The independent study is finally back! Continuing my research and interviews with professors and authors of all genres, I have produced my second major paper of the semester which focuses specifically on digitization. To get some context for this project, you can go to my first paper or look at the feature of Prof Buzbee which I made at around the same time to see the types of questions I am asking and what research I am trying to accomplish. Once again, the formatting isn't perfect on Wix compared to Google Docs, but it doesn't change too much. Thanks for reading!
Is the world on a one way path towards complete digitization, where there is no turning back and the days of paper have transformed to the screens that increasingly define our everyday activities? In fact, the solution may not be so straightforward or hopeless. In conjunction with the technological developments that have taken place during the Covid-19 pandemic, writers have taken advantage of new websites and social media platforms to expand the scope of their profession. Every year since the beginning of the 21st century, there has been a steady increase in the number of professional and self-published writers while the number of books published on a yearly basis has remained constant. In response to these recent trends, scholars have developed two dominating theories to postulate how the evolving digitization of information, data, media, and publishing will impact authors. The first theory takes a revolutionary approach, stipulating that authors will become virtually independent from publishers while “[l]ibraries, archives, museums, publishers, bookstores, schools, universities, and other institutions that rely on artifacts in physical form will be transformed radically or will cease to exist.” In other words, the waning institutions of the modern world will be completely replaced by digital technologies. The second theory states that we are witnessing an evolutionary change towards an information-oriented society where print and electronic publishing will coexist with one another. Presently, this seems to be the more plausible hypothesis. Lewis Buzbee explains, “It’s not a war. We have this new landscape where electronic books are part of it.” This peaceful coexistence and the impact that digitization— including social media, blogs, web pages, and an online profile— has had on contemporary authors is the driving question behind this paper. First, I will examine the increased publishing opportunities and platforms that have emerged as a result of new digital technologies. Following this overview, I will focus on authors of color, female authors, and LGBTQ authors and analyze the benefits and drawbacks that these communities have experienced as a result of the gradual digital shift. I will then conclude by exploring the newfound reach that the democratic nature of these platforms have offered writers.
Before I begin, it is necessary to differentiate between two concepts that will make frequent appearances in my research: first, the act of getting published, or passing the gatekeepers who control the industry at large, and second, the ability to get a book into a reader’s hands, or the author’s “reach.” The latter involves increasing sales and growing an audience, which is not necessarily guaranteed through publishing. New self-publishing platforms have facilitated both of these components of an author’s job, which has led them to be widely supported by writers. Of 9,200 authors who responded to a 2014 survey regarding the form of publishing which they wished to pursue in light of new digital platforms, “there was more satisfaction with self-publishing, and only 16.1% of this group… said they intended to go back to traditional publishing.” Melissa Clark, a member of the Author’s Guild who has published three novels, found the transition to self-publishing to be extremely helpful for her career. “It used to be something you sort of looked down upon and it was the last resort. And then, because of digital platforms… I saw a lot of my peers and colleagues self-publishing.” Clark says that these less traditional models allowed for a “more interesting and exciting avenue to pursue.” The question that remains, however, is whether these authors who are experiencing the benefits of independent self-publishing will also be able to distribute their books and gain sales to the same degree.
To start, we can look at how digitization has impacted authors in addition to self-publishing services, including submission services and platforms that bypass gatekeepers. After an author has finished producing their work, there are effective ways to circulate it and share it with different publications. Professor Nina L Schuyler of the University of San Francisco says that one of the benefits of digitization that she has experienced is that it is “easier to submit work, for instance. Many journals use "[S]ubmittable" which is an online platform to submit work. So, gone are the days of a hard copy and an envelope with a SASE enclosed.” Indeed, the ability to compress a manuscript into a PDF and send it to individuals or publications with the click of a button has encouraged writers to submit their work more frequently. Authors can now submit to multiple sites much more easily since they use the same platform, which allows their writing to eventually find a home at the publications that value the themes and issues that they raise in their work.
