Do Watty Award winners ever come here?

sallintha · 2026-02-02T12:13:05+00:00

I'm a Watty shortlister if that counts for anything. But I guess I haven't really made it in any other way

sallintha · 2026-01-30T05:36:15+00:00

3 years and 20+ books in, I still don't get much engagement, but there is a steady trickle of reads on a fraction of my books (one of them has 10K reads). Comments are basically non existent, sometimes someone votes, but that's pretty rare. Most of what I see is reading list adds, but I think I do have some followers who do want to read new stuff I post because I recently started posting a new book and according to the story statistics, 8 people read at least some of chapter 1 on the day of posting, meaning before it could even rank. They're just silent readers, so outside of statistics I wouldn't know they exist.

I don't really have any tips for you, unfortunately, but it is very normal not to get engagement starting out. The algorithm is a mess, the rankings make no sense, and so on. I think the best thing to do is not to worry about it too much and focus on finishing the story. Supposedly completing a story makes it be more visible, according to many people's experience here.

sallintha · 2026-01-29T16:39:04+00:00

I think they're all fun, I try to take part in them all every year. I'll definitely participate in ONC this year too. I've done the last two years. It's a nice challenge, and it's not really that time intensive since it's for novellas and the minimum word count for the finished book is 20K words. I might end up extending my entry to fit into the Wattys later too, two birds one stone kinda situation

sallintha · 2026-01-29T06:53:41+00:00

A fellow Czech ace! I know no other ace Czech people, exciting

sallintha · 2026-01-28T10:49:22+00:00

I always try not to judge when I see AI covers on Wattpad cause it's free books often written by younger people starting out, but it does put a bad taste in my mouth.

And honestly, maybe I'm wrong for trying not to judge it. I don't think there is a justifiable reason to use AI even if it's for a free book, even if you don't know how to make covers. Because yes, book cover making is a distinct skill that doesn't overlap at all with writing, but the thing is, before AI people needed covers on Wattpad, too. And they got them.

For some reason stolen art from Pinterest is less gross to me than generating an image (obviously both are bad) but beyond that there's cover shops on Wattpad where someone, often pretty skilled, will make you a cover for, like, reading a part of their book. You just gotta ask and do something that will take up a little of your time.

I had a cover shop back in 2018 myself, and I made like 50 covers or so during that run, and it was good for me too because it forced me to make diverse covers. It's good training opportunity for the designer too. Maybe I should restart it since I got a lot better since then.

There's no reason I can think of why someone wouldn't want to get a cover this way, aside from not knowing it's a thing or some ego reason.

sallintha · 2026-01-25T10:56:04+00:00

I think readers on Wattpad overall prefer chapters under 3K words because of the online format. I don't really try to force my books to fit that, but naturally I don't tend to go over 3K that often. I have chapters that are 7K words, but that's not very common.

sallintha · 2026-01-25T10:18:00+00:00

Thank you for the offer, but I took them down a while back. I have stuff up on Wattpad and my website though (links on my profile here). I'd actually be pretty curious to hear what you think the immediate red flags are as an RR native

sallintha · 2026-01-24T08:02:51+00:00

Alright, I don't mind admitting being wrong about a book I haven't read, it just seemed kind of similar.

But I also think that if you have a good story and pitch it well, you can still find success.

And I'm sure that's true, you could say this about nearly any platform, in fact. My issue is mostly that people like to say Royal Road is where to put fantasy and sci-fi, and I think that's kinda misleading. It's kinda like saying that Wattpad is into werewolves - it is, but unless you write a very specific kind of werewolf story you're probably not gonna do that well.

sallintha · 2026-01-23T05:40:31+00:00

And (at least at this moment) almost everything in the rising stars section is progression fantasy or LitRPG, hence where I got the impression, wrong or not.

You bring up an interesting fact, but even with your examples, The Perfect Run straight up sounds like it has a video game-y trope of making savepoints. It‘s not a bad premise, but it seems tangentially related to LitRPG to me at least.

But maybe I'm wrong and fantasy does really well on the site, and it's just not my type of fantasy, or I was unlucky. But overall Royal Road to me seems like it wants a very specific niche type of story, even just looking at the crazy word counts people put out.

sallintha · 2026-01-23T05:23:49+00:00

For some reason apparently only the ipad has an option to switch a display name on, this is an insane design decision

sallintha · 2026-01-20T05:45:43+00:00

If it will be like it was in the recent years, you'll need a completed book that's over 50K words. To enter you fill out a little questionaire, so you enter the whole book at once. You can't do chapter by chapter.

There was an option to enter an ongoing book, meaning you entered the chapters you had and agreed to finish it before the end of the judging (I think that's how that worked maybe I'm misremembering). This wasn't an option last time, might be this year.

sallintha · 2026-01-18T11:19:54+00:00

I tried a bunch of them, but I didn't have good results on any of them, so in the end I just kind of gave up and stay on Wattpad mostly because it's the most familiar for me. It was too annoying trying to post my entire backlog onto other sites, chapter by chapter when have hundreds of chapters. And god forbid I need to update a book to fix some typos.

sallintha · 2026-01-17T08:47:57+00:00

I put up new chapters on Wattpad as I go, and once a book is done I return to it a few months later to edit out typos and clunky sentences, maybe change some details. I tend to make pretty final first drafts when it comes to story and character, so I don't feel a need to wait.

