Ten Ways to Get the Most Out of Writing on Wattpad

I've had a few requests from other authors about how to get the most out of writing on Wattpad. I promised them a blog about it, so here it is!

First of all, here's a bit of background on my own Wattpad story. I started up an account over on Wattpad in August 2010. Now, I know that makes me sound like I've been really active over there for years now, but that isn't the truth. Back in 2010, I did what many people do. I hopped over there, started my account, posted a couple of chapters of a story, and then essentially forgot about it.

Things most likely would have stayed that way if it wasn't for a non-author friend of mine contacting me about an article she'd read about a writer getting snapped up on Wattpad and getting paid a crazy amount of money for her story. At the time, I was considering writing a story that was a bit different for me - a contemporary romantic suspense. So far in my career, I'd only published full length paranormal books, and I wondered if I would be able to pull off a full length contemporary novel.  I figured why not publish it, chapter by chapter, to Wattpad as I wrote it and literally get feedback from readers as the book was being written.

So that's what I did.

This was back at the start of 2015, and I wrote and published 'Cut Too Deep', chapter by chapter, to Wattpad. When I started, I only had a handful of followers. It took a few chapters before things started getting rolling, and I was bringing in more readers. At the end of every chapter, I tweeted and facebooked, etc, to let all my regular readers know they could read a brand new book over there as well.

I really enjoyed the process and loved reading everyone's comments as I went along. I even made serious editorial changes to the book due to certain observations the readers had made. It was like having several hundred beta readers in one spot, and you know what, most of them were really encouraging.

That was almost two years ago now, and to date Cut Too Deep has had over 700,000 reads on Wattpad. It's also published as an ebook, paperback, and audio, and is one of my best ever sellers.

But you guys are here for tips on how to make Wattpad work for you, so I'll shut up and write some down.


1.) Enjoy it! This is going to seem a bit obvious perhaps, but Wattpad is just like any other social media. You have to get involved. Comment on other people's works, add them to your library. If someone leaves you a comment or a message, reply to it. Wattpad is social media for readers and writers. If you don't put yourself into it, you won't get anything out.

 2.) Post a new chapter every couple of days. This will keep your readers interested and excited about your story, and won't give then the chance to forget you.

3.) Tweet/facebook/pin your new chapter. As soon as you hit publish, Wattpad brings up all the little icons that allow you to do this just by the click of a button. You want people to know about your story, so use the tools they give you.

4.) At the bottom of your chapter, ask people to vote for your story or leave you a comment. Sometimes people just forget to do so, and there's no harm in asking.

5.) If you're posting an already published book, make sure you link to it on Amazon. You can do this by clicking on the three dots on the right hand upper corner of the chapter you are editing, under 'external link'. You can also add in images of your characters, or dedicate your book to another Wattpad user.

6.) If your book has sexual content, you can mark it as 'Mature' to stop younger people accessing it. If you don't mark it as mature, but then a Wattpad reader notices you have adult content in your book, they will mark it as mature for you, and you can't change this. It's easier to do it yourself. Most of my books have adult content, but not straight erotica. Wattpad doesn't like erotica.

7.) Once you have a completed story, apply for a feature. You have to commit to leave your book on Wattpad for six months, but it's definitely worth it. Cut Too Deep was featured, and this is what's built the vast majority of my followers.

8.) How to decide what to post? I tend to post my first in series books, in the hope that people will go on to buy the next books in the series (I've been contacted by Wattpad users to say this is what they've done, so it does work, though you'll also have people complaining that they want to read it all on Wattpad for free!). I also post the first few chapters of new books, and then link them to amazon, together with teasers, to get people interested. More recently, I've been posting my newer, full length, standalone books because I've wanted to position myself ready for the Wattpad Futures program (where writers will be paid in return for ads being shown in their stories).

9.) Use your profile! Make sure you have a good bio, and link to all the places readers can find you!

10.) The 'conversations' tab is like your very own mailing list to your Wattpad readers. You can post info about new releases, or any other news here, and if you click 'notify my followers' that message will end up the email inbox of all your followers, as well as on Wattpad!


Okay, I think that's it, though I'm sure I've missed something vitally important out! If  you've got any other questions, just ask away in the comments. Also, come and check me out on Wattpad. https://www.wattpad.com/user/Marissafarrar If you shoot me a message, and ask me to follow you back (mention you've come from my blog), then I will do!

Thanks for reading!

