From Forbes:
It took a less than an hour in 2013 for Anna Todd to change her life. The Army wife and part-time babysitter had spent a lot of time reading fan fiction, stories by amateur writers about existing fictional universes and real-life celebrities. So her erotic tale about Tessa and Hardin—a wholesome college freshman and a tattooed bad boy who is a thinly veiled stand-in for singer Harry Styles—came together quickly when she sat down to type the first chapter of After on her phone. Todd posted it to Wattpad, one of the world’s largest destinations for online reading and writing.
After has since been read more than 1.5 billion times on Wattpad. It’s now a bestselling book series, with 11 million copies sold after Wattpad brokered a mid-six-figure deal for Todd with Simon & Schuster. She fully credits Wattpad with getting her in the door. “If I had sent After to any publisher, there’s no way they would have even read it,” says Todd, 29. Wattpad got paid for its work, taking an estimated 15% of Todd’s book earnings–about what a typical literary agent would charge—and it’s also a producer of the After movie that began production in June. The lucrative evolution from Wattpad post to mainstream book to Hollywood movie is precisely what Wattpad wants to see more of.
“We had built the audience for the writers, the platform for them to share their stories,” says Wattpad cofounder Allen Lau, 50. “But we did have the idea, ‘Hey, we have millions of stories already. Perhaps we can expand that.’”
Wattpad’s 65 million active users (most of them women under 30) spend 383 million hours a month on its site and its mobile apps, reading pieces like “Brave,”a yarn about the Harry Potter character Neville Longbottom, and “Taking Selfies and Overthrowing the Patriarchy With Kim Kardashian.” Wattpad has more than 4 million writers, who post an average of 300,000 pieces a day. The company brings in an estimated $19 million in revenue, mostly from ads on its site and from stories sponsored by companies like Unilever who want to advertise alongside a specific writer or genre. Nearly all its writers are unpaid; several hundred make money from ad-sharing revenue and 200 of those also earn from writing sponsored content and inking publishing deals with Wattpad. That lean business model means Wattpad is profitable. It has few costs beyond bandwidth, its 130 employees and the Toronto offices. The model “is a great way to seek talent without having to pay huge amounts for it,” says Lorraine Shanley, a publishing industry consultant.
. . . .
Since Wattpad doesn’t own the rights to the stories on its site, it’s morphing into a talent agency for its authors, cutting out the famously fragmented and high-touch world of literary agents. By bypassing the middle man, Wattpad can funnel the most popular pieces directly to book publishers and TV and movie studios while taking a cut of the authors’ deals.
. . . .
Lau and Yuen weren’t the only ones plunging into digital fiction. FanFiction.net, where EL James wrote the stories that became Fifty Shades, had launched in 1998. But FanFiction.net rarely updated its site as the Web evolved, and it still looks pretty much like a Web 2.0 message board. Traditional publishers have tried their hand, too. In 2008, HarperCollins launched Authonomy, where users could upload manuscripts and editors would read the five highest-rated stories each month. By the time the site shut down in 2015, the publisher had picked up 47 books for publication. Macmillan’s five-year-old Swoon Reads plans to release 22 titles in 2018, but with more than 70,000 users and 700 manuscript uploads, its reach is far smaller than Wattpad’s.
Wattpad has not only the bigger size but also the burning desire to avoid another of FanFiction.net’s errors: letting a craze like Fifty Shades happen without getting a piece. To that end, Wattpad has put together more than 100 book deals for its authors over the past four years (not including foreign rights deals), likely collecting the typical 15% commission of a literary agent.
Link to the rest at Forbes
My understanding is that Wattpad has also produced some successful self-published authors. It is of course up to the individual author which path to take. If they do want to go traditional they are probably much better off with Wattpad spruiking their book than with most traditional literary agents.
But I thought youngsters are all about reading on paper?
Why would I want to give them any power/control over my works?
“Wattpad has not only the bigger size but also the burning desire to avoid another of FanFiction.net’s errors: letting a craze like Fifty Shades happen without getting a piece. To that end, Wattpad has put together more than 100 book deals for its authors over the past four years (not including foreign rights deals), likely collecting the typical 15% commission of a literary agent.”
Ah, yeah, they don’t need a piece of my ‘action’, thank you. 😛
I’m confused by the “likely … 15%”. Are they protecting their asses after an unofficial source or just guessing?
If it’s out there up front many will say ‘no way’ and go a different path. This way they can sit on the fence and pretend they aren’t going to demand 15% (or more!) until another 50 Shadows comes up – and then they pounce and show their true colors to those that have foolishly submitted their stories!
(Yes, maybe they won’t, but is it worth the risk?)
MYMV
I don’t see how they can unless they put it in a contract.
What I’m confused by is if Forbes actually talked to any of the authors who got deals about the 15% or they are just guessing. You can’t tell by this.