Wattpad R4R was a mistake (but something unexpected happened elsewhere)

Okay, the aim of this post is not diss Wattpad as a site in any way, but I want to share my experiences as a precautionary tale for other struggling writers out there.

Last month, I sat down and seriously thought about how on earth I should promote my new novel. Advice in this regard on the internet is overwhelming, and it turns out that to successfully advertise your work, you should be on social media 24/7, making posts, reels, and churning out organic traffic from the followers.

I figured since my novel is already out on self-publishing platforms, I might head over to one of those R4R (read for read) threads on Reddit, submit my story, and see what happens.

I did just that and I will never do that again.

Initially, I thought about posting screenshots with censored names of users, but that would be too much of a hassle, so allow me to summarise what happened.

I found the latest R4R thread on Wattpad subreddit one evening and replied under a poster’s request saying that I’m up for genuine read-for-read, and included a link to my story. After barely three minutes, the original poster liked the first few chapters of my novel and left a (sort of) positive comment along the lines: “Good stuff, mate. Your stories deserve more recognition.”

Honestly, I found it hard to believe that this particular wattpader actually read the beginning of my novel, but R4R it a R4R, so I headed to his profile and honestly read the only thing he had on it, which was an unfinished short story about Pokémon… Reading it really took me three minutes and I left an honest comment saying that fan fiction is not my cup of tea, but the story gives off the vibe of the Nintendo games, in particular the ones I used to play on GameCube back in the day.

That was it, and I thought I was done with my R4R adventure until I logged in to Wattpad a couple of days later.

Turns out some other wattpader noticed my submission on the subreddit, followed me, and within the timespan of five minutes liked all of my chapters in the novel, and left at least five comments. All of which did not refer to the actual story, but to a concluding segment of a given chapter. So, for instance, if there was a song at the end of the chapter, that wattpader wrote: “I love that song!”; or if there was a mention of an apple pie, they wrote: “I love apple pie!”

Again, I doubt they read through the novel, but… R4R is a R4R. I headed to their profile and read through the only thing they had, which was a short story about Call of Duty (also unfinished)…

I just left a generic comment and called it quits, deleting the subreddit reply with my novel link altogether. Two things irritated me in this situation: 1) Why do people promote fanfiction on Wattpad? I don’t understand it. 2) The entire R4R on Wattpad is a self-perpetuating promo scam, and now I really doubt that the most popular works on this platform were read and appreciated by real people.

Having arrived at this sad realisation, I gave up, once again, on further promotion of my novel. And I guess this was a good thing? When I let go, the stars must have aligned in a favorable configuration because I logged in to Inkitt this week (where my novel is also published) and saw this in the notifications:

I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a review! At first, I was afraid that this may be another dishonest R4R scheme or some self-promotion attempt, but I read the review and it seems genuine! What is more, I did a bit of googling, checking the user who left the rev, and they appear to be a normal, living person, not a bot!

This review is an unexpected blessing for which I am extremely grateful. Maybe regular readers are out there after all. But the question is: Will they find my work on their own? In the age of unreliable search engines, I’m highly doubtful.

Image attribution: All screenshots were taken by me.