Book Publishing Startups in the U.S. 2022

Why Beth Reekles Is The Wattpad Success Story Behind Netflix Hit 'The Kissing Booth'

Author Beth Reekles, with copies of her novel.

Beth Reekles

When Netflix chief content officer Ted Sarandos discussed the Netflix Original teen romantic comedy The Kissing Booth in a recent interview, he used two seemingly contradictory phrases, calling the film both "one of the most-watched movies in the country, and maybe in the world" and "This is a movie that I bet you'd never heard of until I just mentioned it to you."

Sarandos' point was that, thanks to the internet, films and the books that inspire them can find new paths to audiences that mainstream gatekeepers might never have offered. The Kissing Booth, based on a novel first published by then-15-year-old author Beth Reekles in a free, serialized format on the social publishing site Wattpad, is a perfect example. 

Community and anonymity kept Beth on Wattpad at first. "A friend told me about a book she was reading and it sounded so great I wanted to read it as well — which was when she told me it was on Wattpad," Beth says when asked what led her to first join the service. "I loved the feeling of community on the site, and when I began to share, I liked the anonymity of it because I was so self-conscious about my writing and hadn't shared it with anyone before."

The Kissing Booth became popular as Beth was writing it, but continued gaining traction after she'd finished it. One factor leading to her success? Engaging closely with her audience. "I think it helped that while I was posting, I tried to interact with readers as much as possible, through author notes at the start and end of each chapter as well as sending responses to some individual messages. I used Twitter and a Tumblr blog to promote the book and talk to readers, too, and I also tried to upload regularly — once every few days — so that people didn't lose interest in the book."

Thanks to her online success, Beth was able to entirely circumvent the typical path towards tracking down a publishing house: Instead, the editor came directly to her. "I was approached directly by an editor at Random House (now Penguin Random House) through a private message on Wattpad" Beth says. "She told me that they were interested in publishing The Kissing Booth and gave me her email address to get in touch. We soon after set up a call and then I met with them in their London office, where they offered me a three-book deal!"

Beth first sold her film adaptation rights to UK-based production company Komixx in 2013. The adaptation brought Vince Marcello on to write the script and direct the movie.

"I was able to have a great chat to Vince before he wrote the script, and gave some feedback on the first draft of the script - which I loved!" Beth explains. "I wasn't involved in casting, but did get to go out to set for a week during filming."

Beth's success lies in the passion that comes from writing the books she herself would want to read: "That's what I did with The Kissing Booth and what I continue to do. I find it makes me so much more passionate and motivated when I'm writing," she says, along with a second piece of advice for young authors, "I'd also recommend sharing your work on a platform like Wattpad: the community is so supportive and it's a huge boost to see people reading and enjoying your work - even if it's only three or four."

By writing the teen romance that she wanted to read, Beth was able to tap into an underserved audience, and thanks to the Wattpad platform's delivery system, she was able to reach that audience. Given that Netflix execs are bragging about it, the film version appears to now be enjoying that same popularity.

'Red, White & Royal Blue': Wattpad Is Taking Over Hollywood

"Red, White & Royal Blue" is enjoyable but it falls into many of the pitfalls of the Wattpad genre.

Nicholas Galitzine and Taylor Zakhar Perez in "Red, White & Royal Blue" (Courtesy of Amazon Studios)

The much anticipated queer romance "Red, White & Royal Blue," based on the Casey McQuinton novel was released early this August with surprisingly decent reviews.

To Bone or Not to Bone

The film directed by freshman director Matthew Lopez, follows Alex who is the son of the United States president. Alex portrayed by Taylor Zakhar Perez and Henry, the Prince of England, is played by Nicholas Galitzine. Enemies for some non-convincing reason, the two are forced together after a mishap on their part threatens the relationship between the U.S. And the United Kingdom. This show proves to be in the vein of Wattpad, an online platform that allows users to read and publish original stories. So of course, it's not enough to simply explore the romance and interpersonal relationship between two people. Instead, the fate of the entire world absolutely must rely on whether or not two people bone. And of course, they do.

Should We Gatekeep Writing Literature From Horny People?

It's hard to describe this movie without repeatedly bringing up Wattpad and the impact fan fiction has had on mainstream media. We all know about the 9/11 to My Chemical Romance to "Twilight" to "Fifty Shades of Grey" pipeline. Every year another straight-to-streaming, steamy romance pops out of the woodwork and infiltrates everyone's social media feeds. "The Kissing Booth," "He's All That," "After" and "The Summer I Turned Pretty." The list goes on and on. Each addition becomes tackier and more juvenile while simultaneously upping the smut. Who exactly is the target audience if the movie is both too poorly made to engage most adults and far too sexual to be directed at children?

