Not edited.

Written August 11, 2021.

A lot of people have been complaining that Wattpad has been on a backslide for the past couple of years.

I'm going to be honest, I kind of agree.

Wattpad was at its peak, in my opinion, back in 2016 up until about 2018.

What changed? What needs to change?

I'll be talking about some of the answers down below. Will anything actually get changed? I highly doubt it, which really is a shame.

On the odd chance that anything actually comes out of this piece, I'll let you know. In the mean time, feel free to share your opinions on these ideas.

What was working before?

Back in 2016 through 2018, Wattpad was running pretty smoothly. It had bugs like any other app, but things were generally functioning well.

The stories were easy to find, as they were categorized by genre. If you labeled your book as Fantasy, there was a one hundred percent chance that, if you took the time to scroll all the way through the Fantasy list, you would eventually find your book.

Sure, it might not have a fancy number in front of its name, but it would be with other books in its genre.

You could look through other tags, and more tags could help your book reach a bigger audience.

However, these tags were mainly to help people who were not searching by genre. If you wanted a book about school, for example, you could search for 'school' and get a list of books with that tag. You might find anything from Romance to Fantasy to Historical Fiction, or a combination of all three.

Awesome.

These tags helped everybody's stories. They allowed books to be discovered by readers from outside genres, and lead to a lot of crossover. Science Fiction readers might enter into Fantasy books with certain tags. Romance readers might enter into a Spiritual book, if it promised uplifting examples of romantic topics.

I personally saw all of these, and more, happen in the old system.

Under this system, the rankings were straightforward. You were almost guaranteed to find a pure Science Fiction book at the top of the list in that genre. Of course, all books have subgenres, but the sorting based upon the primary genre was quite accurate.

Because books were ranked solely based upon primary genre, stories actually had a realistic shot at the rankings. If you were out here busting your butt, making sure you were posting and editing, you could get a ranking somewhere in the top thousand. Once you got a decent ranking somewhere in the four or five hundreds, you tended to keep it for a very long time. Those people would continue to go upward in the ranks, as having that number in front of your book's title sorted it into a list where lots of stories were getting lots of clicks.

Of course, the rate at which someone's reads increased would factor into how fast their book moved up the hotlist. The number of reads the book had when it first got ranked also mattered.

That wasn't a huge detriment, though. Sure, the top five or so in each genre used to be high-level books with somewhere above twenty-five thousand reads, but by the time you got anywhere near to that point, you would be getting massive amounts of views each day. So, there was a reason those books had gotten so many reads.

While discovering books was easier back in the golden age of Wattpad, the same can be said for actually reading them.

Back in 2016 and part of 2017, I was living in a very rural area. I had lived there my whole life, and the closest neighbor was almost a mile away.

We had horrible internet coverage. We had dialup for years after it would have been considered out of date, and then our new internet provider had awful coverage.

During my junior and senior year of high school, that went downhill fast. The internet would go out if there was any heavy rain. It would go out sometimes for no reason. It wasn't predictable and it was annoying.

The good thing about this? When it happened, I could read on Wattpad.

I didn't have unlimited cellular data back then, but that didn't matter. This app used so little cellular data. Like, doing my homework in Google Docs took up more of my data plan.

I could pull up a story in my library, and spend the evening reading it. It could be a little slow, but I could also search for new stories and read those as well.

And guess what? I didn't have to pay.

There are people on here now who have no idea what that was like, and that's sad. I've been asked if, way back in the day, it was really free all the time. The answer is yes, it always was.

I could read basically anywhere. If I was on my hour-long school bus ride? Wattpad. Driving to the grocery store with my parents? Wattpad. This app was my go-to.

This app still is my go-to, but there are a lot of things going on here now that can make me sit back and think.

What's changed?

First up, the ranking system.

If anyone here has read my story descriptions for the 2050 and Perkins School books, you'll see that the first thing in the descriptions is the highest ranking.

People who look at that and come over here are probably going to be asking questions. My books actually got ranked, so who am I to sit here and talk about what's happened to the system? Some people's books never get ranked.

To have a triple-digit rank is a privilege, and having a double-digit one is unheard of now.

I recognize the fact that getting that kind of ranking is a massive honor. I know that my books don't deserve that, and I one hundred percent acknowledge my privilege when it comes to rankings.

Remnants of Reality currently is ranking in the eight-hundreds in one of its tags. The Beginning of the End and A Time of Courage both ranked exclusively on the old system. School of Secrets had its best showing right at the beginning of the overhaul.

If you've been here long enough to see all the forms of the system, and you see the numbers for each of those books, you can definitely see a difference.

I'm a math-based person, so I used to sit back and look at the algorithms and patterns for the ranking system. The old system made sense. The time of day at which you posted mattered. If you were ranking, and you knew when your target group might be tuning in, you could optimize your posting times.

If you had an ongoing book with, say, a hundred reads, you might have known that your book will move up faster than someone's completed thousand-read story because of the ratios.

I know that's boring to a lot of folks, so let's move on to the new version of the genre rankings.

This is painful to say, but the genre doesn't matter.

I'm going to do my best to explain it, as it's very complicated and there are a lot of flaws.

Firstly, it's important to look at the integration of tag rankings.

Now, stories can rank in their assigned genre, as well as any other tag listed in the tags section.

That makes the rankings a free-for-all, and here's why.

Wattpad allows you to have up to twenty-five tags.

