How Do Wattpad Story Rankings And Awards Work?

Question

I keep seeing these stories on Wattpad that get the 'Editor's Choice' or top rankings, but the whole awards process still seems pretty vague. Does anyone know how they decide on the weekly 'Hot List' placements?

Sklmvn · Answer

Most Wattpadders use real-time reader engagement in determining rankings – number of new votes, comments and reads per hour. Each year, the Wattpadders community, along with a panel of judges, chooses from thousands of entries to award the annual ‘Watty’s’. For example, a collection of short intense stories such as ‘Heated Tales: A compilation of steamy stories’ can gain so much from being a collection of short stories, as each story allows the reader to binge read different scenarios rather than reading on for chapter after chapter of one long serial. In terms of gaining quick reader interactions to climb the lists, a collection such as this is ideal.

Katie · Answer

As for how the rankings and awards work on Wattpad, I can explain a bit about it. The rankings are determined by engagement, like read counts, vote counts, and comment counts. The higher your story does in those, the higher it will rank in the relevant categories. There are also featured lists for stories that the Wattpad editorial team has chosen. Awards are usually given by the community, where readers can nominate their favorite stories in different genres and then vote on them. Some of the awards are official (i.e. given by Wattpad itself) and some are just fan-made. I think the algorithm favors consistent updating, so it’s a good idea to keep your story updated regularly. Also, the stories that do the best are usually the ones that have really connected with readers on an emotional level, or that have a really unique hook. Sometimes those things are timely, and that can help a lot. I also think that the community aspect is really important, and things like commenting and messaging with readers can really make a difference with how well your story does.

Charlie · Answer

Wattpad’s ranking system is another aspect of their ecosystem that evolves with time. The current system really rewards writers for consistently updating their stories, even if the initial read count isn’t the highest. It’s pretty cool because new content gets featured and popular stories are kept on the radar too.

The Awards on Wattpad can be seen in two ways: platform-driven and community-driven. The Watty Awards is the official recognition that Wattpad gives to its most successful writers of the year, while there are many other awards given throughout the year in many different genres. It’s also worth noting that reader engagement weighs a lot in both the Ranking System and the Awards on Wattpad. This means that a story can get ranked higher or even win an award if it has fans who vote and comment frequently, even if the story has read counts that are lower than other stories.

For many Wattpadders who have made it as successful authors, they swear by the social aspect of the site. By frequently responding to comments on their own stories, taking part in writing communities on the site, and even supporting other young writers on the site, a story can really reach its full potential on the site.

Cathy Hartford · Answer

So I read an analysis by a writer on a blog. In it he talks about the fact that the stories on Wattpad Premium and Paid Stories are split into two different categories of content and as a result there is a two-tier ranking system on the site. Paid Stories are featured in special lists of Paid Stories and are shown differently in the app than Free Stories. The ranking for Paid Stories may even be altered to try to get more people to convert them into purchases over regular ratings.

This affects the way we now have to approach writing in order to receive awards. With Paid Stories receiving their own set of awards that reward commercial success, the traditional Watty Awards, which reward stories that receive tons of ad-supported love and interact greatly with their community, are catering to a different type of reader and therefore a different type of writer. So, we now have to decide early on which type of success we want to go for and then tailor our writing, genre and even the length of our chapters as well as the update frequency in order to receive the most awards and accolades for our work.

Violet · Answer

The ranking system of Wattpad incorporates many different algorithm-based metrics to create a system that encourages engagement within the community. Stories increase in ranking based on total reads, voters, comments, and how quickly and frequently a writer updates with new chapters to their story. The Wattpad algorithm seems to give the highest ranking to the most up-to-date story.

Ranks come in different forms such as ranks in specific genres and trending stories on Wattpad as a whole. There are also Wattpad awards such as the Watty Awards which recognize excellent stories in various categories. The official awards are highly recognizable to readers and can definitely boost a writer’s visibility very much. The process for the official awards are chosen by the Wattpad editors and then voted on by Wattpad users in later stages of the choosing process.

Most importantly, within the Wattpad community there are many fan created awards. These are most often created by the clubs for specific reading lists that feature fan chosen stories, but there are also several large annual awards given by reader ‘clubs’. In some cases these even predict the story that Wattpad will award with an official award (and add it to their featured stories) in later months. Networking within the Wattpad community and participation by a writer can score just as many points with readers as the actual quality of the writer’s work when it comes to rankings and awards.

