- Minimum age to use the platform
- Can children use Wattpad?
- Security and privacy on Wattpad
- or download Wattpad
- Wattpad Premium and Premium+ versions
- Step-by-step instructions for using Wattpad
- or delete Wattpad account?
- or put gif not Wattpad?
- o make Wattpad dark?
- o having two Wattpad accounts?
- Can I share my Wattpad account?
- I can't log into Wattpad my Gmail, what to do?
- Is it possible to download Wattpad fanfics in PDF?
- Conclusion
What is Wattpad?
Wattpad is a platform for book lovers first and foremost. More than that, the service also functions as a space for those who want to publish their own texts, fanfics (fan stories), or even a complete book. Users of the tool can both pick up the production of other writers and make suggestions about published stories, allowing units to be created around authors.
When registering, the user can create a reading list and select which works he intends to read in the future. Reading is done within the application itself, which has features to change font size and also a dark mode to make life easier for those who want to read through the app.
Wattpad has partnerships between studios and publishers. A user, when publishing a text that becomes popular on the service, may receive an invitation to transform it into a physical book or a multimedia work. That is, it can serve as a starting point for the career of writers.
Who founded Wattpad?
Wattpad is the result of a partnership between two developers: Ivan Yuen and Allen Lau. They launched the platform in 2006, and were the controllers of the service until January 2021, when the South Korean company Naver Corporation acquired Wattpad for US$600 million.
Until September 2020, the service had more than 90 million monthly users, 665 million texts available, and more than 85% of traffic came from mobile devices, tablets or cell phones.
What is Wattpad for?
Wattpad is an excellent tool for those who like to read a lot, but don't have the money to buy a lot of books. Or for those who want to publish their own stories, but don't know the best way to do it. search tools for works and functionalities o the possibility of following authors, it is easy to discover new content on the platform, thus finding out firsthand that a favorite writer has released something new.
Who is Wattpad's audience?
Wattpad's audience is made up mostly of women and people from the generations known as “millennials” and “gen Z”, which would be people born from the mid-80s onwards. According to data released by the company, 80% of the traffic comes from the female public, and, within this universe, 80% are “millennials” or 'gen Z'. Which does not mean that the platform is exclusive to this audience: people of any age and all types of literary interests have the chance to find something good to read, or else to write.
Minimum age to use the platform
Not just anyone can access the platform: the minimum age to register and start using Wattpad is 13 years old. o there is adult content on the platform, it is good that parents keep an eye on what their children consume to avoid inappropriate texts. It is worth mentioning that, in the case of the iOS application, only people over 17 can download it. In the Play Store, on Android, downloading the app generates an alert for parents.
Can children use Wattpad?
Although texts suitable for children are available on the platform, the minimum age for registration is 13 years old – that is, the presence of children on Wattpad violates the terms of use of the service. Still, parents can very well help children interested in service by filtering out what they deem inappropriate for them.
According to Wattpad, users under the age of 13 who are detected within the service will have their account automatically blocked by the application. In addition, moderators also have the power to terminate accounts that violate the terms of use.
Security and privacy on Wattpad
The issue of security and privacy is increasingly fundamental for anyone using internet services, even more so in cases like Wattpad, which is also quite popular among younger people. To ensure the best use by users, the service has a series of privacy and security features to allow people to read and publish texts without major concerns.
If something is wrong with any of the texts that you opened to read, it is possible to report problems from the menu found in the upper left corner, thus denouncing users who are violating the terms of service. When reporting texts or users, an explanation field appears, allowing the user to explain what exactly is wrong there.
And if social networks tend to have annoying problems, Wattpad is not exempt from this: fortunately, it is also possible to silence users – so, you can very well stop reading what that person who seems to just want to annoy you is writing and publishing on the platform.
or download Wattpad
Wattpad has apps for Android and iOS (iPhones and iPads). There is still a version available on the web, accessible through the official website of the service. It is not possible to download it on the PC – on Windows and Mac, the service only exists in its web version.
To download Wattpad, just click on the link for the desired operating system:
- Wattpad for Android
- Wattpad for iPhone and iPad
Wattpad Premium and Premium+ versions
Yes, Wattpad has paid plans. In general, the free version user has access to most of the service's features, but there are two paid categories – Premium and Premium+ – some extra facilities for subscribers.