Say ___ has a story with ten tags. Five of their tags are genre-specific tags, like Fantasy and Thriller for example.

Now, let's say their story takes off. They're doing everything they possibly can, and now they're ranking in all ten of their tags.

This is a huge problem.

They're ranking in five regular Wattpad tags, but they're also ranking in five different "genre" tags.

Say their story is a Fantasy novel with some fight scenes, teen characters, and a love interest.

This book could, and often does, end up ranking very highly in a genre that is the least relevant.

Let me give a few specific examples.

The first is my own story, Remnants of Reality. It's in the eight-thirties for Thriller right now. I do not personally believe it is a full-fledged Thriller book. Should it be ranking there? I don't know.

It never got the fair chance to rank in Fantasy, though, because of when it got posted. It was written from January to August, 2018. The new rankings came about in February 2018 at the latest.

Fantasy is a much larger genre than Thriller is.

There are 464K Fantasy stories. Four hundred and sixty-four thousand. I just looked that up on here, and my mind is blown.

There are 174K Thriller stories. Still no picnic, but slightly better in terms of odds.

Yes, I have this "genre" ranking listed as my story's highest, because some contests and publishing offers take that into consideration on here.

They shouldn't nowadays, but they do.

There are so many stories in each category, because the current system allows for a lot of categorical double dipping.

I started getting curious about what the hotlists actually look like right now. If my Fantasy novel with a sprinkling of Thriller aspects can rank in such a random subgenre, what's going on in the real Fantasy rankings?

The third ranked story in Fantasy? Last time I checked, it was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. No, I'm not joking. A version of that book, listed with a primary label of Classics, is taking a ranking position away from someone's original story.

That's a big issue with this new system. Books that should be ranked by their primary genre aren't because something with that subgenre, or a very limited imitation of it, are taking away those spots. No one's stories are going into the proper section for maximum benefit, because they're all mixed up together in the wrong sections.

It makes it harder to find new stories, and really difficult to promote your own.

What's ranked at the top of the Fantasy list?

A completed story with four thousand reads. That's awesome, but the apparent content isn't.

All I read was the title, description, tags, and basic info. I didn't click in to give it a read.

The book is called Psionic Discipline, and at least half the tags are inappropriate for younger readers.

I think it's awesome that a book with so few reads can get a number one ranking, but this story is one part and these types of tags should get it a mature label.

There used to be a reason behind the system. Now, there's no math or logic to explain what or how things get into the rankings.

So, seeing what's going on with the lack of moderation in the Wattpad rankings, here's what I would like to see.

Tag rankings need to go away.

I know some people might get excited by seeing that their story is ranked in anything. That's cool, but it doesn't mean anything for your story. School of Secrets is first in the "myown" tag. It's not doing anything at all for the story. No one searches for that. It's a placeholder tag, and one that I use as a signature to let people know the story is my own creation.

It would be much more rewarding to see your book rank in a category that actually matters. I used to get so excited about that with my 2050 books, and it's sad that it can't be like that for new and upcoming writers.

Wattpad needs to find a way to revert the tags back to how they were before, and create a different ranking system. Stories should be ranked according to the genre that was selected as the primary one.

I know this is controversial, but I don't think that books should be ranking in two genres at the same time on here.

I think that stories should be given a subgenre section when writers are creating them. Wattpad needs to create this option, so that more than one genre can be used effectively to describe a story. This takes nothing away. People would have more of a chance to get their story ranked in a list that matters.

Having a subgenre option allows you to separate your subgenres from your tags. Taking away the tag rankings in addition to this would make sure that stories do not end up losing views because they inadvertently rank in the wrong section.

Aside from the ranking system, it's also important to take a look at the paid stories program and Wattpad premium.

I talked about it a while back, whenever it started coming out. It was a cash grab then, and still is.

A long time ago, Wattpad made a promise that it would always remain free to readers. Always. It broke that promise, and I think it was a mistake.

A lot of Wattpad users are younger. Many are teens, living at home with their guardians.

Unless you're a teen with an allowance or job, you can't pay for that by yourself. I had neither as a teen, so I would have been left out.

In such cases, teens have to ask their guardians for the money. It's a monthly or yearly rate, and can be quite expensive for the working poor or lower middle class. My dad is retired, and my mom is the one working part-time to bring in an income. This was the case when I was a teen as well.

Teens' guardians in these circumstances have other priorities.

You only get two offline stories now. This was another thing that was never supposed to change. Since it has, a lot of people who have similar circumstances to what I had as a teen will be missing out on a source of comfort.

I know it's 2021, but not everyone has Internet access. Not in other cultures, and not in the United States. I know places in my state where people have little or no access to constant WiFi.

Wattpad premium needs to be optional, and by that, here's what I mean.

You should be able to get perks by signing up, but you shouldn't lose anything. Like, you get theme colors with premium. That's great. It adds on, but doesn't punish people who don't want or can't afford it.

Offline stories have got to go. Maybe, you give stories more adds. Or, do what YouTube does and make advertising a bidding process. The company who pays the most gets their ads shown.

That's an equally successful method of gaining money. I know people hate ads, but if it means we can all enjoy the same reading benefits, then why not?

Wattpad premium does not pay the authors involved a significant amount. I feel like there has to be a more effective method all the way around. These authors need to be compensated, but not in a poor manner that takes away from Wattpad's original mission.