Empowering Fandom: Supporting Creative Communities on Wattpad
By Aron Levitz, President, Wattpad
When I joined Wattpad in 2013, I had no idea that I’d be starting a journey that would still be under way in 2025. In 2013, we were just starting to build our advertising and monetization tools at Wattpad, and our biggest moments were still to come--After wasn’t yet the global phenomenon it would become and we hadn’t built our studio or publishing divisions.
But even back then, it was already clear that for many people Wattpad was the home of fandom. Fan communities have long recognized that Wattpad is the perfect digital home for fandoms to thrive: a global community of readers and writers celebrating stories, pop culture, and everything that inspires them.
Fandom can be a hard concept to define. Vox notes that “fandom is simply a community of fans, be they online or off, active or passive,” while Teen Vogue (citing Fanlore) defines fandom as “a community of fans, participating in fanac [fan activity] and interacting some way, whether through discussions or creative works.”
Wattpad offered--and continues to offer--all of these things: a platform for creativity, community, and connection. This unique combination is exactly what fandoms thrive on, creating, sharing, and celebrating stories and pop culture in different ways. Every day we see writers create new worlds, new characters, and new stories on Wattpad, with new fandoms forming around them. We also see writers exploring the biggest themes and tropes in fiction and pop-culture, remixing and rearranging fan-favorite universes that global fandom communities rally around.
Fans and fandom are what make Wattpad special. Our authors have been the driving force behind major new trends in fiction, a stream of bestselling novels, award-winning films, and unmissable pop culture moments. Fan communities made genre-blending like Action Romance or Romantasy huge on Wattpad before they made the jump into the mainstream. Before Anora won an Oscar, falling for a Billionaire Mafia Boyfriend was an unmissable trope and trend on Wattpad because of the way it offered a contemporary spin (and exciting stakes!) on the Cinderella story trope. Trends like this are not new to Wattpad. Hockey romance? Paranormal romances? The romcom renaissance filling streaming services and Booktok can often be at least partially traced back to the voracious appetites of Wattpad readers. What started as a new author's spin on a classic trope can turn into cultural phenomena.
Internationally successful authors like Anna Todd, Ariana Godoy, Tay Marley, CeCe Lib, and many others have built their own fandoms on our platform. And we’ve consistently seen these fandoms help the stories they love reach new heights on and off our platform. From Tay Marley’s The QB Bad Boy and Me to Ali Novak’s My Life with the Walter Boys to Mercedes Ron’s Culpa Mia trilogy, these stories have become pop culture sensations thanks to their passionate like-minded fans on our platform.
The role of fans and fandom culture is central to the question of "What's next for Wattpad?” After a multi-year strategy to improve Wattpad’s core product and enhance community safety, we’re ready to embark on a new era, one where our platform can better support and grow the fandom communities on Wattpad. We want to make it easier for fans to connect on Wattpad, for writers to share their work and reach new readers, and for anyone to find a story that speaks to their interests.
Our vision at Wattpad has always been to entertain and connect the world through stories. As we evolve our business, we’re going to focus on those core pillars to deepen our connections to readers, authors, and global fan communities that love to read, write, and share incredible stories on Wattpad.
What does this mean? It means we’re going to focus on a few key areas this year at Wattpad:
A Focus on UGC and Accessibility
Paid Content has become an important part of Wattpad, and Wattpad Originals are an incredible opportunity for authors who are ready to publish their work. But UGC stories and communities remain the heart of Wattpad, and our free experience is what many people love about the platform. Wattpad is a place where you can find new, free stories from authors all over the world. Wattpad’s free experience should always be just as compelling, diverse, and exciting as our paid experience. We’re going to make it easier for people to write and share on Wattpad, building fandoms whether they are independent authors or part of our Wattpad Originals ecosystem.
Enhanced Discovery
One of the most common questions we get from writers is “How can I reach more readers?” And as a reader, with millions of stories in every possible genre, browsing Wattpad can feel overwhelming. Story discovery is one of the most important things we can enhance to benefit the reader and writer experience on Wattpad. This year we’re going to start to build new search, discovery, personalization, and recommendation features, making it easier for readers to find stories they love.
An Improved Subscription and Ad Experience
A free platform is an ad-supported platform. Advertising makes Wattpad accessible to anyone who wants to find a great story. But advertising also means striking a balance, ensuring readers aren’t disrupted by ads. Our teams will be looking at new ways to make ads on Wattpad a more seamless part of the experience, maintaining a free and accessible platform while also making sure our ad experience is optimized to let people lose themselves in a story. We also know that some readers simply don’t want ads, which is why we offer the Wattpad Premium ad-free experience, a product we’ll be reviewing to ensure we are delivering strong value to subscribers.
New Connection Features
Community and connection are core to fandoms and Wattpad. Our platform has transformed the solitary experience of writing by giving authors a safe, global community to share their stories online. Writers can engage with their readers directly, creating a connection and proximity to fan communities that doesn’t exist anywhere else. This connection is one of Wattpad’s superpowers, and something we intend to build on. Reading on Wattpad is a bit like being part of the world’s biggest book club. That’s why we want to make it easier for fan communities to identify each other, to find other like-minded readers, and for authors to connect with their fans in new ways.
The global Wattpad community of readers and writers has been redefining pop culture since 2006. One of the reasons Wattpad authors have become a go-to source of hits in Hollywood and entertainment markets all over the world is because fan communities show up to support things they are passionate about. That’s why The Kissing Booth, After, Through My Window, Sidelined: The QB and Me, and many other stories that started on Wattpad have become pop-culture phenomena.
The ethos that got us here is one built on celebrating fandom and creation. And that’s what we’re going to continue to do at Wattpad: enabling anyone who wants to read, write, or simply celebrate great stories to do just that.
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