Finding Myself as a Writer.

I have twenty-three published novels now.
Yup.
Twenty-three... I think... if I counted them right.
I also have several unpublished novels, and numerous novellas and short stories on top of that.
You'd think I'd know who I was as a writer by now, but I'm still asking myself that question.
When I first started writing, I'd believed I would be a horror author. It was what I'd grown up reading, and so I wanted to emulate what I loved. My first couple of novels were horror/dark fantasy (The Dark Road and Underlife), but then I decided I wanted to write a vampire romance (I'd always loved Anne Rice) and so I wrote Alone. From Alone spawned a five book series which ended up being The Serenity Series.
But in the sidelines, I was also writing erotica, and over the past twelve months in particular, I've found myself publishing more sexy contemporary romance than paranormal. It's not that I don't love my paranormal, because I do, but honestly,  the contemporary sells, and at the end of the day I have a family to feed.
But even as I'm writing the contemporary, I'm finding I don't want to stop at romance. I have ideas for a couple of suspense novels, and also some paranormal thrillers I'd love to write.
The problem is that as young writers we're told that to be successful we need to discover what our readers want and give them more of it.
But what if we're not happy as a writer to write the same genre over and over again?
As a reader, I read multiple different genres - horror, thrillers, suspense, romance, women's fiction. Short of westerns, I think I read pretty much anything, so why wouldn't I want to be the same when I'm writing? I have tons of stories and characters floating around in my head, demanding to be written, but at the same time I have the whispers of doubt taunting me.
Your readers won't want to read a suspense novel from you.
Your readers will move onto someone else.
They'll be disappointed.
No one will buy your book.
I feel like I've got my publishing schedule finely tuned now, and honestly, I'm scared of doing anything to upset the apple cart. I'm not a massive seller, but I'm doing better than I ever dreamed of, and I'm terrified it's all just going to slip away from me one day.
So do I take the time to write books I'm not sure anyone will read? Or should I stay focused on the romance, either paranormal or contemporary?

If you want to check out my latest boxed set, Three: An Alpha Male Boxed Set, you can get it now!

getBook.at/ThreeAlpha

In the testosterone fueled world of the alpha male, these men know what they want and how to get it. Meet the women who come up against them, and experience the heart-racing suspense and toe-curling sex for yourself!

Includes three of Marissa Farrar’s full length romantic suspense and dark romance novels:

Survivor: Sparks fly when a spoilt princess and the ultimate alpha male are thrown into a survival situation.

Cut Too Deep: Curvy Jenna is on the run, but can tattooed mechanic Ryker make her stay?

And finally, Defaced: Kidnapped by a man both dangerous and enigmatic, can Lily resist?

Save $5.99 – that’s half price! – on buying these books individually!

How to Run Facebook Ads!

I was chatting to a fellow author today (an author who is also involved in this amazing $0.99 boxset, Voracious Vixens - a PNR anthology - in case you haven't checked it out yet,) and she was asking me about running facebook ads. I told her I normally had a couple on the go, and had got the pay per click down to only £0.04 per click, which seemed pretty good to me. I do notice the difference in sales when I have facebook ads running, and even though I complain about facebook wanting us to pay to boost every post in order to show it to our fans, I still believe it's one of the best forms of advertising available at the moment. There aren't too many people who read ebooks who don't also have a facebook profile.

So, here are the things I covered. 

Setting up an ad on facebook is pretty easy to do, but they do take a bit of tweaking to figure out what works best for your books. First of all, you have to decide if you want to link direct to Amazon, or to your author page? I tend to link direct to Amazon these days, as f/b doesn't show half of our posts to our likers anyway! When you initially go to set up your ad, the page will look something like this:

Obviously, you need to decide which book do you want to link to. Ideally, you want to choose one that is currently on sale or even free.

You're going to want to find a really eye catching image that relates back to your book and the genre it is in. For me, writing romance, I tend to go for a hot guy, or if it's paranormal, I might throw in a wolf and a gothic background as well. Whatever you choose, it needs to be something people are going to notice. It need to be a certain size, 1200 by 628 pixels, so if you have photoshop, you're going to want to resize it. Don't just use a book cover, they don't work well. Though I have done this image for one of mine, which works.

These are the images I'm currently using for two different ads. You can upload multiple images if you want, and then figure out which you're getting the best click rate for.

