Wattpad Article Two: 

Posted on October 6, 2015 by
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This is a continuation of the blog last week. Author, Lareena Goertz shares her experiences and knowledge on WattPad. This is a possible source of beta readers for authors and a great source for people who love to read to be introduced to new authors.

HOW MY BOOK TOOK OFF ON WATTPAD:

I began using the publishing platform Wattpad in 2013. It allows any
author to put up either short works or novels, one chapter at a time.
Anyone can publish on Wattpad and anyone can read them. It is free and
there’s no charge for its use or any of the software.

There are several handy things about the platform. For one thing, there
are apps that readers can download to their phones or tablets to read
their Wattpad books. These apps download and save the books so they can
be read when the device is offline.

All users gets a profile page, where they can put up a bio, including
their location and how long they’ve been a member on Wattpad. They can
include a facebook page link, twitter info, and links to other websites
if they want. This is handy for authors. Everyone gets an Inbox to send
email to each other within Wattpad.

Readers can browse through the Wattpad stories by category or search by
keywords to find stories that they want to read. Then they can save
links to the novels they are reading to a list called “Library.”

If a reader likes another user, they can “follow” them. The profile
pages shows who a member follows and who follows them, similar to
Twitter.

Readers can also give feedback on stories by leaving comments or
“voting” for stories / chapters that they like.

The profile page will also list the stories you’ve put up on Wattpad,
with the covers and a description. They can see a demographics page to
understand who is reading their story. More on this below.

COPYRIGHT

Publishing on Wattpad doesn’t mean you give up your copyright. You
retain that. But you grant Wattpad some limited licenses when you upload
a story.

Wattpad has multiple copyright options: “All Rights Reserved” which
retains all the rights provided by copyright law; “Public Domain” means
you don’t want to save any rights to the story; “Creative Commons”
reserves some of the rights to your story.

Choosing “All Rights Reserved” doesn’t copyright your work but might
allow you to sue someone who takes your story. Wattpad recommends that
everyone copyrights their story with the copyright office in their own
country.

More about Wattpad copyrights here:
https://support.wattpad.com/hc/en-us/articles/200773104-Copyrights

FORMAT:

I liked the chapter by chapter format and it seemed an easy way to put
up sample chapters or novels that I wanted to get feedback on. So I
began by putting up rough drafts of a few novels I’d done. First, an
urban fantasy horror novel, named Magic Spawn, about a necromancer who
comes from another universe to terrorize a Nebraska town on Halloween
night, attacking them with skeletons and zombies. Horror with a little
humor.

MAGIC SPAWN: http://www.wattpad.com/story/42523928-magic-spawn-origins

When I wrote the sequel to this, Nethermost Realm: Prisoner of Arlunn,
where Rian, a 17 year old boy, goes through to the other universe to get
into trouble there, I also put it up on Wattpad. Here Rian must fight to
save his ten year old brother from those who accuse him of being cursed
and want him destroyed.

PRISONER OF ARLUNN:
http://www.wattpad.com/story/10007829-nethermost-realm-prisoner-of-arlunn

PROMOTING YOUR STORY
As soon as you put up a new chapter, Wattpad notifies all the people who
are reading your story, if they’ve saved it to their “Library.” Also, if
you have news, you can put up a comment on your wall and also send a
little note to all your followers. Also, if you like your Twitter and
Facebook accounts to Wattpad, you can send a tweet or post to Facebook
telling people about your new story or chapter.

Later, if someone is reading your story and they like a chapter, they
can also easily post it to their Facebook and Twitter accounts.

Wattpad also has various “Clubs,” which are basically discussion boards,
one for each genre. Plus a number of other “Clubs” on various topics.
There’s a place where you can put up a plug for your book in your genre.
Readings can discuss other Wattpad novels or stories there.

After putting up these two novels, I began plugging them on twitter,
mostly, and on Facebook. You can check my blogposts on how to do that
here:

7 Basic Twitter Tips: How to Tweet and Get more Followers
http://meredithskye.weebly.com/blog/7-basics-twitter-tips-how-to-tweet-and-get-more-followers

20 Facebook Groups to Promote your Free or .99c Ebook in
http://meredithskye.weebly.com/blog/20-facebook-groups-to-promote-your-free-or-99c-e-book-in

ARE PEOPLE READING MY STORY?

