From the Wattpad blog:
It’s not everyday we get to make an announcement like this. It doesn’t really get much bigger, but today we’re incredibly excited to let everyone know that our fellow Canadian, the esteemed novelist and poet Margaret Atwood has joined Wattpad.
You can find her profile here – http://www.wattpad.com/MargaretAtwood. Reach out and say hi, read her work, or share your own!
Remember when Oprah joined Twitter? That’s what it’s like for us to have Margaret on board. She’s a legit legend: a prolific and award-winning author of over 50 books, a technologist, an entrepreneur, and an inventor who spends her spare time provocatively exploring the future of publishing, recently launching a campaign on the crowdfunding platform Indiegogo for her own start-up, Fanado.
Like us, Margaret is deeply interested in the evolving nature of reading and writing online. She is at the forefront of the major shift happening right now in the publishing industry and realizes that authors need to be aware of the brave new world of digital opportunities that are out there.
It’s an adventure all around! As part of her deep dive into digital publishing, Margaret is going to be sharing work on Wattpad. Starting today Margaret is posting a collection of poems called “Thriller Suite” and she wants to hear from you.
We’re also happy to announce that she will be the final judge in our upcoming poetry contest, which will get underway in July. Please keep an eye out for that.
In the meantime, Margaret told us she looks forward to exploring how our community connects people to reading and writing, and how it gives writers confidence through direct feedback. She’s also interested to connect with an entirely new audience, many who will be reading her poems directly on their phones!
Margaret’s been a great supporter of ours for awhile now; we love that she “gets us” and is always helping to spread the word.
I admire Atwood’s writing, but I don’t see what her presence on Wattpad is going to do to improve a badly designed site that almost goes out of its way to defeat any sense of community.
Honestly, I hope she eventually realizes that she’s been recruited to give the place a boost, as if her golden glow will rub off.
I’m distracted from this great news by two things: 1) the cut-and-paste formatting from the source page that doesn’t match Teleread’s, and 2) The misspelling of Atwood’s name in the headline! Please fix…