For the heading, you're going to want something like 'ONLY $0.99 on Amazon TODAY!' or 'FREE on AMAZON Today' The annoying capitals letters acts as click-bait. It might irritate some people, but it does tend to catch the eye.

You're then going to want to use a catchy one liner to describe the book in a way that will make people want to read it. You only get a certain number of letters, so you have to be concise!

Here are a couple of mine:

For Autumn's Blood: 'Autumn Anderson never expects to meet the dark, dangerous man whose touch seems to burn.'

For Cut Too Deep: 'Curvy girl Jenna is on the run from her past, but can tattooed mechanic Ryker make her stay.'

Once you've got all that sorted, you need to decide how much money you want to spend and how long for. I tend to put mine for a couple of dollars/pounds per day over a month. You can always stop the ad if it's not working, or extend it.

You need to start thinking about who your readers are so you can narrow down who f/b aim the ads towards. I tend to choose women between 18-65, in the US or UK (depending on which amazon link you use). You can also use a link that will take the clicker to the correct Amazon site, depending on which country they are in. If you do this, make sure you add all English speaking countries that use Amazon into the targeting.

I also target right down to interests - so I always do 'kindle' 'e-reader' 'romance novels' and then 'the vampire diaries' 'teen wolf' 'twilight' and any other popular pnr stuff that is about! For my romance novel, I swap the pnr tags for BBW, Curvy, Tattoos, etc.

And that's really all there is to it! You just have to click submit, and hope the facebook gods approve.

Good luck!

Why Free Still Works...

I've found that marketing tactics among indie authors seem to go in waves. A couple of years ago, free ebooks were all a hit. Then this time last year, it was the $0.99 'deal' ebooks that were riding high. Now it seems to be $0.99 box sets that are hitting the best seller lists.

I have debated putting together a box set for some time now. To be honest, the only thing holding me back is time in formatting it, and also creating a box set cover. I'm sure I could figure it out if I had the time, but I don't right now because new books still take priority with my writing time. With the kids off school, so I now have three little ones under my feet all day, I need to stay focused.

However, that wasn't the point of this post today! No, today I wanted to talk about free ebooks and why as a marketing tool, they can still work.

May 2014 was one of my slowest months, sales-wise, that I've had for at least a couple of years. I had the third book in the Spirit Shifters series in the editing process, and I just thought sod it, I'll put the first book as free and see what happens. I did this by choosing the free option on Draft 2 Digital, and then within a few days, Amazon price matched.

Within a few days, I had over 14,000 downloads of Autumn's Blood on Amazon, and thousands more on Barnes & Noble and Apple. The sales of the second book took off, and as soon as I released book three, my sales jumped to a height I've not seen for some time.

Because my free book worked so well in this instant, I decided to take one of my other books, The Sound of Crickets, and put it into KDP Select. I've not been in KDP Select for eighteen months, but the book wasn't selling on any platform, so I figured I had nothing to lose. I set up a number of ads and set three of my free days on Amazon. Well, even these results surprised me. In three days, I had almost 20,000 downloads of The Sound of Crickets. I'd been hoping for a couple of thousand, so those numbers were overwhelming. When it went back to paid, the sales continued. Over the last few weeks they've begun to drop back down again, but I'm still getting more sales than I did before the KDP promotion.

One of the best parts of this free promotion hasn't just been the sales. When I started my give away, I had about fifteen reviews on Amazon. Now I have 35 reviews for the book, and all of them state that they're 'Amazon Verified Purchases' and all of them loved the book. I always expect at least a few negative reviews from such a big give away, but so far there hasn't been anything below a four star! (This may change any day though!).

So, here's a summary of the benefits of running a free ebook:

• Exposure. People who haven't come across you before may put your book on their kindle, or other e-reader.
• Sales. You may get continued sales after a free run, or the readers may buy other books in the series, if there is one.
• Reviews. Hopefully people will be good enough to leave a review once they're done reading.
• mailing list sign-up. I always include a link to my mailing list at the back of my books. 

Want to try one of my free books? I have several! Thanks for reading!

• Alone (Book one in the Serenity Series)
• Autumn's Blood (The Spirit Shifters, Book One)
• The Vengeful Vampire (Alone prequel)
• Go Back (Underlife prequel)

Writers Beware - Things Newbie Authors Need to Consider Before Signing a Contract.

This week the social networking sites have been rife with tales of Anthony Giangregorio and his multiple presses (Living Dead Press, Open Casket Press and Undead Press). One very brave newbie author, Mandy DeGeit, spoke out about her issues with this 'editor' because he completely butchered her story.

