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Books and Social Media
Social media and digital technologies are transforming what and how we read. Books and Social Media considers the way in which readers and writers come together in digital communities to discover and create new works of fiction. This new way of engaging with fiction stretches the boundaries of what has been considered a book in the past by moving beyond the physical or even digitally bound object to the consideration of content, containers, and the ability to share. Using empirical data and up-to-date research methods, Miriam Johnson introduces the ways in which digitally social platforms give rise to a new type of citizen author who chooses to sidestep the industry’s gatekeepers and share their works directly with interested readers on social platforms. Gender and genre, especially, play a key role in developing the communities in which these authors write. The use of surveys, interviews, and data mining brings to the fore issues of gender, genre, community, and power, which highlight the push and pull between these writers and the industry. Questioning what we always thought we knew about what makes a book and traditional publishing channels, this book will be of interest to anyone studying or researching publishing, book history, print cultures, and digital and contemporary literatures.
164 pages, Paperback
Published July 30, 2021
3 people want to read
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February 8, 2025
In some words, "pollyannish, cynical, discordant."
In a phrase, "techno-optimism and unerring trust in free markets."
And in a full review?
Books and Social Media studies how the age of the internet has redefined readership, authorship, and books themselves. Miriam J. Johnson investigates the new forms that fiction and poetry have taken across social media, laying out the intricacies of the social expectations and allowances within these spaces, arguing that books have become a socially constructed object due to the global-villageization of the world, thanks to the web. It promises a salient exploration of brave "citizen authors" sidestepping industry gatekeepers to get their work directly in the hands of their readers.
A big problem? Books and Social Media can't decide whether it likes the publishing industry or not. Or let me rephrase that---Books and Social Media is simultaneous an indictment of and a shill for the publishing industry.
Let's start with the indictment. Throughout the book, Johnson describes the publishing industry as elitist, gatekeep-y, and inaccessible to most writers---all very true claims---but backs them up with false statements and bad examples. For instance, she uses social media's skew towards genre fiction (especially sci-fi) and fanfiction to show how the publishing industry gatekeepers have blocked these voices in the past:
The problem with that? Publishing invented genre, including sci-fi, because the publishing industry's primary goal is to make money---and its secondary goal is to publish good books. Genre works and series are safe bets in publishing. They're money-makers. At the end of the day, "genre" is a marketing ploy---and a highly valuable one---so saying that publishing has "marginalized" sci-fi is like saying an oil baron's too interested in oil to be interested in money. Actually, it's more like saying an oil baron's too interested in dirt to be interested in oil---because the bogeyman of the publishing industry is... lit fic. Notoriously profitable. Sure, you can get away with your claims of "snobbish" for lit fic, but arguing that publishing houses center on lit fic is just incorrect. Here is just one article of about a billion you can find that show that lit fic is not profitable: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201.... If publishing houses have to make money, and literary fiction (not to mention poetry, which also gets singled out as the darling of the gatekeepers) doesn't make money, then what are they publishing? Genre fiction.
I also hope I don't have to explain why the industry can't publish fanfiction---like, unadulterated fanfiction, no name swaps, not Fifty Shades of Gray. This isn't a sign of gatekeeping by the industry. It's a sign of copyright law.
The quote above and the analysis throughout also misses the fact that notoriously fanfiction websites like Wattpad are dominated by young people---who usually aren't going to be the ones writing lit fic. It's not some class revolution against the gatekeeping industry, and most adult writers putting their stuff out online leap at the opportunity to get it published by a house, if given the chance.
