Okay, so I know I already posted a lil’ Wattpad rant pretty recently… but, I’ve got another one on the way today.

Wattpad now has a ‘premium’ feature, and I just found out about it a day or two ago… because it is BRAND NEW.

The new Wattpad premium feature is just what you’re probably thinking it is. Taken straight from the site…

“It’s the same Wattpad you love, with none of the ads. When you subscribe, you’ll gain instant access to a new Wattpad theme and unlock our ad-free platform experience.”

So, that’s exactly what you get- exemption from ads and some ‘new Wattpad theme’ of which I can’t even find any examples of to see how great it must be.

Now, here’s our premium pricing options…

It’s 5.99 (USD) monthly, or a discounted 59.99 annually.

Now, I guess that’s a reasonable price for such a feature on both the app and website… but, since I’m such a penny pincher myself, I would never shell our sixty bucks just to take down the ads on a website, even if I do use it daily or near-daily.

And, besides that, I actually can remember a time when Wattpad was both ad-free and gratis-free. I mean, sure, there’s always been some sidebar ads and such on the website itself… but it’s only fairly recently that they’ve started packing advertisements into our stories and online books themselves. And that part of the equation is actually what’s irritating me right now.

(Though they claim they’ve received requests for a subscription-based version of the site for ‘years’… I don’t think it’s become necessary until very recently.)

So… okay, I get that Wattpad needs to display ads to physically make money and keep the site domain running, and I understand that that may mean sneaking some in-between the chapters of everyone’s books. I’m okay with that. What I’m not actually okay with are the ads I’ve encountered recently (on the app) that are video-based, almost youtube-like commercials. Like, the ones that pop up before you can swipe/scroll to the next chapter and freeze your screen for 10 seconds, preventing you from skipping it and reading on.

And, what’s most annoying, is when this happens while I’m trying to flip through my own stories.

So, I’m just kind of wondering… if money hasn’t seemed to be a problem for the site for so many years (and, trust me, I’ve been a Wattpad user for quite some time now), then why the sudden changes?

I really want to stay loyal to Wattpad, I really do- it’s where my true writer’s roots rest. But, if the site is now going to go down the monetization route… well, I’m just still not quite sure how I feel about it.

Let me know if any of you have given some thought to the new Wattpad feature in the comments- I want to know some opinions of others!

-iKari