To complement these platforms, Social media outlets have provided authors with the opportunity to expand their reach to more readers. Being able to directly send pictures or excerpts of a certain literary work through websites or social media has helped many writers overcome the barrier of increased processing times that come with online submissions. Craig Santos Perez explains that he “sometimes share[s] poems on Facebook even before it’s published,” which is useful when he is “writing about a political issue that is very timely and [doesn’t] want to have to wait six months for a journal to accept it.” He adds that “it’s an immediate form of making the poem public that [is] useful for certain kinds of poems” and that the pictures can be deleted afterwards to have them reconsidered in the future or if they lose relevance over time. Publishing companies have witnessed similar trends taking place at the industry level. Derek Krissoff explains that while “ebooks are still a small percentage of total sales” at his publishing house, there are “opportunities for online communities” to form around print books which have been “meaningful on the marketing side” since they can help an author’s sales. He cites how “social media, and more recently, virtual book events” have been helpful for “smaller publishers who can't count on traditional forms of marketing like review attention from the New York Times and the like.” A variety of experts in the publishing industry have credited social media as being an essential tool for expanding an author’s reach and building their platform, including Jane Friedman, who worked in multiple publishing houses. Certain key questions that authors should ask themselves as they continue to produce written work, according to her, include: “Where do you or your work regularly appear? How many people see it? How does it spread?” In order to quantify the answers to these questions, she explains that a writer can monitor the “size of [their] email newsletter list, website traffic, [and] blog comments,” all of which are products of recent digitization. K.M. Soehnlein, a professor at the University of San Francisco and the author of The World of Normal Boys, had a literary career which developed alongside the expansion of digital technologies. Despite the modernization that unfolded throughout the 21st century, he explains, “My first book actually sold better than my second or third book [but] the technology was cruder. I wouldn't say that the advent of social media equaled more sales. In some ways, it allows for more reach. I can track more people who are aware of my book.” While social media cannot provide the widespread acclamation of a publication like the New York Times, it can still provide opportunities for authors to reach out to readers in ways that were never possible before.
In addition to the increased reach which comes with submission platforms and social media, review sites have been developed wbich take advantage of the convenient nature of sharing electronic manuscripts to boost authors’ sales. “Its so easy to give somebody a copy of the book. People can go to sites like Eddlewise and NetGalley and get ARCs [Advance Reader Copies] of books,” explains Deesha Philyaw. “I’m also an anonymous book reviewer for Kirkus books… From the review standpoint, you make it easier for people to review books. Authors need those reviews during the pre-order period and it’s a great first stamp of approval for a book to get out there,” Philyaw adds. NetGalley describes itself as a platform which “connects publishers with reviewers, librarians, booksellers, media, and educators who discover new books on NetGalley and recommend them to their audiences,” which allows for increased reach, and in turn, better sales. However, the fact that so many writers can take advantage of these websites means that very few of them actually go on to achieve financial success. This will be discussed in my next paper about financial sustainability.
The democratic nature of digitization and social media outlined above has been particularly helpful for women and writers of color, who previously had difficulty being accepted by the mainstream gatekeepers who had no interest in diversifying their list. But now, Perez explains that social media is the only tool that a writer needs in order to start building an audience in the contemporary world. It “can be our platform and there’s no gatekeeper stopping any writer from building their following and building a huge audience,” he says. “One other interesting way that it’s helped is that it’s been very effective in terms of online shame or guilt. The example could be, let’s say a famous or prestigious journal publishes an issue and there are no writers of color. What will happen is that everyone online will shame them for not being diverse and that would go viral. It has really put pressure on the publishing industry to say: we’re watching you… and if it’s not diverse we’re going to call you out on it,” he adds. Since publications can easily be shared online nowadays, editors constantly have to ensure that they are accounting for writers with different backgrounds and viewpoints to enrich their content and represent the diversity of their readership. Sites such as Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have been especially helpful for writers to expand their base and promote their work. Deesha Philyaw, a finalist for the 2020 National Book Award for Fiction, has benefited enormously from social media. “I got active on Instagram which has been a game changer. The Bookstagram community has been instrumental in the success of my book and spreading the word about my book. They engage like no other that I’ve met… people started posting on Instagram holding my book or having it in stacks,” says Philyaw. Elyssa Friedland, the author of various books including The Floating Feldmans and The Intermission and Love and Miss Communication, agrees with Philyaw. “There’s a huge Bookstagramer culture— people who just get free books and in turn they review them and feature them on their accounts and often they have thousands of followers,” Friedland explains. “It’s cheap and it has a wide range.”
