Wattpad itself, founded in 2006 by Lau and Ivan Yuen, is one of the most extraordinary success stories in the same digital-era neighborhood as Medium and Tumblr. Our focus was on the Wattpad Presents development. Dubbed “Around the World in 8 Hours,” the online event gave me a chance to lead a live Twitter chat with Gardner as my guest. Today, there are more than five million “Wattpadders” there.Īllen Lau’s Wattpad is doing something right in Manila.Īshleigh Gardner, Wattpad content director, spoke with us this week as part of London Book Fair’s #Quantum16 Virtual Conference. The number of Wattpad users in The Philippines in 2007 stood at 80. The partnership embraces a through-bonding effect between fans, writers, and-eventually-extending to the actors who play the stories’ good-looking characters in the shows.

Many of the most ardent fans of the programming on screen are also devoted readers and/or writers of Wattpad’s stories-in-process online. This unusual liaison between media may suggest a valuable model for more traditional publishing companies to explore in the search for new readers. But the mechanism of Wattpad Presents requires an element of blur: there’s a blending of TV-film audiences and readers here that goes beyond simple movie tie-ins. Young love and pink-hued comedy are the stuff of such titles as Cupid’s Fools, Fake Fiancé, Casanova’s Love Game, and A Rose Between Two Thorns. The program is heavily geared to the romance and fan-fiction interests of the millennial demographic that seems to “get” Wattpad most easily. There, Wattpad is known as much more than a huge online reading and writing community. Its arm called Wattpad Presents generates content for film and television productions.Īnnounced in September 2014, the partnership sees TV5 Manila dramatize popular stories from the Toronto-based Wattpad site. #KathNiel is the most-searched term on Wattpad in The Philippines.

Wattpad stories kathniel