I was about to say… I wouldn't call myself popular by any means, but I have more than 10K reads. I make a conscious effort to respond to most of my comments, all of my PM's, and all of the messages on my message board.
It's my favorite part of Wattpad. It's why I have no dreams of publishing or anything like that.
That's great, too. I do know readers like to know their comment was seen by the author. I guess it's that weird human thing where we just want to know the person that we are trying to get the attention of, is paying attention to us so they see that we appreciate their work. That's what I like anyway. I like for my favorite authors to know that I really do appreciate and enjoy their stories. It brings up the authors mood.
This one seems probably safe as a general concept. While my focus is fairly exclusively on Next in terms of content or promoting content, I have to think of it in the context of all the other stories too and making sure it doesn't interfere with their promotion, so I do have to think about it. Plus it was a portion of my former job and the new person in that role works on the same team and yaddy yaddy.
Something similar to that in order to grant more space to equal groups is important to me. Would love to see those sorts of spaces in play. We have some of the pieces in place and other people have different opinions and ideas too so we'll see what happens.
Otherwise there's a concept from the book Happy City that has a long name that I never remember and only appears once in the book so I'll never find it again. Real shame. It comes from transit, it's a concept in which there should be multiple solutions to the same problem, and that no one solution should eliminate the possibility of the others. For example, if you design a city for cars, you make it virtually impossible to walk, very hard to bike, and not even that great for buses, so you shouldn't do that.
There's some similar things we can do with Wattpad where even though less people use a pathway to discover content, they should still have the option if they do want to because those who do dig deeper should be able to. Or you should be able to walk around Wattpad if you want, you don't just have to take the car.
Having only been in the forums for less than a month, I have no idea what you do to them and now I'm curious.
It comes from transit, it's a concept in which there should be multiple solutions to the same problem, and that no one solution should eliminate the possibility of the others. For example, if you design a city for cars, you make it virtually impossible to walk, very hard to bike, and not even that great for buses, so you shouldn't do that.
Fun fact - one of my psych courses in college required a textbook that touched on this. It was really interesting how much they could relate psychology to how a city is built. Anywho, so what you're saying is… my idea has a shot?
Also, does Wattpad do any sort of research to see how users are searching for new stories and what they're searching for - like SEO but Wattpad-specific? Or use any kind of program to see what tabs and tags people are clicking on? Just curious, I feel like that kind of information would help when it comes to ideas for features involving exposure.
But I liked your answer and you brought up some points I hadn't thought about.
Hey you got the badge!
I work in a library and sure, we have the New releases and Staff pics, but we also have a display for books that haven't been borrowed much or indie/self-published authors and that seems to be one of the displays that I continually have to restock. Though, that being said, some books still do spend a long time on that shelf. But for the most part, its a pretty popular shelf.
I mean I'm always in here, a bunch of designers and other people are around. We always watching and we don't usually say "hey what about this idea" because we've usually already discussed that idea or it's on the board. That's the most common thing that happens, and then the threads are good for validating. Yes people do think that's an issue. We should put that idea higher because it gets talked about a lot. Nobody ever mentions this idea, let's not.
And then there's lots of surveys and interviews we do all the time across Wattpad.
Thanks for the reply supreme goat lord! I appreciate it very much!
we also have a display for books that haven't been borrowed much or indie/self-published authors and that seems to be one of the displays that I continually have to restock.
This makes me really happy. Everybody starts somewhere.
The point of it is to be a section for undiscovered writers and books. So every book included would have under a certain number of reads, it would just be organized by genre, and new/recently updated/completed.
There's just too many unfinished books and authors whining that they're not getting reads.
So then you'd stay in the "completed" section of the undiscovered area. That's why I suggested a completed section, for people looking for completed hidden gems.
I was just responding because I felt that you didn't understand my original post. Your first post was about the current hot, rising, and new lists, but it isn't specifically for "undiscovered" writers and books.
Your second post was about wanting completed books, but there would be a section incorporated for completed books.
It's certainly okay if you don't agree with my idea, it was just a suggestion. I've seen the current system, I just thought this would give newer and undiscovered writers more of a chance and also give us readers who enjoy hidden gems a spot to go find them.
I'm confused as to what that has to do with what I've suggested… this would be a section for people with under 5K reads for example. I think that's the example I used in my original post.
When I check out rising, I see up to hundreds of thousands of reads. The hot list is… well… the hot list. Not everyone gets hotlisted. And new is new. This is an alternative if you're looking for undiscovered books.
If I've offended you in some way, I really am sorry. Or maybe I'm misreading your responses but it seems that way.
Rising isn't limited to under a certain number of reads. That's what this is all about. None of those columns are.
So why create another system that's a duplicate??
Nick kind of addressed this in his response.
This section wouldn't be subjective though. I read somewhere that a minority of authors get above 1K, and a very small percent hit 5K. That's where I pulled those numbers from. And that's what I'd want for my section if I was in charge of this.
As for poetry, it's probably much easier to find "undiscovered" because it's not as saturated as other genres.
That's an option as well.
The reason I chose an entire section was to have multiple columns that all had the same max read limit. That way people could choose between brand new books and become a future star's first reader or maybe they've already "read everything" as I've seen many people say.
Or they can find books that are actively being updated… maybe they're having a hard time finding a hidden gem that isn't from an inactive author.
Or they can find completed books that just haven't had their time to shine yet.
Your way makes sense as well, I just liked this so that there was more room to filter exactly what you were looking for.