Maybe Wattpad isn’t such a good idea

Ah, continues of the Wattpad saga. Will I or won’t I and other blah blah blah such as that.

I tried putting up Mika’s Robot as a tester (it’s in private so no one but I can see it because tester). Crikey, did I freakin’ despise it. It threw away all my formatting (especially for digital conversations, which are presented differently than usual he said/she said), I had to re-add spaces between paragraphs because some conversion thing went sideways from Word and I just…I think I experienced the last straw. I already get tension headaches when I simply visit the site because of the nonsense I know I’m going to go through. Not even logged in, just going to the landing page. I don’t think it is a good sign when simply visiting a website irritates me. Then, it chews up my formatting like no tomorrow. I just plain don’t like Wattpad, it seems.

Here are the pro and cons of Wattpad, from my interactions with it so far:

Pros:

• Ability to procure more readers (always a good thing)
• That’s it?

Cons

• Formatting is neutralized and you feel like you’re back at Square One
• Tagging system is a pain in the derriere
• Building a cover for a book that is presented for free is not my cup of tea. For sale? Sure! For free? No way.
• Can’t schedule chapters to coincide with patreon stuff (which is a pain all by itself)
• If I slap it up on Wattpad, I can’t sell the story anywhere else. Unless I make some omega changes to make the story very different. I want to sell mah storehs, mang.

It just…I thought being on Wattpad would be a good idea because it was suggested as a way to get readers – which is true, if you know how to tag effectively and buzz about on Wattpad. Instead, it kinda keeps getting in the way. I am getting tired of going, “I wanna post this…but what if I want to submit it later?” For example, this is the exact thing that happened with In Search of Amika and “Runoff”. I had to take it down because both are being shopped around. Then there is the fact that I found a place that even “Reflectors” can be submitted to! So now I’m left wondering if I want to post that and risk not being able to sell it at all.

Then you have the formatting bloodshow that was for Mika’s Robot. Good gods that was awful and so awful I’m now reconsidering being on Wattpad at all and just keeping things between Patreon and hoping I can sell a story.

I always thought of Wattpad of a way to place my stories that simply can’t go anywhere else. But it seems like they’re finding places they at least sorta can go. (Hecka emphasis on the “sorta” because these rejections are making me feel very otherwise.) I dunno, man.

However, there’s the work Mika’s Robot. It’s a novella length vignette. That is a super hard sell. It’s four stories clobbered into one. I may just self-pub that one because I don’t think anyone will buy that one. Or I may suffer through Wattpad… but then I’ll be moody that Mika’s Robot won’t be read the way it should be, emphasis and all. I still don’t know.

It really is a toss up. I may cut out Wattpad and leave things to just submissions, self pub what can’t be submitted, promote works here instead of on Wattpad and keep Patreon as a place to put up works in snippets so I can still submit them. I already have beta readers, don’t need Wattpad for that. That actually might be a plan. Wattpad is the only place where I can’t schedule anything, or anything. I am stuck to nonsense. I rather put full effort and probably  self-pub Mika’s Robot instead. Complete with neat formatting.