Fandom is big business, and Wattpad is poised to cash in

It’s been said before, but it bears repeating: fandom is big business. 

The 2020s might as well be dubbed “the fandom decade.” From publishing to consumer products to politics, industries have focused on attracting and catering to fans and fandoms, and fans have increasingly been at the center of the cultural conversation. 

But fandoms are fickle: because they’re always far more bound by loyalty to celebrities, creators, artists, and stories than to companies, there’s no one guaranteed way to win them over. 

At the turn of the millennium, media companies and owners of intellectual property were still figuring out what exactly to do with increasingly large and organized groups of fervent fans. They could certainly be sold merchandise and movie tickets, but they couldn’t be tamed in exchange. Consumers clashed frequently with studios and creators over the legality of fan websites, fanfiction, and other heartfelt expressions of obsession — who was in control? 

By the end of the 2010s, a detente had been reached and fandom had officially gone mainstream. The Marvel Cinematic Universe brought comic book geek culture out of the shadows; the success of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and its publicly acknowledged roots in “Twilight” fanfiction introduced the concept of fanworks to a broader audience eager to know where they could find more stories starring their favorite swoon-worthy characters. 

Since then, one place fans have been visiting to scratch their fandom itch is Wattpad. On the online writing platform, which was founded in Canada in 2006 and acquired by South Korean internet conglomerate Naver in 2021, millions of readers from around the world spend an average of about an hour a day reading and commenting on stories hosted on the platform. Wattpad is incredibly popular not only in North America, but in Southeast Asia and in Spanish-speaking countries as well, especially among Gen Z women. 

Since 2016, the Wattpad Studios division has connected entertainment executives with the best-performing IP on the platform for potential adaptation. While some of Wattpad’s best-known successes in the film and TV space, like “The Kissing Booth” on Netflix and the Spanish-language “Culpa Mia” (“My Fault”) franchise on Prime Video, have been adapted from original stories posted to the platform, Wattpad is also widely known as a place to read fanfiction based on existing IP, like “Twilight” and “Harry Potter,” as well as stories involving real-life celebrities such as the members of boy band One Direction. 

One Direction heartthrob Harry Styles was originally the love interest in Anna Todd’s “After” when she first began publishing it serially on Wattpad; when the book was acquired and published by Simon & Schuster in 2014, his name had been changed to Hardin Scott. “After” became a movie in 2019 and four sequels followed, grossing a total of $168 million worldwide. 

Todd’s success provided a major blueprint for aspiring Wattpad writers. But plenty of users are coming to the platform just to read, not necessarily to publish stories of their own. Especially for younger Gen Z and Alpha readers, Wattpad’s easy-to-use platform, discovery features, and social layer offer a perfect entry point into the world of pop culture community. 

It presents a much more mainstream, populist experience than its older sister, the more upscale, literary fanfiction site Archive Of Our Own (AO3). On social media, it’s common for readers to portray themselves as having “graduated” from Wattpad to AO3 as they develop more mature taste in stories and fandoms. 

Until now, despite success on and off the platform with fans’ work, Wattpad had not necessarily embraced its identity as a fandom destination. 

But that’s soon to change as Wattpad leans more into being a platform not just for stories, but for fandom. Wattpad President Aron Levitz, who was formerly the head of Wattpad Studios, released a blog post in May detailing a new fandom-forward strategy for the company, acknowledging, “Fans and fandom are what make Wattpad special.” 

This means making fanfiction a priority on the platform — which for many of their visitors is why they’re there in the first place. Better discovery and community tools are on the horizon for Wattpad’s many users. 

This shift is a sign of the times. Wattpad is positioning itself as the go-to destination for fans of existing IP as well as young creators looking to stir up new audiences for their own original stories. 

The fandom business  

For companies that cater directly to fans, finding the perfect formula is a tricky business. 

ReedPop, a division of Reed Exhibitions (RX), which is in turn a division of the UK media conglomerate RELX, has been running fan conventions since 2006, beginning with New York Comic Con. It quickly expanded worldwide in the 2010s, buying up and running conventions across Europe, Africa, Asia, India, Australia, and beyond — but even before the pandemic, it had begun letting go of many of these international events.

