Wattpad Technology looks for ways to boost revenue as Amazon joins competition

TORONTO: Wattpad Technology Inc. has become the world’s biggest online story-sharing community, with 40 million people a month reading and writing stories about lampdwelling genies, vampire wives and dreamy trysts with boy bands. Now the Toronto startup, backed by investors including OMERS Ventures, is looking for ways to boost revenue as Amazon.com Inc. fires up a similar service.

"Forty million is a pretty sizable active user base," Brian Blau, a San Francisco-based social media analyst at Gartner Inc., said by phone. "It’s getting to be big enough, if the company has investors they’re going to be pushing them to figure out how to monetize." Wattpad has been sidestepping publishers since 2006, offering readers free content and writers a way to connect with audiences, 85 percent of whom are on smartphones or tablets.

Seattle-based Amazon is now testing its application WriteOn while other companies offer self-publishing, such as Apple Inc. with its iBooks Authors platform.