Last September, the folks over at Forbes wrote a story about Wattpad and its highly exploitive (though completely voluntary) business model:
Wattpad has more than 4 million writers, who post an average of 300,000 pieces a day. The company brings in an estimated $19 million in revenue, mostly from ads on its site and from stories sponsored by companies like Unilever who want to advertise alongside a specific writer or genre. Nearly all its writers are unpaid; several hundred make money from ad-sharing revenue and 200 of those also earn from writing sponsored content and inking publishing deals with Wattpad. That lean business model means Wattpad is profitable. It has few costs beyond bandwidth, its 130 employees and the Toronto offices. The model “is a great way to seek talent without having to pay huge amounts for it,” says Lorraine Shanley, a publishing industry consultant.
Forbes, September 2018
4 million writers, and only a minuscule number (about .005%) make any money for their efforts.
I have nothing against the concept of web fiction, web serials, or posting fiction for free on the Internet. Much of the content of this site, after all, is web fiction. (I have my own little Wattpad going on here.)
But the defining characteristic of digital sharecropping is the socialization of effort, and the privatization of rewards. Wattpad earns $19 million in revenue, because writers choose to post their fiction there, rather than writing on their own sites.
I can already anticipate your “but….” rebuttals.
Yes, I realize that only a handful of these writers, if they created their own web presences, would garner any appreciable audience, or earn any real revenue. But let me ask you: How much chance do most writers have on Wattpad, amid 4 million other writers, posting 300,000 pieces per day?
The odds of genuine success are about the same either way. The writers who are standing out on Wattpad could, with a bit of effort, stand out on their own online platforms. And then they would make a whole lot more money than Wattpad is paying them, you can be sure. Even more importantly, they would control their own platforms.
Digital sharecropping works because too many creative types are desperately slavering for any form of immediate recognition, like a thirteen year-old boy hopelessly infatuated with an eighteen year-old girl.
Look at me! Look at me now! …A like on a Facebook post! A retweet! A like on a YouTube video! Oh, any form of recognition will do! Pleeeeaaase!
The owners of the social media giants understand this weakness of all creative people, and they eagerly exploit it.
Resist. If you can’t afford your own independently hosted WordPress site, then start a free blog on Google’s blogger platform.
Yes, Google ultimately controls Blogger. But there you at least have some independence. (You can also run your own affiliate links, and eventually qualify for Adsense revenue).
Whatever you do—if you’re a writer—don’t post your fiction on Wattpad. Don’t be a sucker.
Just as Facebook and Twitter have become the cancer that destroyed blogging, so Wattpad has become the cancer that threatens to destroy independently published web fiction.
That night, I did manage to go to sleep. For a while, I lay awake in bed, listening to my parents arguing with Jack.
I don’t know if they gave him yet another handout that night. Eventually, though, he left. By then I was asleep.
Late that night—or early the next morning, I should say—I awoke from a dream.
The dream itself was routine enough: a mishmash of random scenes and events from my daily life. First I was at home with my parents, then I was going to classes at West Clermont High School. In another segment of the dream, I was working at McDonald’s.
The dream was subject to the usual distortions and inconsistencies of the dreamworld, but it contained no content that was especially memorable or disturbing.
And then some force invaded the dream.
The dream images of daily life abruptly dissolved, replaced by total darkness. I was awake now—but not quite awake. Paused on the boundary between sleep and full consciousness.
And I wasn’t alone there.
A presence was leaning over my bed.
I dared not open my eyes. As is often the case in this in-between state, however, I was capable of some version of sight, or what I imagined to be sight.
Lying on my back, I could sense the vague shape leaning over me.
It terrified me, whatever it was. It was horrible and seductive at the same time.
The thing was trying to speak to me. But before I could make out the words, I pulled myself out of this in-between state.
Fully awake now, I sat up in bed. Looked around my darkened bedroom.
I was alone. But I noticed something: The door of my bedroom was slightly ajar.
I had closed it when I went to bed, to drown out the sound of Jack’s rambling pleas for charity, and my parents’ frustrated but half-hearted responses.
But now the door was slightly open.
Not good.
It was just a dream, I told myself. Just a dream.
Another part of me perceived that it hadn’t been a dream, though. The scenes of school and home life and McDonald’s—yes, those had been dreams. But I had been at least marginally conscious when that thing visited me.
I struggled to figure it out. The thing had appeared as nothing more than a mere shape.
Or no—more than a mere shape. The shape had been distinctly female. But no longer female in the sense that Leslie Griffin and Diane Parker were female.
The shape had once been female, it occurred to me. My visitor carried femininity—and humanity—as distant memories. But it was something else now.
Marie Trumbull, were the words that sprang to my mind.
Ridiculous, I told myself. You were not visited by Marie Trumbull, the executed Loyalist spy. You’re letting your imagination get the best of you.
I lay there, for perhaps an hour or more, before I finally willed myself to go back to sleep.
I walked in through the front door. As the six o’clock hour neared, the restaurant was doing a fair amount of business.
This early, it was mostly families. Young parents with small children. McDonald’s wouldn’t release the Happy Meal for several more years, but the fast food chain was already a hit with children.
When I walked back into the employees area, behind the customer counter, I didn’t see any unfamiliar faces—and certainly no one who could be Diane Parker.
