Wattpad has 94 million users.

Substack has 20 million active subscribers, with no public data on how many read fiction.

When people ask why Wattpad gets movie adaptations and Substack doesn’t, the numbers tell part of the story. But a friend on Wattpad told me the platform removed DMs because of doxing (and other words I can’t write here). Another writer escaped what they called mafias that were destroying their mental health.

Meanwhile, Joana Marcús has lines stretching from end to end of Paseo de Gràcia to sign her books.

Scale has its costs. Maybe Substack’s smaller fiction community isn’t losing…

Anyway:

Readers and fiction writers, please keep registering here until we create a subs mafia?