 Self-published authors can reach a huge audience through Wattpad, a popular e-book community with downloadable apps for mobile devices.
published than were traditionally published during a year. Clearly self-publishing is booming, and marketing self-published books has become an industry in itself. If you’re a self-published author looking for readers, look no further than Publishers Weekly’s PW Select and Wattpad’s online platform.
PW Select is a quarterly supplement to Publishers Weekly featuring self-published books with ISBNs. It requires a registration fee of $149 to list books in the supplement and online database, and each supplement features reviews of at least 25 books chosen on merit. (Publishers Weekly subscribers get the registration fee waived for their first self-published book listing.)
Cevin Bryerman, publisher of Publishers Weekly, explains that the registration fee includes a six-month Publishers Weekly digital subscription, which allows authors to learn more about the publishing industry, and potentially puts their books in front of a broad network of booksellers, librarians, agents, wholesalers, distributors and other media, given that reviews are syndicated to 35 partners. For self-published authors looking for a larger readership, this targeted demographic is hard to beat.
Wattpad is an online platform dedicated to originally created e-books. Nina Lassam, who works in marketing for Wattpad, describes it as the world’s most popular e-book community. “Wattpad is a unique social-networking and digital entertainment platform for readers and writers to discover, share and connect,” she says. The mobile version has also become one of the top e-book apps for BlackBerry and iPhone, is available on more than 1,000 mobile devices, and is downloaded more than 1 million times per month. That’s a potential readership self-published authors won’t want to ignore. Thinking of exploring both PW Select and Wattpad? You’re in luck, because they’ve partnered. According to Lassam, PW Select titles and excerpts that appear on Wattpad are differentiated by PW branding, which adds promotional value, and “because we generate so many readers through our apps, this is an opportunity for writers to see their work reach a huge mobile audience in a specialized way.” PW Select authors can also expect to see their work emphasized on the Wattpad home page, a perfect place for picking up new readers. |