Are digital writing communities viable publishing businesses? Signing up to online digital writing communities for the everyday person is free and easy- but where are these businesses making their money? How do they manage to build up their community and masses of online free content, and how can publishing companies exploit this new platform? What is ‘Wattpad’? With new business models emerging in the publishing industry, the author is freed from the restraints of retaining literary agents and publishing contracts in order to get published. New digital writing community sites such as Wattpad, launched in 2006, with an audience of 45 million writers every month (Wattpad, Business) may possibly be the future of book publishing. To help monitor this huge platform, Wattpad has an in-house community unit and global team of ambassadors. Wattpad’s overall demographic consists of younger individuals such as Millennials and Zen G (13-30 years old) which make up 80% of their total audience. Though Wattpad earns its revenue predominately through advertising, sponsorship links with other businesses wanting to market their books to Wattpad’s readers is also another revenue avenue. What issues do they come across as a business? With 250 million story uploads (Marc Shewchun, Head of community, Wattpad) a day, Wattpad is such a big community that it is hard to control all of the content its users post. Therefore issues with liability, explicit content and plagiarism often arise and are unreported such as with C J Daugherty’s ‘Night School’ book series. C J Daugherty found more then 20 illegal plagiarised books with over 10,000 views overall on Wattpad and the author criticised Wattpad for not acting out more strongly against plagiarism, saying that there was “no sign that Wattpad cares about copyright”. Even with clear user instruction to not plagiarise work when uploading, a proprietary algorithm and encouragement for its users to report stories that violate Wattpad’s content guidelines, it appears impossible to fully monitor the entirely of this social platform. According to a report by Forbes (Daniel Newman), Millennials are becoming more ‘immune’ to ads, thanks to communication and trust issues. With advertising and this target audience central to Wattpad’s business plan, it was vital that Wattpad address this issue to prevent them loosing any business. By redesigning their website (2016) with ‘native advertising’, adverts being placed between the chapters of each story, Wattpad attempted to counteract this. Users (according to a report by Flipp) will spend 40% more time interacting with integrated, relevant native ads then they will with standard ads. However with Amazon’s announcement of creating ‘WriteOn’ (2014), Amazon’s own version of a digital writing community, Wattpad has some serious competition. With 150 million accounts in existence, Amazon is no small competition. However it still must be considered today (2016), two years after the creation of ‘WriteOn’ it is still fairly unknown by the public, and with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohunian quoting that Amazon is “trying to eat Wattpad’s lunch”, ‘WriteOn’ still has a long way to go to surpass Wattpad. Are they viable businesses? Online writing communities are vital for the publishing business marketplace. With the ability to enable its authors to communicate directly with their readers, gaining invaluable feedback in the form of comments, votes and the demographic data Wattpad provides, publishers must see these sites as vital marketing and research tools for their businesses. However, it must be considered that Wattpad’s predominantly younger demographic may be a factor in which types of publishers will find this platform most useful. Overall, it is evident that Wattpad is an incredibly successful viable business worth $277 million. It is also clear that Wattpad’s expansion is far from over though with CEO and co-founder Allen Lau telling the guardian (Victoria James, The Guardian) of Wattpad’s plans to reach a billion users. References: Websites:
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AuthorMy name is Victoria Bush and I am a Publishing Media/Fine Art student at Oxford Brookes. I'm 19 years old and I'm a self confessed bookaholic. I'm going to write 6 short blogs on this website on the realm of 'digital publishing'. I hope you enjoy them! ArchivesCategories |