I was about to take my place behind the open cash register—the one on the far right. But first I had to clock in. The time clock, with a card for each employee, was mounted on the wall, adjacent to the manager’s office. As I stepped past the office door, I saw Louis seated behind the desk. He was smoking a cigarette, as always.
Louis saw me through the window in the center of the top half of the door. He waved me in.
I pantomimed punching my timecard. Louis nodded. I clocked in, so I would get credit for my time. Then I entered the smoke-filled office.
Oh, another thing about 1976: Smoking in public was still more or less acceptable behavior. Most restaurant dining rooms had nonsmoking sections. But smokers lit up without hesitation in the common areas of offices, shopping malls, and bars.
“Shut the door behind you,” Louis said.
I complied. The smoke inside the office was so thick it stung my eyes, filled my mouth and nostrils.
I waved my hands about dramatically, as if I could drive the smoke away. “You’re going to stunt my growth with that stuff, Louis.”
Louis was a tall, gangly young man with black curly hair and a light complexion. He often developed inexplicable red blotches on his cheeks and neck. He wore thick glasses encased in heavy black frames.
Louis smiled impassively at my objection to the smoke. We had had this discussion before.
“How tall are you?” he asked.
“Six-one.”
“Well, there you have it. You’ve already done all of your growing. And look at me: I’m six-three.”
“We could both get cancer.”
“You won’t get cancer. Have a seat, please.” He motioned to the visitor’s chair on the far side of the desk. “I wanted to go over next week’s schedule with you.”
I sat down, coughing.
“Quit hamming it up. The smoke will make a man of you.”
“If that’s the case, then I should have a twelve-incher by the time I walk out of here.”
“Hey, I didn’t say that smoke is a miracle drug. Think of what you’re starting with. Anyway, take a look at the days and shifts I have you signed up for next week. Let me know if there’s any problem. But please don’t let there be any problems. If I have to redo your schedule, I have to redo everyone else’s schedule to fill in the gaps.”
He slid the paper across the desk to me and I gave it a quick look. I was scheduled to work almost every evening, as usual.
Ray Smith had a diktat about day shifts: Day shifts were reserved for the older employees, especially the young married women with children. I think Ray Smith believed that he was doing his part to keep at least a handful of the local teenage population out of trouble, by keeping us at work at his restaurant during the witching hours.
“I don’t see any problems,” I said, sliding the schedule back to him. “That will be fine.”
“I saw you looking around when you came in,” Louis said. “You were looking for Diane Parker, weren’t you?”
“Not really.” I said.
“Bullshit. You were rubber-necking like you’d never seen the inside of a McDonald’s before. Anyway, Diane Parker is working a half shift tonight. She’ll be in at eight. Speaking of schedules: You’re good for closing up tonight, right?”
“Closing up” referred to the procedures that we went through after the conclusion of business hours. Some light cleaning, restocking supplies, etc. Everything that needed to be done so that the morning shift didn’t walk into a chaotic, messy restaurant.
“Of course,” I said dutifully. I would leave the restaurant at 10:30 or 10:45 p.m. tonight, I estimated.
“I guess you can go ahead and get to your cash register.” He glanced at his watch. “Did you get here at six?”
“Five minutes early, actually. Then you called me in here to talk.”
“Ah. Yes. Well, anyway.”
I could sense Louis hemming and hawing around. There was something else he wanted to talk to me about.
“Is something else on your mind, Louis?”
After pondering my question for perhaps five seconds, he said, “I’m not sure, really. I’ve been feeling a little…weird, of late.”
“‘Weird’? You’re always a little weird, Louis.”
“Come on. I’m being serious.”
“All right. What do you mean by ‘weird’? Are you sick?”
“No. I don’t mean that there’s anything wrong or weird about me. I feel like there’s something weird going on. Around here, I mean.”
It was as if Louis had read my thoughts, been privy to the events of the entire day: the hoofprints at the Pantry Shelf, the missing persons flyer, that shadow I saw in the hallway of my home…and then finally, the second set of hoofprints and the bizarre reaction of the clerk at the Sunoco station.
“What about you, Steve? Have you noticed anything unusual of late?”
I could have confided in him in that moment. I could have told him about everything I had experienced since roughly noon.
Unlike the clerk, Louis was certainly open to a speculative conversation.
But I didn’t reveal anything to Louis.
“I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary,” I said. “Not really. Not at all, now that I think of it.”
Why didn’t I meet Louis halfway, when he was clearly attempting to take me into his confidence?
I wondered to myself—even then.
My reasons had nothing to do with Louis. I don’t know if I was still in denial, but I was definitely in a state of resistance. This was the summer before my senior year of high school. I wanted it to be filled with fun. Pleasant memories. Maybe a new girlfriend.
I didn’t want to think about young people around my age going missing, possibly the victims of some horrible forces that I could barely imagine existing. I didn’t want to consider the notion that Harry Bailey’s article in Spooky American Tales might be anything more than the sensational ramblings of a pulp journalist. I didn’t want to contemplate the possible meaning of those two sets of hoofprints, the nasty gunk around their edges.
“I’d better get to my cash register,” I said.
“Yes, I guess you’d better.”
I was standing up from the visitor’s chair when Louis gave me yet one more thing to think about.
“Oh,” Louis said, “if you do happen to hit it off with Diane Parker, I recommend that you don’t take too long in making your move. What I mean is: Don’t let Keith Conway make his move first. You know how he is, after all.”
