David Lee is leading Wattpad, the digital fiction-publishing platform, at a time of momentous change. It’s been reckoning with the rise of writing generated by artificial intelligence, shifts in fan-fiction and its own conglomeration.
In 2021, the Toronto-founded business was acquired by the Korean company Naver, and in 2024 it went public as part of Naver’s comic-publishing division Webtoon. Lee joined Webtoon as its chief financial officer in 2023, becoming Wattpad’s president, too, this past April. Combined, Wattpad and Webtoon have about 145 million monthly active users around the world who consume content by more than 27 million story and comic creators, according to securities filings. By the end of last year, Wattpad’s creators had published more than 67 million web novels on the platform.
Wattpad president David Lee. 'We don’t think it’s good business to try to replace the best storytellers in the world, which are human storytellers,' Mr. Lee says.Wattpad/Supplied
It’s a lot to wrangle, especially in the age of AI, when anyone can ask software to write their stories for them. Even with the complications of that ever-expanding technology, though, Lee hopes Wattpad will remain a bastion of human creation. Among those creations so far: Anna Todd’s Harry Styles-inspired After; Beth Reekles’s The Kissing Booth; and Ali Novak’s My Life with the Walter Boys. All of them began on Wattpad and were later published as physical books, expanded into series and adapted for film or TV.
Just months before the 20th anniversary of Wattpad’s founding, Lee spoke with The Globe and Mail backstage at the Web Summit conference in Vancouver after discussing fandoms onstage.
Have you noticed any shifts in recent years in how much fan fiction is written versus original intellectual property?
If someone is struggling to write their original story, they can join a community of fans on Wattpad and write about something that already exists. Maybe it’s Harry Styles, or BTS or Harry Potter. They can graduate to becoming an author of truly original work – reigniting that fuel to lower the barriers to entry for more people to become authors. I think we’re in a great position to accelerate that return to its roots.
There’s definitely plenty of strong original IP on the platform, but the heritage of having superfans of fan fiction and original IP continues. I think Wattpad’s strength is the diversity of its content, the access it gives authors who may be a little reluctant to put their pen to paper.
Have there been any moments since you joined Webtoon and Wattpad when you’ve seen an uptick in people creating fan fiction? The example in Canada’s public imagination right now is Heated Rivalry.
It does feel like fan fiction has crossed over into becoming its own form of nearly original mainstream drama, and it goes beyond web novels – it goes into film and adaptations. I think that’s continued to grow momentum. If you look at the category of web novels globally, this is a growth industry. There’s more demand than ever for what Wattpad does. Philosophically, I think we’re needed more than ever, too. This idea of creating access to storytellers who come from diverse backgrounds, serving readers quickly and easily on a digital platform – I think it’s very relevant.
What is Wattpad’s relationship with AI-generated stories?
We are all for the human creator. We believe that human storytellers are the best storytellers. And as a company that started its heritage as a tech company, we know great technology. But there are so many ways to use great technology to protect the human storytelling – to shorten the time it takes for them to write their original story, or to protect them from piracy. We’re using technology to personalize recommendations to readers who want to find the next story. That helps the human storyteller, because it creates access for their next read.
So we don’t think there’s any shortage of great ways to use technology to advocate on behalf of the creator and the consumer. But to be clear, we don’t think it’s good business to try to replace the best storytellers in the world, which are human storytellers. We just want to make sure it’s easier for them to tell their stories.
But there are no particular rules around AI in your company policy, correct?
We are open to people finding their best story, so if that means leveraging technology to give them ideas as creators of original content, we’re all for that. I think that over time every platform that has UGC [user-generated content] is going to have to find ways to give consumer differentiation on the source and origin of that content. I think that’s a fast-moving space. We intend to be on top of the issue, but I think it’s too early for me to opine on the right way.
Do you worry about people flooding the platform with AI-generated stories at the expense of human creators?
The wonderful thing about Wattpad is that readers and the fans are the ones who determine the popularity of what is on the platform. I think people underestimate the high bar that Wattpad readers have – that human consumers have – for great stories. I’m not too concerned that standards will fall. But we’re very vigilant because we know that the space is moving and changing, and we want to make sure we protect our human storytellers.
Do you have any potential policies you’re considering around that?
Any great hyper-growth company has potential policies under consideration all the time. None that I’m ready to disclose at this point.
You spoke at this conference with an executive with Amazon Prime Video – and IP moving to other formats was a major theme of the panel. Do you have any formalized IP partnerships?
I don’t think we’ve announced any formal partnerships yet, but it’s a wonderful thing for new creators to know that there’s a platform that can identify the next hit film on Prime Video or Netflix. Sidelined on Tubi is a great example. I hope you see more of it over time. We have great signal on what resonates with who. We just announced a partnership with Warner Bros. Animation. You see things like in Japan, in 2025, we green-lit 20 animation – anime – projects.
This interview has been edited and condensed.
Editor’s note: Due to an editing error, this article was previously published with an incomplete first paragraph. The full text is now included.