However, it is also important to note that the aggregatory nature of digital technologies has its downsides for minority communities, who no longer have physical spaces dedicated to their work and are sometimes blended in the mass of literature which circulates online. K.M. Soehnlein has witnessed the evolution of LBGTQ fiction and the difficulty that it has faced recently in remaining distinct from works of general fiction. “The rise of Amazon has really crippled bookstores. Among those independent bookstores there was a kind of category of bookstore that was basically called the gay bookstore… you would find one of those in any city that had a notable gay community… The same is true of African American bookstores or Jewish bookstores,” Soehnlein explains. “As LGBTQ content has become mainstreamed… you don’t need to go into a big store like Barnes and Noble and find a bookshelf called LGTBQ fiction— you just go to fiction. In some ways that is good… but it also means that there is a less apparent place if you are looking for that kind of fiction as a reader to find it. The downside is: Where do you find queer books?” Certain books that include gay characters are winning national book awards, for example, but the fact that they are not categorized as LGBTQ fiction in addition to their more broad classification makes it difficult for readers who are interested in specifically gay literature to find the work that interests them. And, as noted by Soehnlein, this is true of other minority communities that are slowly being integrated into the mainstream.
Finally, COVID-19 has accelerated the process of digitization and forced authors to pivot to new techniques that will most likely prosper in the future. Many writers who previously delivered presentations in bookstores have made use of platforms such as Zoom to connect to audiences interested in emerging contemporary literature. Philyaw explains that being able to tour in a pandemic” was a crucial benefit of digitization. “Without Zoom, it wouldn't have happened. It’s been nonstop for me even since before my book came out. I’ve been doing bookstore events [and] I’ve been doing book club events,” Philyaw adds. Max Brooks, author of books World War Z and Zombie Survival Guide, is still waiting to see how this shift has impacted his most recent release, Devolution. “I made my career doing personal appearances… one handshake at a time,” says Brooks. “The jury’s still out. I just had a novel that came out and it was the first time during COVID that I had to do a virtual book tour. It will be very curious to see when the numbers come in, whether it helped or hurt.” While overall book sales have increased throughout the pandemic with more readers turning to literature during a time of confinement, online tours have made it more difficult for authors to interact with their audiences. As readers “hop-scotch from Zoom live-stream interviews to webinar writing workshops to quarantine-themed reading series,” there is a very limited ability for authors to elicit spontaneous responses and reactions to their work in a live bookstore setting. The ongoing and evolving nature of the pandemic will ultimately reveal how authors were impacted by such a clear digital shift. For now it is clear that it has encouraged writers to experiment with new techniques to share their work which will remain in the future.
Historically, authors have had an immense amount of difficulty reaching audiences due to the consolidated nature of the publishing industry. In recent years, however, digital technologies have provided revolutionary outlets for writers to bypass these restrictions and expand their reach. These include social media platforms that come with large follower bases, as well as promotional websites that can easily be shared. Coupled with an increased pressure on publications to include contributors that represent a wide range of perspectives and backgrounds, authors— especially those who identify as female or BIPOC— can now surpass gatekeepers while reaching more readers. In the next paper, I will uncover whether these recent democratic trends are increasing financial sustainability for authors, or whether the cutthroat nature of the industry persists in spite of this digitization.
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