I will no longer be updating this guide. I'm leaving it up in case it will continue to be helpful to anyone in the future.
People have asked me writing tips, Wattpad tips, and whatever. This is some of that advice I give them. Keep in mind most of t...
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For this topic I'm not going to beat around the bush. I'm going to set it to you straight. So sit down, grab a coffee and a bag of gummy bears, and let's talk Plagiarism.
If you are putting your story anywhere aside from your personal notebook or computer, you are at risk of being plagiarized. If your book is on Wattpad, FictionPress, FanFiction, any of those other free book sharing sites, sold on Amazon or iTunes, sold through Lulu or Createspace, you are at risk of being plagiarized. If your book is posted on tumbler, facebook, twitter, blogger, you are at risk of being plagiarized. If your book is traditionally published or self-published, you are at risk of being plagiarized. There isn't a damn thing you can do to stop it except to never show your work to anyone, anywhere, at any time. Hell even on your own personal computer you're at risk of being plagiarized because that computer could be stolen and thus the person who stole it could publish that book.
Let that sink in for a moment. How scary is that? That no matter where you put your book it can be stolen at any moment. Maybe you're sitting there thinking "meh, I'm not a good enough writer to be plagiarized" well, that was me about six months or so before I joined Wattpad. And yet, it happened to me.
Before I joined Wattpad I was on FictionPress. I had posted Brothers Blood on there because I was so proud of actually completing a novel I wanted to share it. I looked around at other sites but I chose fictionpress (I can't remember if I saw Wattpad in my search to find some place to share my work or not) and thus I called that my home. BB was mostly a dud there, and I don't blame it. That story was just bad. The Wattpad version is a little more cleaned up, but it's still a mess. But then I started to post Freelander.
FL managed to be a semi instant success. It was getting comments and people adding it to their favorite list (or whatever it's called, I can't remember now) I don't remember exactly how well it was doing, but it was a stark contrast to BB. So I decided to start cleaning it up some. I had my friend read through the rough draft and she pointed out a few things that I started fixing. Then I started posting that draft over the old version. Around the time I started posting I saw people talking about how they were leaving FP for Wattpad because it was harder to steal work from Wattpad.
At first, I ignored it. What did I have to worry about? While FL was doing good it wasn't doing as good as the people complaining about being plagiarize. But then I started seeing people with few reads complaining about the same thing, how their story was posted elsewhere without their consent. So I decided to check out this Wattpad and see what the layout was like.
That's just what I did. I journeyed over to Wattpad and circled around it a little bit. Then I decided, for grins and giggles, let's search my stories. I did BB first, it wasn't found. Then I did Freelander . . . to say I was shocked when one came up was an understatement. I was floored. I stared at that name "Freelander" for a moment and then I took a breath. It couldn't be my Freelander. No. It had to be a fanfiction for Sanctuary (which was still airing at the time) or about the car or just sharing the same name. Nope. Couldn't be my Freelander.
