Fiction Posting Experiment

Day 4

This is my first update since joining the four platforms I chose for my fiction posting experiment and I thought I would write a little about my first impressions of each (Wattpad, Inkspired, Prose and Tablo). Each one is quite different and my first impressions are steering me towards two out of the four so far. Let me talk a little about each of them in turn:

Inkspired

For me, Inkspired is the platform that has had more niggling little issues than the other three. I had some odd issues getting the site to actually appear for me when I typed “getinkspired.com” or “www.getinkspired.com” into my browser header but this now seems to have resolved itself. I also had a browser crash when trying to upload a picture to one of my stories and after several attempts it still hadn’t worked, but as I say, these are just little niggles.

The site itself looks nice and it is easy enough to upload a story, and then to make a fairly attractive front cover for your work using templates on the site.

There is a thorough FAQs page where you can find out information about all of the different aspects of publishing on Inskpired, including how to accept contributions from readers for work that is “in progress”, a system which reminded me a little of Patreon. They also have a great pop up support chat where you can ask questions live or leave an email address for them to answer your query later.

There are community groups that you can join, although many of them do not have very many members which made me concerned that Inkspired is just not as active a community as other sites. Also I noticed that some writers who had been on there for some time did not have a huge number of followers or likes which also suggested to me that it may not be quite as large or active community as other sites.

There were also two other things I noticed that raised questions for me: one is that there seem to be a lot of non-English publications and groups. Four out of six of the community groups and all of the Inkspired Facebook groups that they list on the site are for Spanish speakers.

This made me wonder if the site is more geared towards Spanish speakers than English. Even though I can speak Spanish I will obviously want to find a site with plenty of readers who want to read English fiction as that is what I write.

The second thing I noticed was that there are lots and lots of public domain, published works from well-known writers on the site. This made me wonder who the site was aimed at and what the goal of the company was. I definitely think it may be harder to get your fiction read on a site where searching for science fiction brings up works by Philip K Dick and Kurt Vonnegut.

So far, as you can imagine, the jury is out on Inkspired. Here are my current stats: I have posted two stories, I have zero story likes, I have zero followers but the stats say that my stories have been viewed a total of 160 times between the two of them.

Tablo

Tablo is a site that is based in Melbourne, Australia. The website itself is simple enough to use but it doesn’t look as attractive to me as some of the others like Medium and Prose and I don’t always find it as intuitive to use.

It has an FAQs page and also has a pop up chat help, similar to that of Inkspired.

It has community groups that you can join and these are all for English speakers but, as with Inkspired, they don’t contain a huge number of members again signalling to me that this site might not be quite as active as I would like. The Science Fiction and Fantasy group has 136 members and the chat there is not very active. Think about that for a moment: they grouped together science fiction and fantasy and there are still only 136 members.

As with Inkspired I took a look at some members who have been on there since 2015 and their follower numbers were much lower than I would have expected.

There are another couple of notable differences with Tablo: firstly there is a pulse rating that shows you how well your story is doing. This reminded me a little of a photography site I used to use called 500px.com, but I digress.

At the time of writing one of my stories has a rating of 67 which might sound good to you, but that story has had 3 reads and zero likes. At this stage I’m not really sure that I like the pulse rating. I would just rather cut out the need to click on it to find out how the story is doing.

One thing that is quite different about Tablo is that you can choose to “sell on bookstores”. I’m not 100% sure which bookstores you can list your work on as I haven’t gone through that process yet but it certainly looks easy to use. There is also a sales section in your profile which shows royalties and sales in Australian dollars but within the page where you can prepare your work for sale there is an option to set the US, European or Australian price.

Again, the jury is out on Tablo for now. I’m concerned about the lack of activity that I see on there but I do find the option to sell your work online intriguing and wonder if it could be useful to use for publishing ebooks to stores outside of amazon.

My current stats for Tablo: Two stories published, zero followers, zero likes and 7 reads total.

