Chapter 2

Not a day goes by where I am not asked “How did you get all those followers?” or “How can I get more reads on my book?” so to help you out I’ve decided to offer you all a little advice, using my own experiences as a guide.

I joined wattpad October 17, 2012 and about a month later after reading book after book on the site, I finally decided it was time to start my own journey into the world of writing, which to my surprise and pleasure, was almost an instant success and I owe that to four major things:

1. The Cover

2. The description

3. The body

4. Interaction

Laid out in this way I’m pretty sure it doesn’t make a lick of sense, so I’ll break it all down into four headings in order to better explain it.

                                THE COVER

Practically every day that we go through life we hear the saying; “Never judge a book by its cover.” Well guess what? We’re all human and we judge, it’s what we do, so with that in mind everyone should strive to have an attractive book cover. 

Let’s look at it practically; if I’m scrolling through a list of books on wattpad for instance, searching for something interesting to read out of hundreds of other books, the first book I’m going to choose is the one that grabs my attention right? I’m certainly not about to click on every book and read the description to find out what it’s about, especially not when there is already such an extensive list to choose from.

Simply put, the cover of your work is of tremendous importance, especially when you’ve just started out and you have to compete with so many other authors. Make sure the cover is such, that if you saw it on another book it would pull you in instantly.

For example when I first uploaded my boyxboy stories I made sure to slap some sexy guys on my cover and clearly if that’s the kind of story a reader is searching for it will pull him or her in. Likewise if it’s a book of recipes slap on some cookies or some delicious looking treats on that cover and watch the readers swarm.

You’ll notice that once your books become popular enough, you’ll be free to put up even plain covers because by then you’ll have gained a reputation and no one will care what your books look like.

I suppose I could go on and on about this, but you get the gist of it I’m sure. Create an attractive cover and people will be drawn to your work. HOWEVER, that’s only the beginning, once a reader is pulled in by your cover, he or she will want to read your description and this is also a crucial stage in the ‘reader recruiting’ process.

………………………………………………..

                                 THE DESCRIPTION

Now that you have your beautiful cover in place and the readers are circling your book, you need to make sure you don’t repulse them with a crappy description. It is your job as the author to advertise your work in such a way that it appeals to those who are reading it. So let’s get into the tips shall we;

1. Never make your descriptions too long, this tends to give away too much of your story and no one likes spoilers. At the same time never make it too short. Make it just long enough to excite the reader.

2. A description is the first insight the reader has as it relates to your writing style. If the description sounds amateur or contains grammatical errors it will be a huge turn off.

3. It CANNOT, under any circumstance sound boring. Remember the description is another factor readers judge when trying to decide if your work will be any good, so if it’s boring then they will assume your work is too and then bye-bye potential reader.

4. Spend as much time as possible on your description, reread it as many times as you can to make sure it’s just right and NEVER, EVER, put a note in your description that says “I’m bad at descriptions just read the story.”...No. If I read something like that, my first thought will be; if the writer can’t even slap together a decent description then how can they write a story?  If you genuinely can’t write a description then ask for help.

5. Finally, after having written the description, if you read it and it fails to interest even you, then you’ll need to re-do it. After all, if it doesn’t even grab your own interest, why would it grab anyone else’s?

I could go on, as always but the point is, treat the description like it’s a part of your story. Make it perfect…or at least close enough. Once the reader has been taken in by your cover and blown away by the description of your work, he or she will now want to take a glimpse into the body of the story. This particular point will be crucial as the body is what decides whether the reader stays for the duration of the story or dumps your book into the ‘no read’ pile.

                              THE BODY

Ah the body…the juicy part, the section that get us readers going and makes us hungry for more. It is arguably the most important part of your book and should be treated as such. The first paragraph alone should have a reader begging for more, because if potential readers are anything like me, they’ll read the first paragraph and if it’s crappy they’ll move on. I’ll admit, like most humans, I have no patience.

Ensure that the first paragraph…no, the first chapter is as free of grammatical errors as is possible and is also as interesting as you can make it, because if it’s really good, readers will stick around even if the latter chapters aren’t as great. Why? Because they see potential and once they see potential there is always the hope that the story will get better as time passes.

There is so much to say as it relates to the body...too much to say in fact, but I’ll keep it short and to the point. Make sure your story is creative, original and well written. Write the story the way YOU want to write it and not the way your readers want it to be, because at the end of the day it is your work and you need to feel fulfilled once it is complete.

You need to understand that while all these steps are pretty important and will certainly pull the readers in, who may even add your book to their reading list and such, there’s no guarantee they’ll care much about you as a writer once they’ve read their fill which is why you need to interact with your readers.

                            INTERACTION

Obviously without readers a story is hardly as fulfilling as it could be, but even with readers it can sometimes be a bit disappointing if no one is commenting or dropping you little messages here and there. This is where interaction comes in.

When I first began posting on wattpad I would reply to every single comment and message I received, letting to readers know how much I appreciated their input and looked forward to hearing more from them, but more than that, I had actual conversations with these people, sharing a bit about myself and learning a bit about them in return. This is called networking and in the world of writing it is imperative that you network.

Unfortunately with the number of readers I have commenting on each story, it’s not as easy for me to reply to them all but I always try to respond to as many as I can and you should too.

 As the book progresses, I’ll get into details as it relates to the topic of networking but for now I’ll tell you that networking can open many doors for you, you’ll meet people from all over the world, gain inspiration from the stories they have to tell and it’s always nice to have someone you can go to for advice or just friendly conversation.

There is so much more I wish to speak to you all about as it relates to the topic of getting readers but in the interest of time I will have to be cut short. So before I go I’ll leave with you just a few short tips:

Write what interests you, write it well and interact with those around you, then once you’ve got your loyal list of readers you won’t have to fight so hard to get readers on any other stories you may choose to post in the future. I’m not saying it will be easy but if you’ve got the talent, you’ll get the readers. I hope this bit helped at least one person to get where they need to be and as the book progresses look out for more friendly tips and tricks to get you going.

 Oh and for God's Sake separate your work into paragraphs please, it's too hard to read otherwise.

Thanks for reading and i'll see your sexy faces next time..or you could just check out my tumblr at http://www.tumblr.com/blog/twinzdouble  and drop me a message or check for updates.

-DoubleZone

Copyright ©2014 by DoubleZone