"Red, White & Royal Blue" is perfectly enjoyable, but it falls into many of the pitfalls of the Wattpad genre. The dialogue was subpar, with Marvel language, "He's right behind me isn't he?" lines that made me cringe. Characters say such profound and believable statements as "I will no longer be the prince of shame and of secrets" and "When we're apart your body comes back to me in my dreams." The last line might have been beautiful if it weren't so incredibly out of place. Not even five minutes into the plot Perez, seemingly out of nowhere delivers the incredible line, "Did your parents send you to snobbery school, or does looking down on people just come naturally to you?" Every "Good comebacks for 8th grade bullies" post I saw in 2013 flashed before my eyes as if before my death.

The acting in the movie is also not Oscar-worthy. Perez in particular, seemed straight out of a TikTok acting challenge as he fumbled about screen and enunciated the living hell out of every word he could. Dramatic scenes were resolved almost immediately and the dialogue was so awkward even Uma Thurman, who played Alex's mom, couldn't keep the movie on track.

Hillary Clinton's Hollywood Debut

Perhaps the most awkward thing about the movie was the surface-level politics that permeated the plot. The discussion of LGBTQ+ rights was less nuanced than many other films we've had in the past few years, but it was entirely acceptable. It was much more the times the film would try to discuss classism or international relations that it ended up feeling like Hilary Clinton-style U.S. Propaganda.

It feels almost petty to critique a film so obviously for adolescents. It is rated R, but even that feels like a stretch. This is the type of movie I would encourage anyone with any real responsibilities to spend their time watching. Unless they have a major thing for Prince Harry.

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'It's Like Comfort Eating': Why Readers Are Hungry For Colleen Hoover

The first Colleen Hoover book I read was It Ends With Us, and when I opened it on the tube, I saw that the woman next to me was reading It Starts With Us. This is not likely to happen with many authors; but as of last year, Hoover was the bestselling novelist in the US, occupying the top six places on the New York Times bestseller list. "To even compare her to other successful authors," wrote Alexandra Alter of that newspaper, "fails to capture the size and loyalty of her audience." In the UK, her dominance is somewhat challenged by the remarkable sales of Richard Osman, who had three books in four of the Sunday Times top spots in 2022, but she was still named by that paper as "undoubtedly the biggest author of the year".

A classic Hoover novel circles round the imperatives of romantic love with distinctively 21st-century impediments, two twentysomethings kept apart not by their parents or society or class or money, but by their own emotional affectlessness. They're too busy, or too damaged, or too empty or numb for love; they just want no-strings sex. The strings then duly appear and catch them in a formulaic but solid cat's cradle.

Hoover has said in the past that she defies literary genre, and her legion of fans sometimes describe her as a genre in her own right, but she is often, for brevity, called a young adult (YA) author. "There was always young adult romance, teenagers in high school, then it went to contemporary romance, stories about older twentysomethings, then indie ushered in college-age romance, what we now call 'new adult'," says Maryse Black, a seasoned book blogger credited with first discovering Hoover in 2012. Black uses "indie" to mean anything outside traditional publishing, and is usually referring to authors who at least started out self-publishing, as Hoover did.

Whatever you call Hoover, she is not only read by the young. "The big reveal of YA lists," says Hannah Griffiths, former publisher and now a book scout for TV, "is that the average age of the reader is 35. The books are young emotionally, but they're not being read by young people. It's like comfort eating."

She self-published her debut novel because her mum had a Kindle and Hoover wanted something to show her

The success of Colleen Hoover isn't a story about an author who can't get published and through sheer self-belief builds an audience, forcing the industry gatekeepers to listen. She has always been very clear on her legend: she never tried to get a publishing deal, and is very lo-fi and hands-off. She self-published her debut, Slammed, because her mum had just got a Kindle and she wanted to have something to show her. That was late 2011, and within a couple of months she had a sequel, Point of Retreat, uploaded to Wattpad, the self-publishing platform. Wattpad is huge for fanfic – self-published fiction at any length, written by fans of an idol: a musician or actor, or a character from a TV show or video game or other book. Fanfic is idiosyncratic and, as often as not, erotic, for obvious reasons.