Prose

As you can probably guess, Prose (found at theprose.com) is one of my two front runners at this early stage.

It has an interface that reminds me a little of Medium, and perhaps that is something that gives me comfort due to its familiarity but I like it nonetheless. It also seems to have a more active membership from what I have seen so far.

You can follow portals, a bit like following topics in Medium but I haven’t found any community groups (unless I am missing something).

Another thing I wish I had found that I have not discovered is an FAQs page like Inkspired and Tablo. I just don’t see one and this has meant that I have felt like I’m fumbling around in the dark a little getting used to the interface. I do think it is quite intuitive but a little guidance wouldn’t go amiss especially with things like the repost button (?). I don’t know if that is what it is, I am currently guessing.

I’m also guessing that the coins you can buy on the site are for use with buying books from the bookstore and entering challenges. It also seems that you can create your own challenges for other writers if that’s your thing.

There is a little icon at the top near your avatar that looks like a pulse button but it is different to that of Tablo. This one just lists “news” or likes and follows etc. There is also a little chat feature where you can message other writers. I’ve already received one direct message from another writer welcoming me to the site.

So, at present I quite like Prose. I think I’ll get used to the interface after some time and I am encouraged by the activity on there. It reminds me in many ways of Medium and this is a positive. I only wish there was a blog or an FAQs page where I could find tips or help on how to get started and make the most of my experience there. I’m going to treat it in a similar way to Medium (replacing publications with challenges) and see how I do.

Current stats on Prose: 2 posts, 7 followers, 6 following. Both stories have 9 reads and 2 likes but I suspect the likes are coming from fellow Ninja Writers at this stage.

Wattpad

Finally we reach Wattpad, the Colossus of the writing sites. Being Wattpad, of course, I have heard a few things about it over the years and I did, in fact, join about 6 years ago and didn’t stick with it. This time I am starting anew and giving it a proper go.

The interface is very straightforward and easy to use and I would say it is the most intuitive of the lot, although not the most attractive with the bright orange header (personal preference of course).

It has been running successfully for some time so it is no surprise that it has a detailed FAQs page when you click on the ‘help’ button on the footer. It’s also no surprise that the community is thriving and very active, but this could also have a downside. There are just so many stories being posted on Wattpad that it could end up being very hard to get noticed. I guess we’ll see how that goes. I’m told that the more engaged you are socially, the better your success on Wattpad so I will be diving in to the community side of it very soon.

I have bumped into a few Wattpad users on twitter and so far, they seem to be a very friendly bunch. It definitely seems to be a positive and supportive community so far and there are thousands of users and tonnes of groups to join.

One thing I have noticed is that Wattpad users seem to be big on high quality cover design. It seems like that’s one of the important things I’m going to need to do to get my stories noticed.

I do have a couple of possible issues that I have either heard about or noticed and I hope to see for myself if these are unfounded. One is that Wattpad is mainly for YA writing. My first impression is that there is a wide range of genres which looks, on the surface, to include my style of writing but when I search through to read work by others, I am often faced with writing that is most definitely in the YA style. I’ll have to see how this pans out and if my stories gain any traction.

The second thing that bothers me is that there are many wonderful competitions on Wattpad but I haven’t yet found one (apart from the Wattys) that I can enter because so far, they have all been for US residents only. I find that so disappointing and I’m really hoping to find some that are open to writers from Europe. I love competitions (not that I’ve ever won any or even been shortlisted) because they are great to use as writing prompts and there is always that teeny, tiny chance that someone might like your writing. It also means there is definitely at least one person reading your work…

Current stats on Wattpad: 2 works, 1 follower. My stories have 5 reads and 2 reads respectively and the more popular one has one recommend and a bunch of really detailed and positive comments from one user.

So that just about wraps up my first impressions on these four platforms. Let me know in the comments if anything I have picked up is wrong (this is highly possible) or if you have any tips or pointers about anything I have mentioned.

I’ll write another update in a week or so to let you know how I’m getting on.

Thanks for reading!