Evelyn63432070 · Answer

I know of one friend who got a 'Staff Pick' badge for one of her stories. It's not an award, but it looks like one and everybody wants it. What's more is that Staff Picks are handpicked by the Wattpad editorial team. They go against the algorithm and feature a story for everyone to read. It's a one night wonder that can totally change a writer's life overnight. How one gets a Staff Pick is a mystery. One can only surmises that stories with great covers, perfect grammar, and unique premises get picked. It just goes to show that there's still human curation within the machinary of the algorithm.

More prestigious community awards are curated by discerning readers who have great taste. Winning an award or even being nominated for one by such a reader is a great honor and something that many discerning readers follow. So although the algorithm is key to daily reader discovery, the rarely seen but highly impactful Staff Picks and other respected awards are the quality guides for readers.

Lex88 Salvator · Answer

I’ve always been rather skeptical of the “read for read” / “vote for vote” type of clubs and forums etc around Wattpad. People form these little Writer’s Circles where they agree to read and vote on chapters written by other members of the circle, in the hopes of boosting their own numbers. This sort of activity can quickly create some artifical Engagement which might score well with the algorithm for a short, shining moment, but will never actually end up building you a Real Audience. Those other readers are simply Transaction Partners, rather than Investing in your work to become part of your Existing Audience.

However, attempts to cheat in awards for community chosen works have not yielded the same results as cheating for engagement. Generally, setting up sock puppets and voting for one’s own work in such communities yields visible results – such as 500 or so votes and three comments in support of said work – and will typically get exposed within short order as the ‘awards host’ catches on. As a community, we police ourselves in many ways, and awarded works typically yield to hold their own against the rest of published works on the site. In the end, authentic growth – however slow – is far more stable and far more worthwhile than any temporary ranking a writer may purchase or trade for.

Jeffrey Dell · Answer

Let’s get technical for a second. I assume ‘Hot’ is a Bayesian estimate of the engagement rate of a story. It takes the average engagement (votes, comments, reading time etc) of a story over a certain time span and balances it against the age of the story and the total amount of engagement for that story. A newly submitted story will receive a high score if it has a high engagement rate. An older story would need a huge spike in engagement to increase its ‘hotness’.

User-awards are usually pretty simple to administer, often just a form for people to nominate others and then a vote between the nominees. Marketing the awards is a far more complicated job than designing the mechanism to run them. As for the Wattys, I imagine they use a multi-tiered filtering process – first a programmatic sift through the site’s data to identify stories that meet basic criteria (e.g. word count, engagement) and then, for a shortlist, they’re read by other users. The final decisions are made by editors and industry people. Lacking clear thresholds for shortlisting and winning is infuriating, but it’s probably necessary to prevent games from being rigged. In the end it’s a constant arms race between the designers of the site and people who are trying to find ways to cheat the system.

Yoly Arce · Answer

There is such a thing as burnout, and specifically, the sort of pressure that the algorithm at medium.com puts on writers to update frequently enough in order to get a lot of traffic, the sort of pressure that award campaigning puts on writers, and the sort of pressure that maintaining a social media presence puts on writers can really suck the fun out of writing for a platform.

My rule is to only be participating in one external thing at a time. So if I'm trying to rank on something by updating regularly, I'm not going to be trying to campaign for an award at the same time. If I'm submitting to the Wattys, I'd just let my update schedule for the other story relax while I'm focusing on finishing that up. Remember the rankings and awards are just tools to help you. They are not masters. The story you finish is the true achievement that no algorithm can take away from you. And the readers that you truly touch and get a reaction out of, that's the true reward and there's no badge that can represent that. Keep a balance or the platform will eat you alive.

How Do Wattpad Story Rankings And Awards Work?

9 Answers

Related Books

Forbidden Love Stories

Burning Passion {steamiest short stories}

Rejected By The Beta, Accepted By The Alpha

DIRTY PAGES (A Short Story Collection)

Sinful Desires(steamiest Short stories)

Sinful Alphas: A Dark Romance Collection

Topic

Related Questions

how to download a story on wattpad

How much do Wattpad writers make per read?

Where can I read Wattpad completed stories for free?

how to find your book history on wattpad

How to use Wayback Machine with Wattpad stories?

Where can I read story for wattpad for free online?

Which Wattpad WLW novels have gained the most popularity?

How to download from wattpad stories in PDF format?

How do readership stats compare on Wattpad vs AO3?

Can I read stories in Wattpad without an account?