Wattpad Premium removes ads, allows the user to download an unlimited amount of stories for offline reading and exclusive themes, as well as bonus prada coins within the platform.
In Wattpad Premium+, in addition to the features listed in Premium, the user also gains monthly access to two Paid Stories, which financially rethink their authors when they are read.
Wattpad Premium costs R$14,99 per month, or R$12,49 in the annual package (a yearly charge of R$149,99). The Wattpad Premium+ is priced a little saltier, costing R$54,99 per month, or R$499,99 per year.
Is it possible to earn money on Wattpad?
Wattpad's main goal is to provide a free platform for both those who want to publish and those who want to read books online. Despite this, it is possible to earn money on the platform, although it is not exactly easy to turn your stories into a career.
Wattpad can be seen as a way to train writing, create a unit of readers and improve your works. From the moment they are ready, the author can very well look for a publisher or publish an e-book independently. In this case, the user would not earn money directly from Wattpad, but would take advantage of the tools available to develop his own career.
The service also has a partnership with Sony Pictures, Hulu and Syfy. In practice, this means that well-evaluated and popular works can become multimedia productions – and, obviously, the author earns good money from this.
Finally, Wattpad's Paid Stories program selects renowned authors within the platform to effectively sell texts, charging in the service's internal currency.
Step-by-step instructions for using Wattpad
Using Wattpad is pretty simple. To get started, you need to access either the official website through your device's browser, or the app available for Android, iPhone and iPad. Follow the steps found on the screen to register your user (you can select a reader, writer or both profile, and also select your favorite genres, be it action, adventure, fanfics or science fiction, among others).
app installed and account created, it's time to start using Wattpad. Check below the main resources and how to use them:
Follow authors and users
When you access some content available on Wattpad, you will find, just below the title of the work, who was the author. If you liked what you read a lot and want to get more productions from the writer in question, it's very easy to start following him: click on the name to open the profile, and tap on the “Follow” button.
Search content
Wattpad asks, when registering, which are the user's preferred literary genres. Thus, the application already creates a list of suggestions for the person to start reading according to what he is most interested in. This is one of the easiest ways to get started with the service, as the rewrites are displayed whenever the Wattpad app or website is opened. But that's not the only way to find things to read.
Within the Wattpad app, in the toolbar found at the bottom of the screen, click on the magnifying glass icon to open the search. You can search for specific genres, people, or any word – if you want K-Pop idol fanfics, for example, search by the name of the idol in question to find productions made available by other users.
Write and publish your story on Wattpad
From the Wattpad app, click on the pencil icon in the bottom toolbar. This is the area for those who want to write and publish stories through the app. You can either already define a title and a cover for your work before starting, or simply start writing the chapters, including multimedia content and whatever else is of interest to you to enrich your text.
From the moment you create a file to write history, just go back to the pencil icon to resume writing, select some old text to write again, or start a new work from scratch.
Whenever you open the page for your story, you'll find options to modify the cover, title, description, categories, genre, copyright and also if it has adult content.
Once you've finished writing a chapter, or the entire book, it's time to make it available to other users. Check out what to do below:
- To publish standalone chapters, go to the edit page for the chapter in question and select “Publish”.
- To publish multiple chapters at once, go to the story, tap the setup icon next to the index, and select all the chapters you want to make available to the public.
It is not possible to publish multiple chapters simultaneously on Android – you have to select one by one. On iOS and the web version, however, the possibility exists.
Add a story to your library
Found something that interested you? On the work's home page, next to the “Read” button, you will find a + icon. Tap it to add the text in question to your library, or to a specific reading list. You can even create the list from the moment you decide to include a text in it – just select “Create a reading list” from the options displayed on the screen.
organize your library
On the toolbar found at the bottom of the app's home screen, click on the middle button. It is from there that you can find your library: that is, all the texts that you have marked as interested in reading, everything you have already read, and what you have saved in your reading lists.
Inside the Library, you will find three areas: Current Readings, which also allows you to download texts for offline reading (in the free version, you can save up to 25 texts for offline reading); Archive, what you have already finished reading; and Reading Lists, everything you saved to read later.
