Hello!
TL/DR: Could Wattpad be useful as a marketing tool for published works?
My first novel (book one of a sci-fi trilogy) was published with a small press publisher last year. The second will follow later this year. I'm always trying to come up with ways to promote my work and draw in more readers... I've found that, on the whole, social media promotion doesn't tend to really deliver book sales unless I put money into it. (I don't actually have access to sales stats so I'm just going off the Amazon Author page, which tend to spike whenever I've done a 'promoted' post.)
My DH suggested that maybe one way to bring in more readers might be to write something which can be released online, chapter by chapter with the idea that my writing itself is marketing my published works. This would mean coming up with something completely different (so my publishing contract isn't affected) and posting it week by week on a platform such as Wattpad. I'm happy enough with the idea of this (far happier actually doing the writing and editing work than promoting it!) but I don't want to plunge a whole lot of time and energy into it if it ends up the same way as the majority of my SM posts (ignored) and then isn't even eligible to be published afterwards.
My main worry is that my (not very extensive, admittedly) knowledge of WP shows it's mostly used by readers of YA/Teen fic wanting stories about werewolves, mafia, bad-boy romance, vampires etc... Which is pretty far-removed from my soft sci-fi thriller about human experimentation and mother/daughter angst 🤔
Anyone with any advice? Maybe I should just stick to SM. It's just hard to come up with regular, fresh content to share that isn't a constant sales pitch!