All aspiring and advanced writers who use Wattpad for their work can have their creations printed with the new division, Wattpad Books. The first six titles will see the world at the end of the year and will be dedicated to young adult.

A key feature of the new publishing agency is that books will be chosen for print primarily by their popularity on the internet. Machine-learning technology Story DNA will enable the system to select the most-read poems, articles, short stories, novels and more. Hundreds of millions of stories will be analysed to find the most commercially successful ones.

But according to CEO and co-founder Allen Lau, the selection of works will not be made solely on the basis of neural network data. The final decision will be left to professional editors.