I began racking up quite a few “reads” but at the time, they didn’t
track unique views or complete reads just page hits. So each time I
accessed the page, the numbers went up. Then whenever I sent out a link
on Twitter, I automatically received 20 or 30 “hits”. I didn’t think a
human could respond that fast and suspected that some of the Twitter
users had a system to automatically follow a link. So, even though each
chapter got a number of hits, I couldn’t tell if anyone was really
reading my books or not.

I was discouraged. I took the first novel, Magic Spawn, down to rewrite
it. But I left the sequel Prisoner of Arlunn up there. Mostly because I
forgot about it, for at least a year.

When Melva encouraged me to write about my Wattpad experience, I went
back to look at the site again. To my surprise, I found I’d gotten a bit
of a following. My novel Prisoner of Arlunn had over 7,000 reads (those
count chapters read) and another novel I’d put up (not quite a complete
book) Tower of the Moon had almost 5,000 reads.

I’d ended the novel Prisoner of Arlunn with a bit of a cliffhanger.
Apparently some of my readers got on a campaign and went through and
“voted” on every single chapter. A few sent me emails or posted comments
asking when the sequel was coming out. Well, I had no idea, I’d been
busy publishing a scifi book: The Gods of Garran on Amazon. I hadn’t
worked the Nethermost Realm books since I’d posted it. And that book was
just a first draft.

WATTPAD DEMOGRAPHICS

I found a number of improvements in tracking the Wattpad readers via
their Demographic tools, most in the form of graphs. And I found them
very useful and informative.

OVERVIEW:

Unique Readers:
Shows a count of unique readers who accessed the novel.

Votes:
Total votes for the story. This is a good way to see how many people are
following your book.

Comments:
Total number of comments left for the novel (chapter by chapter). I had
very few comments.

ENGAGEMENT:

Complete Reads:
This shows how many readers actually read the whole chapter, not just
jumped to the first page. This is good, because I suspected that when I
posted on Wattpad that bots were following the link and opening it. For
Prisoner of Arlunn, I could see that for each chapter in the novel, it
had averaged about 100 complete reads per chapter. This told me that
people were reading the whole book, not just Chapter 1 or 2.

Votes by Parts:
How many people read each chapter of the novel. Prisoner of Arlunn got
an average of 9 votes for each chapter, dropping to about 7 votes by the
end. But this told me that people were persisting to the end, and liking
it.

Comments by Parts:
Total tally of comments on each chapter. Again, not many.

DEMOGRAPHICS:

Okay, here it gets interesting. I was quite surprised by the findings in
these visual graphs. These are things that are critical to know about
your audience.

Age:
This gives you a percentage for each reader in a group. Most of my
readers are age 13 to 25 years old. For Prisoner of Arlunn, it broke
down:

Age 13-18: 15%
Age 18-25: 40%
Age 25-35: 10%
Age 35-45: 3%
Over Age 45: 13%
Private: 20%

Gender:
(What up? Most of my readers are male for this book! I didn’t realize
this).
Female: 10%
Male: 65%

Country (World Map):
Here’s where it got crazy. In fact, I was sure at first that this was a
mistake. I didn’t know how international Wattpad is!  Only 47% of my
readers live in the U.S. A full 25% of my readers live in Hungary! (Who
knew? I don’t even know anyone in Hungary)
U.S.: 47%
Hungary: 25%
Phillipines: 10%
India: 10%
Pakistan: 6.25%

The rest were 5% or less: Australia, New Zealand, Italy, U.K., Sweden,
Norway, Nigeria, South Africa, Italy, Iceland, Malaysia, Nigeria, and
Kenya.

People were reading my novel all over the world! This blew me away. And
I felt quite encouraged about my audience. I’d done nothing to promote
my books except mostly in the U.S. via Facebook and Twitter.

PLAN: USE WATTPAD MORE!

As a result, I’m continuing to study and experiment with Wattpad. And I
fully intend to use it more!

READ MORE ARTICLES ABOUT WATTPAD:

WHAT’S WATTPAD?
http://www.writeabout.com/whats-wattpad/

How to Use Wattpad as an Author
https://getpocket.com/a/read/536059604

 

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The Four Core Stories For Business:

Posted on October 5, 2015 by
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Presentation by Wendy Gourley.

