Knowledge of the consumer, the ability to provide what that consumer wants, and the marketing know-how to capture loyalty are key factors in success with Wattpad Books
| After speaking with Wattpad Books’ Ashleigh Gardner, we also spoke with one of the six authors whose work will be released in the fall by the platform’s new publishing division. Lauren Palphreyman is the author of Cupid’s Match, which Wattpad Books will release on October 1. But the French edition, Maudit Cupidon, is already available in Europe via Hachette Romans in one of Wattpad’s international publishing partnerships. Palphreyman is English, and after our conversation with her from London, we think she may not match the stereotype of a young Wattpad author. Palphreyman entered the world of publishing with a year of work as a marketing insight analyst for Penguin Random House UK. She says her experience at the biggest Big Five helped her recognize the value of what she found at Wattpad. Palphreyman originally joined Wattpad to market and promote herself. But, once she was there, she says, “I was taken with how fun the community was, and I became awestruck by some of the big titles and big authors.” She saw that Wattpad was getting millions of reads and building up an engaged audience. “I started thinking of using the platform itself to create something pretty exciting. I decided to do that with Cupid’s Match, and it went a lot better than I thought it would.” Cupid’s Match is a valuable property on the platform and illustrates why Wattpad would be motivated to launch its own books division. The first of the three books has by itself attracted 46.7 million reads as a 96-part serial; it has inspired more than 100 fan-fiction writings. And it won a 2016 Watty award for “most voracious read” and two more Wattys in 2016 and 2017 for paranormal fiction. What’s more, Cupid’s Match already exists as an audiobook, narrated by Laurie Winkel and produced by Hachette in one of Wattpad’s content partnerships. And a year ago, a nine-minute pilot episode of a television treatment of the book was released by Wattpad at CW Seed, a site run by The CW network. While Palphreyman concedes that she’d probably like to branch out into different genres, she’s keenly aware that she’s onto a good thing at the moment with Wattpad, and she plans “to try to build a bit of a brand around myself.” It’s not for every author, Palphreyman says. “If you look at the core demographic—this young, connected, teenaged girl—and if you’re writing content for that segment of the wider market, Wattpad can help you as an author to get out there.” Bottom line: Palphreyman’s viewpoint is helpful because she brings a business understanding to the platform’s potential advantages for an author. Even while at PRH, she says, she was thinking of an author’s career. What she found at Wattpad clicked with what she’d learned as a Big Five marketing analyst. And while she declines to discuss details, she says she likes her contract with Wattpad. |
Jane Friedman has spent her entire career working in the publishing industry, with a focus on business reporting and author education. Established in 2015, her newsletter The Bottom Line provides nuanced market intelligence to thousands of authors and industry professionals; in 2023, she was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World.
Jane’s expertise regularly features in major media outlets such as The New York Times, The Atlantic, NPR, The Today Show, Wired, The Guardian, Fox News, and BBC. Her book, The Business of Being a Writer, Second Edition (The University of Chicago Press), is used as a classroom text by many writing and publishing degree programs. She reaches thousands through speaking engagements and workshops at diverse venues worldwide, including NYU’s Advanced Publishing Institute, Frankfurt Book Fair, and numerous MFA programs.