I've had my own bad experiences in the past with small presses, from being asked to pay for editing after I'd signed a contract, to non-payment of royalties, to publishers trying to change contracts on me and producing sub-standard paperbacks. Unfortunately anyone can start up as a publisher now without offering any kind of proof that they actually know what they're doing and it's the new writer who suffers.

I know when I was offered my first publishing contract, I was so starry-eyed, I'd probably have signed over my first born if I thought it would help to get my work out there. This was back in 2009 and the wave of self-publishing/e-books hadn't yet taken off (or at least it certainly hadn't in my rural little part of Spain). There were things I didn't even consider. I simply saw that other authors had been published and seemed to be doing well, with blog interviews going on and lots of other promo ops that I hadn't even thought about before.

Although I made mistakes by jumping in too soon and taking the first contract offered to me, I still wouldn't change the route I took. I learned a lot about the industry and my own abilities and worth. Things I was clueless about before. I also got to meet a whole heap of fantastic authors who have done more for my career than any publisher ever has.

However, while writers are continuing to write, there will always be publishers who will be happy to take advantage of them. So what are the things newbie authors need to think about before they jump into a publishing contract:

1.) Google the publishing house. This may seem like a simplistic thing to do and you should really do this before you even submit. If a publishing house has issues behind it, there's a good chance someone will have already written about it.

2.) Ask other authors. If you're not already part of the numerous author groups on facebook, get in there now! It's highly likely someone will have either worked with, or know someone who worked with that particular publisher.

3.) Again, this might seem like an obvious one, but for God's sake, don't give them any money! While many small presses don't pay advances these days, the last thing they should be doing is asking you for money. The moment someone does that, run for the hills.

4.) Don't jump at the first opportunity that presents its self to you. While it is very exciting when someone finally sees something in your work, there may be several more out there who will also be interested in your novel but just haven't had the time to get back to you yet. If a publisher is genuine and really loves your book, they won't mind you taking a few weeks to think it over.

5.) Ask what the publishing house can do for you that you can't do for yourself. Remember self-publishing is still a valid option. You're the master of your own destiny. At least when you self-publish, if a poor product is produced, the only one you'll have to blame is yourself.

6.) Read the contract! How long does the contract last for - two years, five years? Remember this should be negotiable and above all, make sure they specify the length of their rights. I had one contract that didn't do this and the publisher just decided it would be five years from the time I asked about it. Publishers can't do this. If it's not in the contract you signed, they can't just add it in later. Same thing goes with other changes in a contract. Once the publisher has changed or broken their side of the contract (i.e. changing royalty rates) they can't then expect you to uphold your side of the bargain. Remember the contract is there for you as well as them.

7.) Finally, REMEMBER YOUR WORK IS WORTH SOMETHING! You may have spent years working on your 'baby' so don't just give it away. Imagine your book actually is your child. Would you just hand it over to anyone, or would you check out every single avenue to make sure the right person was looking after your offspring? Because believe me, if you've picked the wrong person, you could be in for years of heartache.

I'd just like to end this post by saying that not all small presses and publishers are bad. There are plenty out there who are doing loads for their authors. Just make sure, when someone shows interest in your book, that you don't just say 'yes' because they're the only one to ask.

The Liebster Awards!

I'm sharing some blogging love this morning, after having had it dished out to me this weekend by two of my fellow Masters of Horror and (soon to be, in the case of Blaze) Vamplit authors, Carole Gill and Blaze McRob. The Liebster award is given to those who have contributed to blogging and have less than 300 followers, and I'm very proud that not only one person thought to give it to me, but two!


Carole Gill in a fellow Vamplit author and her novel, The House on Blackstone Moor has recieved some amazing reviews. It's a classic Gothic tale of vampires, madness and love. I have yet to read it, but as soon as the paperback is available, I will be first in line to buy my copy! She also works tirelessly to support other authors and keeps us all thoroughly entertained on our MOH facebook page. So thank you, Carole.


Go check out her blog, Bloody Good Vampires!


I've only recently had the pleasure of meeting Blaze through our Masters of Horror connection, but I've quickly come to learn what a kind and generous person he is. He shares his time and offers so much support and praise to fellow authors on his blog Blaze McRob's Tales of Horror. Out of all the people he could have chosen, I'm honoured that he included me.


Aren't horror writers lovely people! Have a great week everyone...