Exclusive Interview

World of Wattpad: Inside the Fanfiction Adaptation Evolution & What’s Next

“There’s been 20 years of Wattpad, and the output of that is this generation of writers who have gone on to do incredible things. And I’m not even just talking about the ones who were published or adapted. I’m talking about literally talking to people like you,” Alessandra Ferreri, Wattpad’s Head of Content, told Swooon. At this point, Ferreri’s had a number of BookCon 2026 attendees mention that they started reading on the fanfiction platform before starting their careers in publishing or media.

“It’s free, it’s global, and it’s largely quite wholesome in terms of how people engage,” Ferreri said. “It’s just like a fun thing to do with your friends and connect with people. I’m not going to take full credit for it, but I do think Wattpad has been around for so long that I can kind of see its influence all over the place, and I think it’s really positive.”

Wattpad’s reach has expanded greatly since Ferreri joined the company in 2015, particularly in the formal publishing and adaptation space. A few months ahead of the company’s major milestone, Ferreri sat down with Swooon to explain all the ways Wattpad has evolved, how the content fans are writing has changed, and how exactly the company determines what stories should turn into movies.

Swooon: How has Wattpad evolved since you started working there?

Ferreri: Since 2015, we started Wattpad Studios. Wattpad Books came out of it. We got acquired by WEBTOON. So it has seen a huge change. Obviously, I think the desire for storytelling and community hasn’t really changed, but it’s only just become more and more mainstream and bigger. BookTok and Bookstagram and so many of these spaces have opened up in the bookish storytelling digital spaces. Wattpad has been a mainstay, but so much of the stuff around it has evolved and have made it like, “Oh yeah, there’s something here.” There’s something that people love about this kind of the space.

Swooon: What you would say is the biggest difference in the content itself posted a decade ago versus now?

Ferreri: That’s a good question. I don’t know. I feel like we’ve always been pretty split between fanfiction and original fiction. There’s a pretty healthy community for both. There’s some overlap as well. Like, there’s some people that have started writing fanfiction when they were a bit younger, and then kind of migrated into original fiction, and then now some of them are very prolific authors in their own right. So I think there’s always just been a nice balance.

When Wattpad started, it was 2006, and if you think about that time — I mean, I was still in high school, but if you think about that time, Tumblr was kind of just brand new and fresh, and Archive of Our Own didn’t even exist yet. All these kind of areas that are now super well established were brand new, and so all those things together, I think, have changed how storytelling is told. So Wattpad evolved through that. But I think right from the moment, or at least from the earliest moment I remember, it was always romance, young women, escapism, wish fulfillment, all those spaces. It still really is today.

Swooon: What’s the most popular type of story you’re seeing now? 

Ferreri: I find Wattpad tends to mirror pop culture. Pretty often, things that you might see on BookTok will obviously be reflected on Wattpad. I just find the tenure on Wattpad is a little bit longer. So by the time romantasy hits mainstream, Wattpad has been doing it for a little longer. Also, because they’re crafting the story from scratch, it takes a long time for those stories to gain speed and get recognition and all that stuff and become the trend. And then by the time they get into Tumblr or BookTok or Instagram or whatever it is, they are a trend. Similarly, with steamy romances and sports romances as well, they’ve always kind of been around, but then they get really, really popular off the platform, and then suddenly they become even more popular on the platform. So they kind of talk to each other. It’s a bit of a cycle, so that’s always exciting to see.

Swooon: And what would you say marked that shift for Wattpad in the adaptation space? Would you say it was Anna Todd’s After series?

Ferreri: Yeah, I think so. I mean, After was just such a phenomenon in its own right. It was very much like a lightning in a bottle moment where One Direction was doing its thing, and then fanfiction was doing its thing, and then Wattpad was kind of new and fresh, and then suddenly all those things converged into one space. And then After was born. So I think it was a really cool moment that got a lot of people thinking, like, “Oh, there is something very exciting about listening to fans, leaning into fandom, leaning into community, and respecting it and elevating it enough to make it something even bigger.”