Resource: the circle of the nine muses by David Hutchens.

We had a great presentation by Wednesday. It was great to meet some new people as well. She emphasized how stories can be used in the business environment.

Stories of identity:
– They can tell you what you are or what your business is about.
– One important identify sort is the origin story. How did we begin? (the company , the project, your person journey.)
– Everyday moments can also be identify stories if they reveal something about who you are.

Stories of values:
– These stories show how an organization is living up to its values.
– Don’t be afraid to admit to failure. It can be the source of knowledge to build your success. Your story can be what you learned from that failure. Finding and sharing those stories can shape your organization’s identify.
– Look out for them.

Stories of Vision:
– These stories tell where we are going and what we are about.
– A story connects to people more deeply than a vision statement.
– One kind of vision story is a future story. If you were to state what your hopes for your future are as if its already come true.

Stories of change and Learning:
– When did you make a mistake but you learned form it or change how you operate?
– When did you have ah-aha moment that brought a shift in thinking or new understating?
– These are the hardest stories to tell as it teaks vulnerability, but they can be the most powerful and impactful for your organization.

Look for these stories. Ask for them, capture them, craft them and tell them.

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Religion and policy: 

Posted on October 4, 2015 by
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A few months ago I attended a conference on religious liberty by Pres. Holland of UVU. Here are some of my notes. Any inaccuracies are the fault of this note taker.  The lecture gave some info religion and policy.

  • The idea of a wall between church and state began in 1648. By William. This idea is more recognize the first paragraph of the declaration of independence. In the writing of the declaration. The printer replace one word with another, and the mistake was ‘inalienable’ rights. Jefferson in his early life was not very religious, but later in his life and evangelist by the name of Benjamin Rush helped him him becoming more interested in religion. One example of Jefferson’s growing passion for religion were to cut out favorite verses out of the New Testament and made his own Bible. It became known as the Jefferson Bible. some of the topics of the verses were about love and charity. Jeffords inaugural speech mentions religious freedom.
  • What is necessary to make a prosperous nation honesty love of man and the love of Providence, and adoring God.
  • The idea of the separation of church and state was began by a letter to a Baptist church.
  • http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html
  • To messers. Nehemiah Dodge, Ephraim Robbins, & Stephen S. Nelson, a committee of the Danbury Baptist association in the state of Connecticut.

Gentlemen

The affectionate sentiments of esteem and approbation which you are so good as to express towards me, on behalf of the Danbury Baptist association, give me the highest satisfaction. my duties dictate a faithful and zealous pursuit of the interests of my constituents, & in proportion as they are persuaded of my fidelity to those duties, the discharge of them becomes more and more pleasing.

Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should “make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof,” thus building a wall of separation between Church & State. Adhering to this expression of the supreme will of the nation in behalf of the rights of conscience, I shall see with sincere satisfaction the progress of those sentiments which tend to restore to man all his natural rights, convinced he has no natural right in opposition to his social duties.

I reciprocate your kind prayers for the protection & blessing of the common father and creator of man, and tender you for yourselves & your religious association, assurances of my high respect & esteem.

Thomas Jefferson Jan. 1. 1802. http://www.loc.gov/loc/lcib/9806/danpre.html

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Class, Turning Our Food Storage into a Nutritional Powerhouse: 

Posted on October 1, 2015 by
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Got this notification to me as an email.

Class this Saturday Oct 3rd & Next Local-Pick UP

I just wanted to let everyone know, through email, that I’m holding a free class tomorrow (Saturday the 26th) in Lehi, Utah. I will be covering all 3 of the topics I regularly teach about:

Turning Our Food Storage into a Nutritional Powerhouse

Alternative Remedies for the Infectious Diseases that Occur During a Disaster

7 Steps to Preparing Our Bodies Now for What’s to Come

The class will go from 12:00 until 3:30pm. The address to the location where the class will be held is:

121 East State Street Lehi Utah 84043

12:00 – 3:30pm

Rick gave a presentation on how you can brag. When you brag in the right way, you can establish credibility. You can also brag about other people.

