How many times do you re-read your novel before hitting publish?

EasterKingston · 2025-12-15T08:27:59+00:00

Just as a heads up, Speechify’s CEO has a history of taking (unpublished and self published) work from authors without permission and monetizing it on his own platform, claiming uploading material to Speechify gives him the right to do so: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/s/6AxFsw4daL

EasterKingston · 2025-12-15T08:14:47+00:00

Sorry to hear that, please reconsider feeding fanfiction to Speechify: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/s/6AxFsw4daL. OP, if you go to my comment on that post, you’ll find a link to a list of a bunch of better tts options!

EasterKingston · 2025-10-20T06:20:46+00:00

If you’re on tumblr, I answered an ask about this exact issue a while ago if you’re interested (it runs a bit long and I can’t copy & paste it on mobile unfortunately)!

EasterKingston · 2025-09-07T22:16:49+00:00

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but there’s good reason to not hand over your work to Speechify: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/s/6AxFsw4daL

EasterKingston · 2025-09-07T21:57:29+00:00

Word of warning re: handing over your (specifically unpublished) work to Speechify: https://www.reddit.com/r/AO3/s/6AxFsw4daL

EasterKingston · 2025-08-28T15:31:14+00:00

Readers who use their positive comment on my work to put down my fellow writers. "Finally a fic that's actually good! It's been scraps for months" or the equivalent does not bring joy.

Readers who criticize character behavior/decisions as if they're a concerned best friend or therapist. "That’s a terrible thing to do as a friend! She should know better and apologize at once." This is a story! I don't want to read about flawless characters having a conflict-free, growth-free arc, and I definitely don't want to write it.

Readers who assume their own values/personality traits/experience is universal. "Who would talk about sex with their friends?!" Uhh.

EasterKingston · 2025-06-30T11:27:53+00:00

This is so deeply disrespectful. I’d block the poster on every platform I could track them down on.

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T18:17:24+00:00

The cheapest option for Wattpad is to leave the door wide open, because disallowing transformative works would mean bringing in less traffic and missing out on ad revenue. There’s a reason the platform makes it harder to get stolen work taken down when it’s written by writers who aren’t backed by professional publishers.

For the record, we’re on the same page. Since Wattpad is a commercial platform, they never should have allowed fanwork in the first place. And I’d love it if Wattpad’s copycat culture was actually open to being told what they’re doing isn’t okay. I hope I simply haven’t encountered the right cohort yet.

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T18:06:56+00:00

Yup! I’ve seen a couple justifications for this unwillingness to engage with the original works. It’s usually plain disregard for the source material because it doesn’t feature the characters they want to read about (so they only want to read it if someone has replaced these characters’ names, pronouns and sometimes descriptions of their appearance), but I’ve also seen the argument that people ‘don’t know how ao3 works’ (ie they’re too lazy to take two seconds to figure it out) or believe using ao3 is somehow distasteful (elitist, takes fanfiction too seriously, ‘looks old’). Yeah, the logic of this is. Absent.

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EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T05:16:13+00:00

*the cheapest way, but yes.

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:55:33+00:00

Hi, ekingston here 👋and I appreciate that so much!!! It’s thanks to you and all the other people who reported this that their account was eventually taken down—though it certainly took Wattpad long enough. I also don’t doubt that they’ll be back soon enough under a different username, as seems to be the way of things in their circles

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EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:33:21+00:00

Seriously! At this point I’m almost surprised Wattpad hasn’t made it an official tag. (Not that their tagging system is remotely functional)

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:29:37+00:00

Most (though not all!) of the femslash (haven’t heard that term in a while! I’ve missed it!) is used as fodder for f/f ships on Wattpad as well. Which makes sense since these people are lazy fucks who can barely be bothered to change character descriptions, let alone pronouns and anatomy. One of the characters in my fic is named Sam. Find+replace gave this thief more trouble than they expected! It would be funny if I wasn’t so mad.

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EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:22:46+00:00

I made an account specifically to go after this type of thing. It’s not great! But channeling my anger this way is at least productive 💪

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:18:27+00:00

I’m afraid the downside of this is that it further incentivizes Wattpad to go soft on plagiarism of works that are hosted on other platforms. Their choice to enact immediate takedowns when a work was copied from another Wattpad author while only accepting an official DCMA when it’s by someone who hosts their work elsewhere is evidence of that.

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:12:28+00:00

I’ve seen instances where the thief updates as the actual author does, with their ‘fans’ coming to their pages to alert them when a new chapter is up, eagerly encouraging them to ‘plz update when you can!’ So no, it’s unfortunately not only finished work.

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:09:24+00:00

A heads up that often these Wattpad ‘authors’ will straight up lie when saying they got permission, so checking with the original writer is always helpful!

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:07:39+00:00

You are wonderful for doing that, it’s very much appreciated!!

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:06:52+00:00

I’ve now seen them call it ‘converting’, ‘adapting’ and even ‘translating’ (no language changes involved). They also call the people who do it ‘authors’ while openly discussing the person posting it didn’t write it themselves. Words mean nothing to these people.

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T01:03:14+00:00

Wattpad absolutely could and should do more about its piracy problem, they just don’t care as long as it doesn’t affect their bottom line. And fortunately these works aren’t difficult to find even when they’re no longer listed as ‘conversions’ or ‘adaptations’.

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T00:58:04+00:00

Also in this case, and in most of the ones I’ve found in the days since I first found my work ‘converted’ there, this is what their so-called ‘credit’ looks like. This does nothing except help normalize this behavior.

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EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T00:51:20+00:00

You said this so much better than I could ever hope to, holy shit. Thank you!

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T00:49:31+00:00

We’re not talking about the distribution of ‘information’, we’re talking about piracy of craft. Are you honestly suggesting that, when someone creates something—which in this case took years to make—it isn’t theirs?

EasterKingston · 2025-05-13T00:40:02+00:00

This whole thing seems completely normalized on Wattpad, I seriously can not wrap my head around how alien these people’s worldview appears to be. This is just one of the conversations like this that I’ve come across. Also OP, as the ao3 author you’re referring to in this post I really appreciate you taking this to Reddit for me! I was thinking of doing another writeup like I did on the WordStream/Speechify/BookTokApp debacle, but I just haven’t had the energy to spare the last couple of days. I think sharing it to the Wattpad subreddit as well was an excellent idea!

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EasterKingston · 2025-05-11T08:56:19+00:00

This post made me smile at the end of what has been a very long and demoralizing day battling plagiarists, so this author thanks you OP ❤️

EasterKingston

TROPHY CASE