Margaret Atwood Joins Wattpad
Exploring the Future
It’s not everyday we get to make an announcement like this. It doesn’t really get much bigger, but today we’re incredibly excited to let everyone know that our fellow Canadian, the esteemed novelist and poet Margaret Atwood has joined Wattpad.
You can find her profile here - http://www.wattpad.com/MargaretAtwood. Reach out and say hi, read her work, or share your own!
Remember when Oprah joined Twitter? That’s what it’s like for us to have Margaret on board. She’s a legit legend: a prolific and award-winning author of over 50 books, a technologist, an entrepreneur, and an inventor who spends her spare time provocatively exploring the future of publishing, recently launching a campaign on the crowdfunding platformIndiegogo for her own start-up,Fanado.
Like us, Margaret is deeply interested in the evolving nature of reading and writing online. She is at the forefront of the major shift happening right now in the publishing industry and realizes that authors need to be aware of the brave new world of digital opportunities that are out there.
It’s an adventure all around! As part of her deep dive into digital publishing, Margaret is going to be sharing work on Wattpad. Starting today Margaret is posting a collection of poems called “Thriller Suite” and she wants to hear from you.
We’re also happy to announce that she will be the final judge in our upcoming poetry contest, which will get underway in July. Please keep an eye out for that.
In the meantime, Margaret told us she looks forward to exploring how our community connects people to reading and writing, and how it gives writers confidence through direct feedback. She’s also interested to connect with an entirely new audience, many who will be reading her poems directly on their phones!
Margaret’s been a great supporter of ours for awhile now; we love that she “gets us” and is always helping to spread the word.
All concerned about youth literacy and the net: many kids are putting their writing up on wattpad.com. You’d be surprised!
— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) December 6, 2011
A lot of people think that reading and writing have taken a backseat to audio and video in our new multimedia universe. But did you know that users now post over 20,000 new stories every single day on Wattpad and many, many more people are reading and sharing them? Real time feedback and interactions between readers and writers is new. We’re not sure where it’s going to go in the future, but we’re glad Margaret is along for the ride.