Change reading settings
The reading experience can be customized on Wattpad to fit the way you see fit. It is quite simple to make these changes within the applications.
On iOS and Android, reading preferences are found in the menu that appears when you click your avatar icon in the upper-right corner of the screen. Within this area, the user can define background color; font style, size and color; screen brightness; toolbar display while reading, and more.
In the web version there is no way to make these changes – they are restricted to Wattpad apps.
or delete Wattpad account?
Tired of Wattpad and want to no longer exist within the service? You can close your account at any time. The only downside is that this can only be done through the web version, not being available on mobile and tablet apps.
Check out the step-by-step instructions to close your account on the web:
- Enter the Wattpad website and login
- Click on the user icon in the upper right corner and go to Settings
- Look in the menu on the right for the option Close account and fill in the required required information
- Check the box “Yes, I'm sure. Close my account.”
- Enter your password, click Close Account and presto, it's finished.
From there, you will no longer have access to your library and reading lists, entries, published or draft stories, and your profile will no longer appear in Google searches (although, Wattpad points out, this could take a few weeks to happen). ).
If you change your mind and want to come back, just log in again through the Wattpad website or mobile apps. If someone creates a user with the name you used during your absence, you will not be able to resume your old account.
or put gif not Wattpad?
Your Wattpad stories don't have to be just long blocks of text with nothing different. features included in the service, they can be enriched with multimedia content – this includes YouTube videos, pictures or even animated GIFs.
To include multimedia content, just select the area intended for it when writing a text. Wattpad highlights, in its help page, which are the limitations of the functionality: it is possible to have a photo or video in the header, and 20 more in each chapter. The maximum size for images is 10MB, while GIFs can be up to 3MB.
o make Wattpad dark?
To facilitate reading especially at night, Wattpad has, in its versions for cell phones and tablets, a dark mode. To activate it, click on your profile picture icon in the upper right corner of the screen, then go to Dark Mode and select whether it will be automatic (that is, according to your phone's settings), on (to remain dark regardless of than you select on the device), or off (to keep light mode always on).
There is no way to activate dark mode through Wattpad itself on the PC, but the service's help page recommends using the Google Chrome browser and installing extensions for it. Wattpad points out that it does not provide support for third-party extensions, that is, any problem encountered in dark mode activated in this way will need to be addressed directly by the developer of the tool.
o having two Wattpad accounts?
It is not possible to use more than one Wattpad account. If you have more than one and want to vary between their use, you will need to log out and log in again whenever you want to change.
Can I share my Wattpad account?
Yes! If you want to share a single account with relatives or friends, you can do so without fear of violating Wattpad's terms of use. The service even has some amendments for those who will do this, for example, avoiding passwords used elsewhere and limiting the number of people accessing them.
But, if for some reason people who share the same account get into some kind of conflict, the solution must be done internally. If Wattpad support is called upon to resolve any shared account dispute, the account in question will be deactivated with no possibility of recovering any content from it.
I can't log into Wattpad my Gmail, what to do?
Wattpad registration can be done using an email of the user's choice or, to make it easier, through Facebook and Google login tools. On its help page, Wattpad highlights an error one that Google email users experience.
If you try to access your Gmail email service and find a message saying that there is no account linked to the email, the service recommends that you try again by removing any period that is in your email address. If your account is your.name@gmail., the redirection is to access yourname@gmail..
According to Wattpad, the system used by the platform does not register dots (.) that precede the arrobas (@) in Gmail addresses. The justification is that, from the moment you create a Gmail account, you become the owner of all variations of it that contain points, no matter the position in which they have been added.
Is it possible to download Wattpad fanfics in PDF?
No. It is not possible to download content from Wattpad to read in applications other than Wattpad itself. Reading can only be done within the app itself or via the web version of the service. It is noteworthy that, even within the app, the download of stories is limited to 25 simultaneous in the free version – that is, you can only keep 25 texts saved for offline reading. In paid versions, downloads are unlimited.
Conclusion
Ready! the information we provide above, you will be ready to dive into the world of stories, fanfics, short stories, poems and much more that is available on Wattpad. From now on, just open the app and start writing, reading, recording and sharing different types of stories with your friends and relatives from a free platform.
