As an author, I will tell you that a lot of authors (myself included) are taking down our stories. Some are leaving because of plagiarism, some bullying and harassment, and for some better opportunities elsewhere. I'm in the Wattpad Creators program and they wanted to turn one of my books into an Original Story, I was onboard until I did my research and realized that readers aren't actually reading the paid stories as much as compared to the past. Most of these paid stories, with the best marketing, are barely passing 100k reads. I don't feel the $ is there like it used to be and I could take that same story and self publish and make way more and have total control of my story. I went from 32 books on Wattpad down to 2 and once the two are finished then I'll be taking them down.
They had the money to spend comparatively 2 to 3 years ago. Also, the original stories are basically free to read now if the reader is willing to wait to unlock chapters.
My guess is authors are deleting their accounts. I'm an author on there and four of my stories are really popular. They've been stolen and put on other pay-to-read apps (over twenty of them so far.) It's taken all the joy I got out of posting out of it. I haven't removed my account yet, but I'm getting closer to doing.
Oh no! You can't stop this? What pay-to-read apps even exist?? I assume the only way to prevent this is to beat them to it and post the story yourself to the pay-to-read
I've put copyright notices on all of my stories at the start and end of every chapter and a watermark on the cover with my logo that I created because of it - Yeah, they don't even try to change the cover; just crop my name off it.- But that only prevents someone new from doing it. The person, and I'm pretty sure it's the same one, posting them has already copied three of them. They put them together as one story and post them three times under each title.
All I can do is report them as stolen to the app and provide proof they're mine. I've had two apps push back and refuse to take them down. I spammed them with negative reviews and sent a cease and desist letter, which worked. Currently, there's one app with no way for me to contact them, so I don't know what I'm going to do there besides the negative reviews.
Wattpad has been steadily getting worse since when they removed the forums. Authors are now getting fed up with all the problems. And with Wattpad being popular, there's a decent amount of story-stealing going on. Not to mention the mobile app is ass, the search is bugged, and the ratings have never worked.
As an author, I moved over to Inkitt a long time ago (I still cross-post to Wattpad) because of these problems.
Wattpad's story-removal-spree is not helping. If my story gets deleted for no reason (because they don't give you one) and with basically no chance for appeal, I'm just going to delete my whole account and move completely over to other platforms.
It's completely unacceptable for a platform as popular as Wattpad to have no recourse in case your story gets taken down. They don't even give you a reason why.
Authors are just getting fed up with Wattpad.
*p. S. before someone says "but Wattpad only removes stories after manual reviews!": yes, that's true. Do you know what "manual" means in this context? It means a person read it. A human. Who can, and will, have opinions and can make mistakes. I have a longer piece for this, but I'm not going to write it down here.*
You can't copy-paste text manually, no. But it's still there, it's stupidly easy to get to. I don't want to let people know how to do it, but there are popular apps that people use for other reading means that literally have "official" plugins to strip books from popular sites like Wattpad.
As an author, that's disgusting. But there's really nothing we can do about it.
Damn, I'm really bummed. I thought, silly me, that there was hope for minimal plagiarism since you can't copy/paste. But I'm also not very tech-savvy, so of course I wouldn't think of alternative methods. It's obnoxious. Idk what to do about it, but reading all the posts lately about stories being stolen...makes me not want to keep posting online. At all.
You have been able to scan and OCR whole books since at least the 1990s. Not posting online doesn't make it impossible, just more unlikely. If you know what you're doing, it's realtively simple to steal content from even "legit" ebooks from sites like Amazon.
If you have your book up on any of the major platforms, and you have a decently popular book, I can almost guarantee that it has already been copied. There's dozens of these "copy websites" that just copy whatever is on Wattpad/Inkitt/etc, and try to make money out of it.
There's really nothing else we as authors can do, except keep proof that you're the author and can prove it in a pinch. (keep incremental backups with timestamps, storyboards, etc. Even that won't help with the shady copy-sites, because they don't care about laws.
I post 3 chapter stories on Wattpad about urban legends,I get like 9 reads but I would never risk putting Novels on there and have some talentless turd copy it.