Swooon: Are there any Wattpad originals that you had a feeling would blow up before they did?

Ferreri: I can’t take credit fully because it really does genuinely take a village in general. The writer puts so much energy into their stuff, and then suddenly, someone would find it, and then you send it to someone else. There’s such a trail that leads to something being a phenomenon or being hit. But there were so many of our stories that came from our Watty Awards, or that we picked out of a curation, just looking at some fun stories. The most recent one, I would say, is Kissing is the Easy Part. It was a Watty winner, and I remember talking about it years and years ago, and being like, guys. It’s like Clueless. It’s so fun. And usually, you get the nerdy girl and like the jock guy, but in this sense, you get the nerdy guy and the popular girl. That was probably when I started, like 2015, and now, finally, in 2026, it’s a movie, and so it’s exciting to see that come. That appetite, those stories, they never expire. They’re never going to become irrelevant. There’s always the entertainment cycles that will come in and out, and then you just hope to catch them.

Swooon: And are there any upcoming adaptations that you’re particularly excited about?

Ferreri: Jessica Cunsolo, who was on my panel, her saga, She’s With Me. It just has so many millions of reads on the platform, but it’s been around since the heyday OG days. That one is in development right now for a film, so I’m really excited to see what that one will look like. It’s a really fun pipeline that we get to see. It takes a long time because Hollywood is slow, but it’s always exciting to see it come to fruition.

Swooon: When you’re picking out what could be an adaptation, is there any metric or number that you search for, or is it more of an impulse?

Ferreri: Yeah, not me. I like to be open-minded about it, because I know that obviously it’s really nice and exciting to find a viral hit. Something as big as After is sometimes like an undeniable thing. But I think that also closes the door in some cases, and the beauty about Wattpad is that the stories are whatever people want to write. They’re authentically theirs. They don’t follow a formula or a pattern that the traditional industries are going to necessarily ask for. So I find that my job is often in translating the potential of a story, not just focusing on what has the potential because it’s so big or because of one specific metric. You have to kind of look at a mix of everything.

It’s like, what are the trends externally? What’s on Netflix or Amazon right now? What is BookTok saying? What are the things that are happening in pop culture, and then what are the things that we’re not seeing anywhere? Also, that’s the flip side of it, where it’s not just about chasing trends. In fact, it’s not about chasing trends at all for us. It’s more like, let’s just let people be creatively themselves and then see what happens.

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Swooon: It could make the trend happen instead of the other way around.

Ferreri: Yeah. And I do look for an engaged audience. I think that’s important. You want to see people resonating with something. But that doesn’t have to mean millions of comments. That can mean dozens of comments and just being like, “Oh, I finished this in a day.” Or, like, “I love it,” or “I want to read your next book,” or whatever. Those are all really valid signals, just as much as a read count is. I work with the traditional industry, like publishing and entertainment, but I don’t want to only follow their lead, and we want to look at the audience too, and just see, like, “OK, what are you guys interested in? What are you excited about?”

Swooon: How many Wattpad stories do you typically read every day?

Ferreri: I mean, it’s hard. I have a full team also. Everyone’s scouting. Incredible content people. We also have a lot of analytics to look at. We have some tools at our disposal, which is awesome. So we don’t have to do it manually. But I always like to have a handful on the go just to see what’s happening. And one of the most exciting things is, this summer our Watty Awards open up, so I like to leave a little bit of space so that I can read any of the submissions. It’s kind of exciting to see the new stuff that’s popping up. So, it’s a lot, but it could be more. It could always be more. It’s just, how many hours of the day?

Swooon: We can relate to that.

Ferreri: Sometimes I’m like, “I want to write on Wattpad.” I wrote years ago, when I first started on there, I was like, “You know what? I’m gonna write a story. I’ve never done it. I’m going to see what the fuss is about.” I had the most fun I’ve ever had. I wrote on my phone serially, like, on my way to work, on the way home. I didn’t plan it. I just had fun with it. And it was just like, “I see it.” I saw one comment, I had a dopamine hit, and then I’m like, “Oh, I can totally see why people love this so much and keep coming back here.”