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Spelling Inaccuracies: 

Posted on September 30, 2015 by
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Good: Inaccuracies

Bad:   Inacceracies

I’m only off by one letter. How to remember the u. When you want to present accurate info you need to fill the bucket with facts. The U looks like a bucket, thus inaccUracies..

We’ll see if that helps. Have a better idea? Please share it in the comment section of this blog.

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Introduction to Wattpad:

Posted on September 29, 2015 by
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An author friend of mine has used a valuable resource in getting beta readers for her book and I thought she would be an asset in telling us more about Wattpad. Welcome to our guest blogger, Lareena Goertz.

A few years ago I found a handy website for uploading stories, which
readers could read online for free. It’s easy to use and has a growing
membership. What is wattpad.com?

http://www.wattpad.com

READ ANYWHERE:
Not only can stories be read on the website, but readers can download a
Wattpad app for their phone or tablet. If they add a story to their
“Library” reading list, the app will automatically download the story to
their device when launched. That way, even without internet, a reader
has the story on their device.

WATTPAD IS INTERNATIONAL:
One amazing thing about Wattpad is how international it is! The U.S. and
U.K. are the biggest market but it is popular throughout Europe, India,
Africa and even in the Philippines. At one point, Wattpad was the number
one downloaded program in the Philippines.

WATTPAD IS FOR READERS:
There are 24 million readers on Wattpad. Growth has been rapid, all over
the world. The core group is teens from age 13 to 18; readers must be 13
to join. And 35% of Wattpad readers are 18-30.

This isn’t a platform where writer’s put up their writing for other
writers. Only about 10% of the Wattpad community are writers, the rest
are readers. This is important, because these readers are very engaged:
they are reading for about 30 minutes at a time. It’s not just a social
media, people get online to find and read stories. That story could be
yours.

GENRES ON WATTPAD:
Wattpad seems to be open to just about every conceivable writing genre
or type. And there is a large range of writers and skill levels, from
beginner to advanced. You can put up a short story, a poem, the first
few chapters of your novel … or the whole novel. Whatever you want. It’s
very open. And relatively easy to use.

Romance and Science Fiction are very popular on Wattpad. Other genres
include:

* Romance
* Fantasy
* Mystery/Suspense
* Humor
* Science Fiction
* Historical Fiction
* Fan Fiction
* Paranormal
* Poetry
* Short Story
* Vampire
* Thriller
* Adventure
* Horror

CONTENT RATING:
Wattpad has two content ratings: Everyone and Mature.

“Everyone” includes material that would be rated: G/PG/PG-13. This
content is generally suitable for everyone on Wattpad. Stories may
contain some use of strong language, and non-graphic mentions of sex,
violence, and/or drug use.

“Mature” includes material that is generally suitable for ages 17 and
up. Stories labeled with ‘Mature Content’ may contain frequent use of
strong language and graphic depictions of violence, sexuality, and drug
use. They don’t allow porn but do allow erotica.

LANGUAGES.
Since Wattpad is international, you can write in any language, though
English and Spanish are most common.

FEEDBACK.
Wattpad gives the writer a lot of chances for feedback from the readers,
as this is a social media. Everyone gets a profile and an email account.
Readers can follow favorite authors, add their books to a Library
reading list and post comments on their favorite chapters. They can
“vote” for a story or chapter to let the author know they liked it. And
Wattpad has some great demographics to let you know the reader’s age,
gender and where they live in the world.

BUILD AN INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE!
Because of its international reach and popularity, Wattpad is a great
place to begin building an audience from. And a good place to experiment
and find out what your readers are, who do your stories appeal to? But
it takes time and patience. So, persevere!

GET NOTICED BY PUBLISHERS
Some Wattpad writers have gotten book deals by publishing on Wattpad and
drawing a large audience. In the Philippines, they are making movies
based on Wattpad novels.

JOIN WATTPAD!
Whether you are a writer hoping to get noticed or a reader in search of
a story you’d enjoy—there’s something for everyone on wattpad.com. Sign
up today!
www.wattpad.com

More will be coming on this topic.