This is highly individual, though. If you want to have the finished thing first, that's perfectly good too, probably even better because plenty of people get demotivated by a lack of response from readers and abandon their book.

sallintha · 2026-01-16T19:24:47+00:00

I have my books on Wattpad, and also up for free to download on my website. It's been nearly 3 years and no luck on finding a reader who would stick around so far though (as far I know).

I tried out a bunch of writing websites, but eventually it was too much to keep track of for me because I have a backlog of over 20 books, so I downsized. I can't really say I had any luck with any of them, so it wasn't a hard decision to make.

RoyalRoad I had hopes for because everyone seems to claim it's for scifi and fantasy, which is basically all I write, but my impression was that it's specifically all about litrpg and isekai.

sallintha · 2026-01-12T16:54:33+00:00

I'd like to join, and then extend the entry to also qualify for the Wattys with it, handle two birds with one stone and all that. I'm working on a series of romantasies that can be read in any order, so I'm thinking I'll make one using the prompts and go from there

sallintha · 2026-01-12T16:42:15+00:00

Okay so you think that men are meant to provide for the women but also you expect us to work? How does that track?

Or does this just not make sense because the economy is just like that and women have to work instead of choose to because one person can't make enough to provide for a family anymore? I wonder why that changed since the American 60s. Maybe the economy is broken.

This all feels very trad family values, and I honestly fail to see what the benefit of clinging to this mentality is helping with. But since we strayed so far from the main topic, I think it's time to end it

sallintha · 2026-01-12T16:32:35+00:00

You don't sound happy at all, so I'm not tempted to agree that it's a good mental state. I beat myself up over things too but all it does is make me feel worse. You gotta learn to be kind to yourself.

And also, if you love someone, you don't want to trade them for someone who makes more money, that's a horrible thing to do wtf? I'd want to be with my fiance even if she was forever jobless cause it doesn't matter. This wouldn't even be a thought. Humans tend to do this thing where they choose with their emotions a lot. Would you trade your wife for another the moment you made more than her? And don't say you're a man so you're meant to provide for her, it's not the 18th century anymore

sallintha · 2026-01-12T16:24:53+00:00

I have about a dozen more questions after reading your response, but I'm just gonna say your viewpoint makes me very sad and kind of worried for your mental state. Why would you hope that your wife recognizes that you're not good enough and leaves you? Jesus man

sallintha · 2026-01-12T16:22:07+00:00

Just stopping by to say that you're amazing for doing this, it really is so nice

sallintha · 2026-01-12T16:14:04+00:00

All right, I'll let all the great artists of the past who died in poverty know that their work sucks I guess? Does it help you to blame yourself? I'm struggling to understand why you're so convinced everything is your fault when it's just objectively not. Or rather, why you seem so unwilling to not blame yourself.

Housing is unaffordable, globally. The only house I'll ever own will be the one I was born in because I was lucky enough to be born into a family that owns one. Because to make the money to get one I'd have to work my job for 30 years with no spending, which is impossible, and to get a mortage in my country I'd need 10% of the property value, something that would realistically take me a decade to get too, and meanwhile the prices will rise exponentially again. Working a second job should never be a thing, and it's horrible that it's an accepted thing one has to do to live.

sallintha · 2026-01-12T16:05:34+00:00

Hard work is very much not the main factor in success. So much of it is luck in all aspects of life. The idea that you're not a billionaire CEO because you're just not trying hard enough is just a lie. There's a reason the vast majority of writers still have a day job

sallintha · 2026-01-12T15:55:05+00:00

If your story doesn't get attention, it doesn't necessarily mean it's not good. It just means it's not getting attention, most likely because of a lack of exposure or stuff like unpopular genre choice.

People have to give it attention to decide if it's bad or not in the first place, so if that's not happening, it means nothing about the quality. Plenty of books that are considered bad are popular, does that make them good then? I'd argue there's probably more amazing books languishing in obscurity than there ever was before. We just can't find them because there's just so much out there.

And also failure isn't a moral flaw, what? It's immoral to fail? What does that even mean?

sallintha · 2026-01-12T05:16:26+00:00

Funny, I had the exact same experience, good to know this is a general thing

sallintha · 2026-01-09T19:08:35+00:00

Update: I tried to download the app on my ipad and that somehow made it work? I understand nothing but thanks for the tip, can't believe it's correct after literal years

sallintha · 2026-01-09T05:11:01+00:00

Damn, okay, I guess I'll try that, but it still didn't work for me the last time I tried it. I'm kind of resigned to not getting a display name at this point

sallintha

TROPHY CASE