Author's Notes/Shout-outs/Email notifications

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Communication with your readers is often important, and Wattpad has graciously provided several tools to assist us with that communication.

Email notifications

Okay, did you know that your actions, stories, and updates might already be sending email to your readers/followers?

It does depend on their email notification setup, but the automatic settings will do the following:

If you post a new story – all followers will receive an email notification.

If you post a new chapter – anyone who has that story in their personal library will receive a notification (does not apply to the other libraries).


Author's Notes

How many here have read books with long Author's Notes and scrolled until the end of time trying to get past it?

Author's Notes are sometimes used as a foreword, footnote, or sometimes even posted as a separate chapter.

There is no real right or wrong way of using author's notes, but there are preferred methods.

When used as a foreword/footnotes, make the transition from your story to your Author's Note clear. They are sometimes bolded or italicized to differentiate them from the actual story text.

Most people will not open a chapter labeled Author's Note (although if there is just ONE at the end of a completed story, more may read it). If you have a lot to say, then a separate chapter is best. If the note pertains to update schedules or other things that change, it's wise to remove the notes when they are no longer applicable. The less 'clutter' in your story, the better.

Usually, Author's Notes are at the bottom of a chapter (like a footnote in a textbook). Keep them short and sweet, or else your readers will learn to ignore them or will skip right over them.

Sure, you may love to tell people how your day went, but a month later, it simply confuses new readers. If you like posting such 'discussion comments', it's wiser to do so on your profile page. (As a side note, if you turn that post into a 'shout-out' you may lose followers who get tired of seeing non-story related posts. More details about this later).

You are always free to interact with readers in the comments, your profile, or even via messaging, but try to avoid too much non-story related stuff in your Author's Notes.

Example of how to make a clear break between the story and the author's note:

After the last sentence in the chapter...

-----------------------------------

Author's Note:

I hope you are having a great day!

If you are enjoying the story, please vote on it. It is possible to vote on each chapter.

I appreciate every single vote or comment. Such support means a lot to me.

The cutoff from the story to the Author's Note is clear, so there is no chance of confusion.


Shout-outs

A 'shout-out' is when you post a message on your profile conversation page and click the small checkbox labelled 'Announce This To My Followers'. (You have to start typing before it becomes visible, at least on a pc/laptop).

This causes the message to appear in their notifications (before 2019, a shout-out would actually email people, but not anymore). This is a powerful tool, but it can backfire if you aren't careful.

If a reader is following 200 authors, that can be a lot of notifications if each person sends out even one a week. Chances are they will get annoyed if someone posts shout-outs every day or even once a week. But if an author only occasionally posts a shout-out, it's uncommon and more likely to catch their attention and curiosity (if they see it in their long list of notifications).

If you don't click the 'announce this to my followers' button, it will still post it on your conversation wall, but it won't send an email. Perfect for small things or idle chit chat.

During my days as a reader, if an author/person posted notifications several times a week, I just found it to be too much (unless it was stuff that really interested me). I unfollowed a lot of authors who posted a lot of irrelevant things frequently.

As a writer, I only do a handful shout-outs each year (an old habit from the days when they used to be emailed). I think I did four shout-outs this year - and they were all story related. New books coming shortly and their update schedule, free raffles to win merchandize, etc. I do post most updates on my profile – I just don't turn them into a shout-out.

Another option is to make an 'Updates' book, where if people put it into their library (library, not reading list), they will get a notification if you add a new chapter with a new announcement. This also works well for important things if you want to keep a record of it or for followers who like the emailed notifications (because they will get an email when you post a new chapter).

It is, once more, personal preference, and there are no hard rules.


Managing all of those emails – this one is for both readers and writers

Do you get quite a few emails from comments and other notifications? I know I do.

Even though it is possible to turn off all notifications, I prefer to rely on the power of email filters to sort through things for me.

When an email lands in the email address Wattpad sends it to, I have filters set up to sort them for me. Email filters are super helpful, although they can take some time to set up properly. (Google will know how to set up email rules/filters for your email system.)

In my case, I made several folders. One for all Wattpad comments (just to keep my inbox somewhat clean), one for edits that need to be done to my stories, and a few others where I can manually file things that I want to keep track of. I even have a folder to store the funny comments for a laugh on a rainy day.

The email filters can look for key words and move those emails into certain places or folders.

Do you get comments from particular people that you don't want to read? You can filter them straight into the trash. Do you want to have all 'new story' alerts appear in your inbox or a certain folder? These only take a few minutes to set up.

It's possible to have more than one filter send things to each folder – so you can have several filters putting things into one folder. I have filters looking for words like #edit, #typo, etc and putting them all into an Editing folder.

The emails often have different subject lines, which makes it easy to set up filters. For example, some say "New comment on your profile", "New comment on", "Replied to your comment", "Read a new story from".

Also the order of the filters is important; normally, the ones on top will overrule those below. For example, I can send all emails with a subject line that starts with 'New comment on' into my Comments folder, but I can have an additional filter that takes any 'New comment on your profile' and puts it into a different folder afterwards.


Communication is important, but how we go about it is equally important:



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