Here is one more link related to Wattpad:

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Nonfood emergency supplies: 

Posted on September 28, 2015 by
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A friend took some notes about the type of things to collect that are non-food items that will be useful in emergencies. Here is the list
toothpaste
toothbrushes
toilet paper
wipes
lotion
chap stick
aspirin
colloidal silver
melatonin
sleeping pills
tums
towels, hand, washcloths
soap
shampoo/conditioner
baby oil
combs and brushes
emery boards
Asper cream
anti-itch cream
and stuff adding to my first aid supplies
batteries of all sizes

Have something to add to the list? Please do so in the comment section of this blog.

 

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Presidential Relationship to Religious Matters: 

Posted on September 27, 2015 by
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A few months ago I attended a conference on religious liberty at UVU. Here are some of my notes. Any inaccuracies are the fault of this note taker.  The lecture gave some info on President Carter that I didn’t know. The presenter seemed to be a big fan.

  • Free exercise refers to religion.
  • The office of president has control over these areas.
  1. Legislative position. One example is the freedom of religion act, which was signed in 1998 by Bill Clinton
  2. Administrative acts.
  3. Foreign and military policy. One example is when Bush had a no-fly zone over Iraq to protect the Syrians from attack by the country’s president. Present elected Roberts and Alito as judges, who were pro-religious freedom. Most the time when religious freedom is presented to the court. It is sustained
  4. Legislation action, law
  5. Supreme Court appointments
  • God and the White House speech by Randall Randall
  • On May 4, 1974 Jimmy Carter gave a speech at a graduation ceremony that got him attention.
  • Jimmy Carter was elected as a moral compass.
  • Religious roots run deep in the voters and after that Nixon corruption scandal. The population wants to elect a moral president and Jimmy Carter as a Baptist minister.
  • A group of Democrats, ministers met in Chicago became the Chicago delegation. They wanted to promote aggressive goals such as women’s equality and helping the poor.
  • The religious right was created by Billy Graham, who gathered with additional ministers to have days of prayer on the presidency. They considered using Reagan or Philip Crane or John Colly to replace Jimmy Carter. They still considered Reagan even though he voted for a major abortion deal as Gov. of California.
  • There was a debate that whatever society allowed abortion would eventually consider euthanasia.
  • Billy Graham offered support to the Reagan campaign. They wanted to derail the accomplishments of Pres. Carter.
  • After his presidency go to continue doing activities to help the poor, such as Habitat for Humanity and he also acted as a liaison between countries to help them to communicate.

Want to add something people may not know about President Carter? Feel free to share.

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Orem Cottage Meetings: 

Posted on September 24, 2015 by
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Please plan to attend one of these cottage meetings and bring a friend! ALSO mark your calendar for Oct 8th to hear County Commissioner Bill Lee address Proposition 1:  the proposed unnecessary ¼ cent sales tax increase.

Governments ALWAYS want to grow.  They thrive on more taxes and more regulations. 

Do you want ever expanding government, debt, taxes and fees?

CLAUDE RICHARDS and HANS ANDERSEN stand for LESS GOVERNMENT.

If you want them to represent YOU, vote ONLY for these two conservative candidates because voting for a third might help one of the other three get elected instead.


Fri 25 Sept @ 7:00 pm -Host Janice Sipherd (801-494-1054)  1588 S 705 E. 


Tues 29 Sept @ 6:30 pm -Host Walt Cryer (801-225-5895)  221 E 1950 S

 Thurs  1 Oct@ 8:30 pm -Host Mike Thompson (801) 615- 7326 1010 W 1420 N

Thurs 8 Oct @ 7:00 pm -Commissioner Bill Lee at 7:00 pm in Pleasant Grove on Proposition #1- the ¼ cent sales tax

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Spelling Analyze:

Posted on September 24, 2015 by
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Good: analyze

Bad:   analize

Ok this word is being a pain for me. This is my fourth attempt to use a mnemonic to remember the word. Let’s see if this will help me remember that there is a LY in anaLYze. Sometimes when you want to learn the truth of something you must face the possibility that truth may be harsh and hard to accept. Lye is a harsh chemical. But ironically is very used for making soap which is cleansing. Thus, as we analyze truth and see it for what it is, it can be as cleansing as LY of inaccuracies.

That’s very philosophical, um? We’ll see it it will help me and others remember the ly in analyze.

Have an alternative idea on how to spell this correctly? Please provide your ideas in the comment section of this blog. Thanks.

<End>

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