I never heard of Wattpad before coming across a TechCrunch article announcing DC Comics‘ imprint Vertigo joining the service. The “social reading app” is a community where writers can share their stories for free, as well as have notes/diaries where they can talk about writing in general.

It’s a niche community that boasts 100 million stories, 40 million people signed up, and 11 billion minutes spent on the site every month (that’d be 275 minutes per account a month, or about 9 minutes a day).

Wattpad is a place to discover and share stories: a social platform that connects people through words. It is a community that spans borders, interests, languages. With Wattpad, anyone can read or write on any device: phone, tablet, or computer.

Vertigo won’t be releasing free stories, instead they are using it as a platform to push specific creators including Lauren Beukes and Dale Halvorsen, the team behind the upcoming title Survivor’s Club, and down the road, Gail Simone and Holly Black.

With 520,000 fans of Wattpad in the United States according to Facebook, the community is heavily female with an impressive 84.61% of those fans female. Looks like DC and Vertigo has an audience in mind for some of their launches and they’re going after them.

(via TechCrunch)