Ariana Godoy, Álex Mírez, Joana Marcús, Eva Muñoz… If one is not between 13 and 24 years old, these names probably do not sound like anything, or vaguely. They are the authors of titles such as Through My Window, Perfect Liars, Before December, Lascivia…, romantic stories with thousands of readers that have managed to skyrocket reading statistics among young people and adolescents. Young writers who share a passion for contemporary romance and passionate relationships, always complex. Also the language, with its peculiarities on both sides of the Atlantic. And the most curious thing is that all of them arise from the digital platform Wattpad, where they began to write stories by chapters at a very early age. Now, the publishing giants dispute them.
"They are new writers who already have readers, the dream of any editor." Míriam Malagrida, head of marketing for Crossbooks, Planeta's youth label, is not the only one who thinks this way about this phenomenon, although all the nuances you want are added later. The label began publishing in January the young Majorcan Joana Marcús, who was the sensation of the past Sant Jordi, concentrating some of the most spectacular queues to sign in memory. She started writing on Wattpad when she was just 13 years old, and now at 21, she has just published with Crossbooks the second installment of her Fire Trilogy, a dystopian romance starring an android. But before her, in November 2021, she already published her first novel on paper with Penguin Randon House, Before December, a work that has sold more than 100,000 copies. And that both had previously been written by chapters on Wattpad.
The figures on paper speak of round business but have nothing to do with those that move on Wattpad, where digital social reading is causing a true revolution among young people. There, Joana Marcús is the only Spanish writer who has currently managed to sneak into the ranking of the top five most read on Wattpad in Spanish, thus viralizing the topic in Spain. Hers Before December online – a love story starring Jenna that Marcús wove around his first year of university and her boyfriend's proposal to have an open relationship – reached 100 million views last week . On the platform and ahead of it are Venezuelans Ariana Godoy and Álex Mírez, with 357 and 115 million views respectively. Both today publish with Penguin and their romances have made the leap to the screen through Netflix in series format.
They are part of what the community calls the second wave of the Wattpad phenomenon, currently in full swing and starring Spanish-speaking writers. After , by North American Anna Tod, starred in the first in 2018. Until then, Wattpad, which had been created by Asian-Canadian engineers Allen Lau and Ivan Yuen in 2006, had good numbers. His idea of creating a platform that would make it possible to publish online, making it easy to read on screen and share stories, was very well received by young people around the world. In 2009, around the same time that the Google app store and the iPhone made their entrance, Wattpad launched its app and within four months it had surpassed five million downloads.
And then came After, a story that began as a fanfic –the story of a fan– about the universe of the singer Harry Styles of the One Direction group, and that reached 1.5 billion views on Wattpad in 2018. Todd later jumped to paper turning his story – a typical bad boy-good girl relationship – in a series of books, which have sold more than eleven million copies. And Wattpad has continued its unstoppable path to reach 70 million current users who enter each month to read some of the 565 million stories written.
But not all stories reach the immortality of the paper. Barely a thousand have succeeded so far. And now it is the turn of the writers in Spanish who, from both sides of the Atlantic, have managed to increase reading in the youth segment by between 30 and 40% in Spain (the presence of Catalan and other languages of the State is still very small). "The most significant increase occurred during the pandemic and was in the 14 to 35 age range, which usually corresponds to the lowest percentage of regular readers," concluded the 2021 report that the SM Foundation carries out each year on Children's and Youth Books .
An increase that however did not translate into more book sales. Where did young people read so compulsively during confinement? Wattpad was the answer, a phenomenon that publishers are now trying to replicate on paper through their own protagonists. And with remarkable success.
Romances in a serial key
The keys: romance, seriality and generation. "They are very young writers who share the same references, the same universe with their readers," says Rosa Samper, editor of Wattpad by Montena, the new label that Penguin Random House has created after reaching an agreement with the platform. “They reflect very well the problems of young people and adolescents because they are themselves and write from those same realities. They have a total connection, empathy, because they are realities that they share 100% in their own flesh and it shows. And although they may lack a literary pulse, they win it for that other part, ”adds Miriam Malagrida, from Planeta.
Love, the romantic novel, is a classic of popular literature and has had innumerable successes from Corin Tellado to the revived Julia Quin of the Bridgertons. The canon is the same as all time but updated and more transgressive, without fear of differences. Hence, it is not surprising that 80% of the readers of these works both digitally and on paper are still women.
Writing by chapters is another of its strengths. "It's a serial narrative, almost serial, with endings that are hooks to want to continue reading," explains Samper. She is clear about the three things that would make her look at a Wattpad story as an editor: “Find a powerful and original love story, fast and intelligent dialogue and that the characters evolve, because sometimes they get stuck” . Something will also have to do with the fact that they have millions of followers, right? "It's decisive, but not an absolutely necessary condition," says Samper, and gives as an example Boulevard , by the young Mexican Flor M. Salvador, whose readership was relatively low when it was decided to go for it. “We look at the digital environments of the authors, their followers, the work and the opinions they generate. We flee from works that have many followers but do not leave a special mark, although of course, everything that exceeds a million views you look at it with different eyes”, adds Míriam Malagrida.
Samper says that Penguin had been looking for talent on the platform for some time and that it has taken them two years of tough negotiations to get this agreement with Wattpad, which not only allows them to use their label exclusively, but also to have first-hand information about the most followed authors. , the interaction they have with their readers, the time they spend reading it, how fast the chapters are read... This does not mean, however, that the authors sign with the publishers exclusively, since they continue to have the intellectual property Of his works.
Hence, we find different works by Joana Marcús herself both in Penguin and in Planeta, or that titles by Valencian Alice Kellen, another rising value from Wattpad, can be found in Planeta and also in Neo, the youth-romantic label from the Editorial Platform. Its editor, Cristina Alonso, recounts the joys that the Cantabrian writer Andrea Herrero, known on Wattpad as Andrea Smith, is giving them, with whom they have published five novels, although they specifically created an award to discover new talent.
fans to infinity
What moves readers to buy the same books that they have previously read in installments through mobile? Apart from the fetishism of physically disposing of a book that has fascinated them, the fact that the manuscripts uploaded to the platform are considered initial drafts by publishers also contributes. "We work with them polishing the text, giving different points of view on specific situations that don't quite work or characters that don't evolve enough," explains Irene Luca, editor of Crossbooks. But the structure, the characters and the plot are rarely touched. And they, the authors, are eager to collaborate, learn and grow... The goal is to earn a living writing, something that the networks do not provide them.
Also contributing to success is the fact that the readers feel the books as something close, they feel part of the author's creative process. Because Wattpad has also revolutionized the way of writing and each paragraph can be commented positively or negatively by readers. “Free reading for everyone, a new portfolio of talent and the generation of a very powerful global reading community”, that is what Wattpad leaves us according to Irene Lucas. Undoubtedly a revolution driven by the digital world of the reading culture of the younger generations of the 21st century.
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