When authors think of marketing their writing, their books, themselves basically, they consider multiple ways of getting it into the hands of readers, even large chunks for free as to draw them to the sale.
And that’s not a bad idea.
If there weren’t such high risks involved.
Mainly, plagiarism.
The main one that comes to mind is Wattpad.
You wouldn’t believe how often I see writers and authors post on social media asking for advice, if posting the beginning, or even their whole book, is a good idea.
The simple answer?
It’s not.
Why? Because there is nothing stopping someone from downloading or copying your book, word for word, maybe changing a few things, and publishing it under their own name. Then when you go to publish it on Amazon, they flag it for copyright issues and from the horror stories of others who I’ve heard from, it’s not pretty to prove that you, as the author of the original work, wrote it.
Not. Pretty.
So don’t. There are safer ways to get your work out there, creating awareness without all of the headache, stress, and anxiety.
Another aspect of Wattpad is the fact that if you did publish to the platform, you can’t change it. Once it’s up, it’s up unless you take it down. Something else to consider is the content itself. A lot of the books featured are full of the same genre and if you post a genre outside of that, your read levels remain low. It doesn’t do any good.
However, and this is just my opinion, the main concern for many authors and writers (and what has honestly stopped myself, is the plagiarism aspect.
I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to have to worry about my work being stolen.
Hell to the no! We all work our butts off on creating our worlds, investing a significate amount of time building and fine-tuning our characters and plots, the details that drive us crazy but give us such satisfaction. That’s a lot of work to just threw away.
Or even risk it.
That’s about it for me today!
Stay sane and stay safe my friends!
Author Desiree L. Scott 