One YA reader, 14-year-old Ash Taylor, tells me Hoover's is "writing for people who don't like reading". Then they amend that: "It's like fanfic whose inspiration is the novel itself." Hoover writes to the novelistic form, but isn't trying to be it. She's deft, she's witty, her plots propel and her characters stand up on their own; if she wanted her books to read more like regular, commercial fiction, she would have no problem writing them like that. That's just not the effect she's going for.

There's a parlour game I remember from being really small: unfortunately, I fell out of a plane; fortunately, I had a parachute; unfortunately, it had a hole in it etc. Potboiler fiction has always been an exercise in taking that "Oh no! Thank God!" emotional journey and complicating and finessing it. But what if you don't complicate and finesse it? What if it's absolutely bare bones: "Oh no, your dad is dead"; "Thank God, because he was violent and abusive"; "Oh no, your mum is sad"; "Thank God, now she's happy you have a boyfriend"; "Oh no, your boyfriend is violent and abusive" (OK, I have now ruined It Ends With Us, but don't sweat it, there are tons of Colleen Hoovers). What if you can see joins, and the lurch is part of the enjoyment?

Black was a guerrilla online reviewer when she started writing about Hoover. "I would write my reviews as if I were talking to a friend. It was, 'Oh my God, you've got to read this and I'll tell you why.'" That was 2012. TikTok didn't exist. Black had been reviewing since 2009, while running a pet supplies business. "I was only reading traditionally published books when I first started," she says. Mostly paranormal fantasy fiction, "and it was starting to seem a little formulaic. With fan fiction, these authors weren't trying to get the books published, they were just writing from the heart."

After Black's reviews, the speed of Hoover's ascent was remarkable. By August 2012, Slammed and Point of Retreat were eighth and 18th on the New York Times bestseller list, and her third novel, Hopeless, was the first self-published book ever to get to No 1, in January 2013. She had quit her job as a social worker to concentrate on writing, and was producing three novels a year. Simon & Schuster picked her up based on sales, which, Griffiths says, is "not an unusual journey; the last 20 years are full of people who self-published on Kindle and then a publisher noticed and brought them across".

Then TikTok got involved; or BookTok, the video-sharing platform's most wholesome story that also happens to be true. A recent survey found that 59% of 16 to 25-year-olds said BookTok helped them discover a passion for reading. Anyone with a teenager will recognise what Griffiths says: "When my daughter, who is allergic to books, came down and said, 'Can you buy this book', I thought, 'What on earth is happening?'"

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The BookTok format is short and sweet: a user will appear and speak from the heart about a book they love or hate, for 15 seconds, a minute, three minutes or 10 minutes. "Content on TikTok tends to be more authentic," says Edel Flood, head of lifestyle and education for TikTok UK. "You don't need any video editing experience or a big following. It's more like getting a book recommendation from a friend." Authenticity is a huge preoccupation on the platform – a constant dialogue between readers about who is most authentically reflecting their experience, and interrogation of the authors, how authentic they were when they started out, and whether they've retained their authenticity in the teeth of their own success.

BookTok tore a hole through what publishers knew about surefire success. "What's new and current, the books you 'should' read, aren't always the titles that do well," says Flood. The recent success of Madeline Miller's Song of Achilles is the classic example (it came out in 2011 – BookTok has only really taken off in the past 18 months). "Publishers were waking up going, 'Why is this out of stock in the warehouse? Jesus Christ, it's a BookTok phenomenon,'" Griffiths says. "It's sold 50,000 and that is pure profit, because you've covered all the costs years before. Weird little imprints had these zombie books coming back to life. No one could control it."

The Bookseller recently released its UK figures for the first half of 2023, and fiction is still winning big from BookTok, earning £215m, its best results in 15 years. It is astonishing to consider that Hoover accounts for £6.2m of that. "Post-pandemic, there are certain themes and types of genre that have really excelled," says Sophie Lambert, managing director at the literary agency C&W. "Romance, sci-fi, fantasy." A portmanteau, romantasy, is huge. "People want escape and hope and wonder and love." Hoover is perhaps the ultimate experiment in giving the people exactly what they want. It's pointless, in a way, to ask whether she's any good. The crowd has already decided.

This article was amended on 21 August 2023. An earlier version described Wattpad as "Amazon's self-publishing platform". Wattpad is a subsidiary of Webtoon Entertainment, which is owned by the Naver conglomerate; Amazon's self-publishing platform is called Kindle Direct Publishing.

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