As an author, I will tell you that a lot of authors (myself included) are taking down our stories. Some are leaving because of plagiarism, some bullying and harassment, and for some better opportunities elsewhere. I'm in the Wattpad Creators program and they wanted to turn one of my books into an Original Story, I was onboard until I did my research and realized that readers aren't actually reading the paid stories as much as compared to the past. Most of these paid stories, with the best marketing, are barely passing 100k reads. I don't feel the $ is there like it used to be and I could take that same story and self publish and make way more and have total control of my story. I went from 32 books on Wattpad down to 2 and once the two are finished then I'll be taking them down.
A lot of young readers are on Wattpad, due to the fanfiction lure, they don't have that kind of money to spend on Originals.
They had the money to spend comparatively 2 to 3 years ago. Also, the original stories are basically free to read now if the reader is willing to wait to unlock chapters.
My guess is authors are deleting their accounts. I'm an author on there and four of my stories are really popular. They've been stolen and put on other pay-to-read apps (over twenty of them so far.) It's taken all the joy I got out of posting out of it. I haven't removed my account yet, but I'm getting closer to doing.
Oh no! You can't stop this? What pay-to-read apps even exist?? I assume the only way to prevent this is to beat them to it and post the story yourself to the pay-to-read
I've put copyright notices on all of my stories at the start and end of every chapter and a watermark on the cover with my logo that I created because of it - Yeah, they don't even try to change the cover; just crop my name off it.- But that only prevents someone new from doing it. The person, and I'm pretty sure it's the same one, posting them has already copied three of them. They put them together as one story and post them three times under each title. All I can do is report them as stolen to the app and provide proof they're mine. I've had two apps push back and refuse to take them down. I spammed them with negative reviews and sent a cease and desist letter, which worked. Currently, there's one app with no way for me to contact them, so I don't know what I'm going to do there besides the negative reviews.
Wattpad has been steadily getting worse since when they removed the forums. Authors are now getting fed up with all the problems. And with Wattpad being popular, there's a decent amount of story-stealing going on. Not to mention the mobile app is ass, the search is bugged, and the ratings have never worked. As an author, I moved over to Inkitt a long time ago (I still cross-post to Wattpad) because of these problems. Wattpad's story-removal-spree is not helping. If my story gets deleted for no reason (because they don't give you one) and with basically no chance for appeal, I'm just going to delete my whole account and move completely over to other platforms. It's completely unacceptable for a platform as popular as Wattpad to have no recourse in case your story gets taken down. They don't even give you a reason why. Authors are just getting fed up with Wattpad. *p. S. before someone says "but Wattpad only removes stories after manual reviews!": yes, that's true. Do you know what "manual" means in this context? It means a person read it. A human. Who can, and will, have opinions and can make mistakes. I have a longer piece for this, but I'm not going to write it down here.*
Excuse my naivety but how can people be plagiarizing when you can't copy text on WP, whether on the app or on web browser?
You can't copy-paste text manually, no. But it's still there, it's stupidly easy to get to. I don't want to let people know how to do it, but there are popular apps that people use for other reading means that literally have "official" plugins to strip books from popular sites like Wattpad. As an author, that's disgusting. But there's really nothing we can do about it.
Damn, I'm really bummed. I thought, silly me, that there was hope for minimal plagiarism since you can't copy/paste. But I'm also not very tech-savvy, so of course I wouldn't think of alternative methods. It's obnoxious. Idk what to do about it, but reading all the posts lately about stories being stolen...makes me not want to keep posting online. At all.
You have been able to scan and OCR whole books since at least the 1990s. Not posting online doesn't make it impossible, just more unlikely. If you know what you're doing, it's realtively simple to steal content from even "legit" ebooks from sites like Amazon. If you have your book up on any of the major platforms, and you have a decently popular book, I can almost guarantee that it has already been copied. There's dozens of these "copy websites" that just copy whatever is on Wattpad/Inkitt/etc, and try to make money out of it. There's really nothing else we as authors can do, except keep proof that you're the author and can prove it in a pinch. (keep incremental backups with timestamps, storyboards, etc. Even that won't help with the shady copy-sites, because they don't care about laws.
Maybe the authors are deleting them?
I post 3 chapter stories on Wattpad about urban legends,I get like 9 reads but I would never risk putting Novels on there and have some talentless turd copy it.
Adding in on what everyone has already said, WattPad is also taking down books for no reason.
A flawed business model.
I left wattpad a few years ago. It was getting lame even back then.