RX’s business model of in-person conventions and exhibitions was severely affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, taking an operating loss of $204.81 million in 2020. But it’s bounced back, reporting strong results last year from its global operation and over 200,000 attendees at flagship event New York Comic Con.

Funko, a purveyor from Washington state of infinitely collectible fandom merchandise mainly in the form of its licensed FunkoPOP! vinyl figurines, has likewise experienced turmoil. Its stock plunged on its IPO day in 2017 and has whipsawed ever since, having fallen 55% in the past year; the company had to destroy over $30 million of undamaged inventory in 2023 to ease strain on its distribution processes. Last year, Funko’s sales were up slightly from 2023, but revenue remained depressed from its 2022 peak.

Though fans and the powers that be are no longer quite as at odds as they were back in the 2000s, with cease and desist orders flying right and left, there has still been a fair share of controversies as companies try to exert control over IP and fans put up a fight. 

Fandom, the for-profit fan wiki platform formerly known as Wikia, expanded further into the world of ad-supported fan content when it acquired a portfolio of gaming- and TV-centric websites in 2022, including GameSpot, Metacritic, TV Guide, and GameFAQs. It continues to report global growth, with 350 million monthly users across its verticals last year — even amid controversy over potential mismanagement of properties like gaming website Giant Bomb (which was sold back to its founders earlier this year) and allegedly exploitative advertising practices, which has led many fandoms like “League of Legends” and “Minecraft” to move their wikis completely off the platform. 

Wattpad’s fandom hope 

But fans will form a fandom anywhere they can, whether online or off — the platforms need them much more than fans need the platforms. 

Rather than trying to shift the attention of users and advertisers to Wattpad’s popular (and monetizable) original stories, the company wants to focus on ensuring that the site is attractive to fans of existing (non-Wattpad) IP and that it’s as easy to share content and build community around that IP as around original stories. 

According to Levitz, in order to encourage fandom to grow on its platform, Wattpad is looking to boost discoverability and user communications.

“There are two ways that we’re looking at improving or supporting fandoms on our platform,” Levitz said. “The first is how do we make it easier to find what you love” — through more effective search and discovery tools, he says — and “the other side is once you’ve found [new stories], how do you interact with that community?” Though Wattpad removed the direct messaging feature last year after reports of harassment and bullying, it’s now looking to develop ways that users can safely communicate and share their enthusiasm for stories and fantasy worlds. 

Because Wattpad is almost equally known for being a fanfiction destination as it is a place to grow and share original works, its position in the fandom continuum is a unique one.

Levitz imagines, “Someone may come because they’re in love with a certain IP and start writing fanfiction. They then might find an original story they love, and then they get to follow that original story — with six of their best friends who were never on the platform to begin with — to a movie theater” to watch the film adaptation. 

While a platform like Archive Of Our Own is fundamentally noncommercial, with an emphasis on not-for-profit transformative works inspired by existing IP, Wattpad earns money from advertising across all types of hosted content as well as from Wattpad Premium subscriptions, reader microtransactions for Wattpad Originals paid stories, and IP adaptation deals via Wattpad Studios.

One way to attract new, enthusiastic readers is to partner with the celebrities they want to read about, as Wattpad did when it teamed up with former 5 Seconds of Summer singer Michael Clifford to launch his latest music video with a fanfic writing contest. 

Book publishers are increasingly using fandom as a resource, a metric, and a marketing tool, and with its track record and global user base, Wattpad is well positioned to be at the forefront of a further move toward welcoming fan creativity in the entire entertainment industry. 

Rather than treating fandom as something embarrassing or secret, or encouraging users to leave it behind in favor of more profitable and easy-to-adapt original IP, Levitz hopes that by fully embracing the community, Wattpad will remain a destination for fans of existing properties as well as writers who — being fans themselves — are building a fandom-first audience for their own stories. 

The kind of Gen Z readers and authors who call Wattpad home are perfectly comfortable with living in the growing gray area between fan and creator. 

“The creators that are most successful on our platform understand the contract with their fandom: ‘I am not in this alone as a creator,’” Levitz said. “It’s that shared ownership of a universe that I think really sets apart [a] creator on a platform like ours, versus a traditional author.”

Allegra Rosenberg is a journalist in New York.