Wattpad and Sourcebooks have announced a partnership that will create new opportunities across multiple publishing platforms for Wattpad writers and Sourcebooks authors. The two companies aim to build more synergy between their businesses and are going to be engaging in a number of new initiatives to accomplish this.
First, Sourcebooks will edit and produce select new Wattpad-branded editions of young adult stories into print and e-book platforms, as part of Wattpad’s recently announced Fan Funding experiments where writers have an opportunity to enlist their fans and the Wattpad community to help fund their dreams. The original e-narratives will remain a part of Wattpad. This partnership will bring successful Wattpad authors and their books to a new readership, with distribution throughout national and international retail channels. The books will be released under Sourcebooks Fire, the company’s YA imprint.
In the second collaboration, Sourcebooks will be a presenting prize sponsor for Wattpad’s 2013 Watty Awards, a program that showcases the community’s most popular content as voted by Wattpad’s thriving community of active young adult readers. As part of this search to find the “next big thing” in YA fiction, Sourcebooks will be developing channels for top Wattpad writers to have their stories secure traditional retail distribution in print and e-book formats.
And finally, several notable Sourcebooks writers including CJ Lyons, Miranda Kenneally, Janet Gurtler, and Zoraida Cordova, among others, will be making exciting new stories available for free and engaging with readers on Wattpad as part of their social media marketing strategies. This promotional channel includes featured content slots and algorithmic targeting and will allow Sourcebooks authors to build a fanbase of highly-engaged readers around their books and series.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.