From Wattpad to Tutelio, when technology supports the self publishing
Before reaching three billion readers, Anna Todd, the author of “After”, was divided between the kitchen of a waffle retail chain and a cosmetic shop and she never would have thought that her teenage love story, loaded online would have made her rich by seeing it published on paper and then among succesful movies at boxoffice both in Italy and abroad.
‘The Kissing Booth” became a real book and then a movie for Netflix and it’s about a story of a friendship that was thrown into crisis by the arrival of a new love, of the twenty-three year old Beth Reekles of Newport in Wales who uploaded the story online in 2011 when he was fifteen with over 19 million readings and 40,000 comments. Beth has a contract for other three books: ‘The Kissing Booth”, “Rolling Dice” and “Out of Tune” with Random House.
In Italy, Sabrina Efionayi or “Sabrinex”, pseudonym with which she became famous, born in Castel Volturno (Na) from a Nigerian mother – today she is the author for Rizzoli with the novels “Over” – a troubled love story in a school in London, published online in the first instance at just fourteen years old – “Over 2” and “#TBT Indietro non si torna”.
These three stories are just some examples of self publishing , a growing phenomenon in the community of authors.
This opportunity is now available to everyone but it does not mean that anyone is able to do it in the best way. A good content is the basic ingredient of success but it does not guarantee good results with self publishing.
In addition to Stephen King’s writing tips, which we published here previously, there are three platforms that can be useful for self publishing:
1) Amazon and Kindle: Kindle, born in 2007 in the United States and available in Italy since 2011, was initially thought as a read-only device. Kindle today is a true Amazon branded category of tablets and eBook readers which allows authors to publish their own content in the Kindle Store, a digital ecosystem of a large number of books and content that can be downloaded and always carried with you. Among the most famous authors who publish on Amazon are the thriller writer James Patterson, the creator of “Games of Thrones” George R. R. Martin, the writer of romace novels Danielle Steel and the horror novelist Stephen King.
2) Wattpad: the social network online platform which catalogs stories and novels of writers from all over the world. Stories can be commented and there are different possibilities of interaction between more than 70 thousand users. Write your story, upload it and chapter by chapter you could receive constant feedback by discovering your popularity on Wattpad: so they came out on the online platform the Andy Weir novel “The Martian” and “Fifty shades of gray” of E.L. James before turning into a worldwide success. Wattpad also selects texts following a sort of algorithm that analyzes the stories present in the app to find themes or elements that could determine the commercial success of a work. Even italian publishing companies, such as Mondadori and Sperling & Kupfer, use the online platform to find new talent to publish.
3) Tutelio: it is the easiest and cheapest platform to register and protect creative works. Normally authors do not care about protecting at initial stage their content because they believe it is a long and expensive process. It’s not like that with Tutelio. In just two steps the author gets a certificate attesting the owernship of his work. Moreover, thanks to a network of international professionals, Tutelio could help against plagiarisms and illicit uses of its content, as well as to support the definition of contracts with publishing companies, film productions and so on. You can upload the text already drafted on Tutelio and before sending it to anyone else: whether it’s a publisher or literary prize or platform like Wattpad or Amazon self publishing.
This article has been registered with Tutelio. Protect your original content by using the platform -> register now or find out more.