Publishing is elitist and the elitism runs deeper than "gatekeepers" who turn up their snobbish noses at affronts to the literary world of Nabokov, Woolf, Hemingway, et al. (I know, what a list.) In the modern era of publishing, houses have become as lean as possible to fatten their bottom lines, leading to pitiful starting wages, averaging around $50,000 per year in New York, making the hiring process bias towards people who have alternate modes of income---usually from family members who can support them in some way. Further, even as publishing begins to pick up more works by people of color, the industry has been historically white, a trend that continues to be true to this day. The industry is gatekeeping---but not in the way that Johnson imagines. Between that and the odd dichotomy she sets up between writers on social media (like Rupi Kaur, ""who just want their work to be read"") and writers who work through the industry (any published author, who, juxtaposed against the social media author, I guess just wants money?? lmao), the book seems truly blind to the reality of its subject---or at least its language is sloppy and its analysis crosses wires too frequently to be of much value.
It's also odd to go on and on about how publishing is dominated by gatekeeping editors and then dedicate an entire chapter explaining how those publishers can scrape data from Twitter, Instagram, and Wattpad to get a sense of market desires and find work to pluck like a diamond from the rough. (yes, this happens.---chapter three, ironically titled "The Creative Possibilities of the Book," gives publishers a roadmap for data-scraping and extolls the potentialities of AI fiction. Another "democratizing" process, I'm sure) It's like---"rah to the citizen author! Rah to tearing down hurdles to good fiction! Rah, fight the good fight, etc., but oh, right, Penguin Random House, here's how you can set up an algorithm to gather data on hundreds of thousands of unknowing users on these websites where art can finally be free :)" Not only can the claims in this book amount to misinformation, but Johnson seems more than eager to sell out her false utopian vision of places like fanfiction.net and Wattpad to the industry. Which, you know, sort of undercuts the whole "the people's fiction!" flavor to the language in this book.
So, it should come as no surprise that Johnson owns and operates an AI startup for audiobooks---"for personal use mostly, but hey publishers if you want to hit me up about using this for your work, pls do ;) btw this totally isn't meant to replace real people narrating audiobooks"
At best, Books and Social Media adds nothing to the conversation but poor analysis, and at worst, it reads like disingenuous apologism for the worst parts of the digital age, protected under the aegis of a class movement. No need to read this one---try Social Reading Cultures on BookTube, Bookstagram, and BookTok instead.
I usually don't like leaving hugely negative reviews for books with very few reviews and try to skew them somewhat generously, so this was a 2 star for a while---but I just can't. I can't honestly rate this anything above
1/5 stars
PS: books have always been social and socially constructed k thnx bye
In a phrase, "techno-optimism and unerring trust in free markets."
And in a full review?
Books and Social Media studies how the age of the internet has redefined readership, authorship, and books themselves. Miriam J. Johnson investigates the new forms that fiction and poetry have taken across social media, laying out the intricacies of the social expectations and allowances within these spaces, arguing that books have become a socially constructed object due to the global-villageization of the world, thanks to the web. It promises a salient exploration of brave "citizen authors" sidestepping industry gatekeepers to get their work directly in the hands of their readers.
A big problem? Books and Social Media can't decide whether it likes the publishing industry or not. Or let me rephrase that---Books and Social Media is simultaneous an indictment of and a shill for the publishing industry.
Let's start with the indictment. Throughout the book, Johnson describes the publishing industry as elitist, gatekeep-y, and inaccessible to most writers---all very true claims---but backs them up with false statements and bad examples. For instance, she uses social media's skew towards genre fiction (especially sci-fi) and fanfiction to show how the publishing industry gatekeepers have blocked these voices in the past:
As such, this highlights the rise in certain types of fictions that have traditionally been marginalised by the gatekeepers of the publishing industry. To address the questions around which genres do not come into being in these new communities, the focus here remains on science and fan fictions, both of which have found a niche market online in social spaces and proliferate in the absence of more ‘literary’ fiction. This invisibility of being outside the gates of the industry allows these two genres to be more malleable and wide-reaching, leading to a large variety of texts that can be included in the fuzzy set of the genres and potentially pulled back into the publishing hierarchy. (p. 92)
The problem with that? Publishing invented genre, including sci-fi, because the publishing industry's primary goal is to make money---and its secondary goal is to publish good books. Genre works and series are safe bets in publishing. They're money-makers. At the end of the day, "genre" is a marketing ploy---and a highly valuable one---so saying that publishing has "marginalized" sci-fi is like saying an oil baron's too interested in oil to be interested in money. Actually, it's more like saying an oil baron's too interested in dirt to be interested in oil---because the bogeyman of the publishing industry is... lit fic. Notoriously profitable. Sure, you can get away with your claims of "snobbish" for lit fic, but arguing that publishing houses center on lit fic is just incorrect. Here is just one article of about a billion you can find that show that lit fic is not profitable: https://www.theguardian.com/books/201.... If publishing houses have to make money, and literary fiction (not to mention poetry, which also gets singled out as the darling of the gatekeepers) doesn't make money, then what are they publishing? Genre fiction.
I also hope I don't have to explain why the industry can't publish fanfiction---like, unadulterated fanfiction, no name swaps, not Fifty Shades of Gray. This isn't a sign of gatekeeping by the industry. It's a sign of copyright law.
The quote above and the analysis throughout also misses the fact that notoriously fanfiction websites like Wattpad are dominated by young people---who usually aren't going to be the ones writing lit fic. It's not some class revolution against the gatekeeping industry, and most adult writers putting their stuff out online leap at the opportunity to get it published by a house, if given the chance.
Publishing is elitist and the elitism runs deeper than "gatekeepers" who turn up their snobbish noses at affronts to the literary world of Nabokov, Woolf, Hemingway, et al. (I know, what a list.) In the modern era of publishing, houses have become as lean as possible to fatten their bottom lines, leading to pitiful starting wages, averaging around $50,000 per year in New York, making the hiring process bias towards people who have alternate modes of income---usually from family members who can support them in some way. Further, even as publishing begins to pick up more works by people of color, the industry has been historically white, a trend that continues to be true to this day. The industry is gatekeeping---but not in the way that Johnson imagines. Between that and the odd dichotomy she sets up between writers on social media (like Rupi Kaur, ""who just want their work to be read"") and writers who work through the industry (any published author, who, juxtaposed against the social media author, I guess just wants money?? lmao), the book seems truly blind to the reality of its subject---or at least its language is sloppy and its analysis crosses wires too frequently to be of much value.
It's also odd to go on and on about how publishing is dominated by gatekeeping editors and then dedicate an entire chapter explaining how those publishers can scrape data from Twitter, Instagram, and Wattpad to get a sense of market desires and find work to pluck like a diamond from the rough. (yes, this happens.---chapter three, ironically titled "The Creative Possibilities of the Book," gives publishers a roadmap for data-scraping and extolls the potentialities of AI fiction. Another "democratizing" process, I'm sure) It's like---"rah to the citizen author! Rah to tearing down hurdles to good fiction! Rah, fight the good fight, etc., but oh, right, Penguin Random House, here's how you can set up an algorithm to gather data on hundreds of thousands of unknowing users on these websites where art can finally be free :)" Not only can the claims in this book amount to misinformation, but Johnson seems more than eager to sell out her false utopian vision of places like fanfiction.net and Wattpad to the industry. Which, you know, sort of undercuts the whole "the people's fiction!" flavor to the language in this book.
So, it should come as no surprise that Johnson owns and operates an AI startup for audiobooks---"for personal use mostly, but hey publishers if you want to hit me up about using this for your work, pls do ;) btw this totally isn't meant to replace real people narrating audiobooks"
At best, Books and Social Media adds nothing to the conversation but poor analysis, and at worst, it reads like disingenuous apologism for the worst parts of the digital age, protected under the aegis of a class movement. No need to read this one---try Social Reading Cultures on BookTube, Bookstagram, and BookTok instead.
I usually don't like leaving hugely negative reviews for books with very few reviews and try to skew them somewhat generously, so this was a 2 star for a while---but I just can't. I can't honestly rate this anything above
1/5 stars
PS: books have always been social and socially constructed k thnx bye
Displaying 1 of 1 review