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Graduate School of Humanities Media Studies From Gutenberg to the wisdom of the crowd: A study of the book publishing industry in the era of online participatory culture Radina Teodosieva Teodosieva MA Thesis New Media and Digital Culture University of Amsterdam Date: 24.06.2016 Supervisor: Lonneke van der Velden Amsterdam, 2016 1 Table of contents Introduction ............................................................................................................................................. 4 Research question ............................................................................................................................... 5 Methodological approach ................................................................................................................... 5 Main concepts ..................................................................................................................................... 6 Justification of relevance and feasibility ............................................................................................. 7 Structure of the research .................................................................................................................... 8 Theoretical framework ............................................................................................................................ 9 Characteristics of participatory culture ............................................................................................... 9 History of participatory culture ........................................................................................................... 9 Web 2.0 as the new media environment of participatory culture.................................................... 11 Social reading or the intersection between book publishing and participatory culture .................. 12 Participatory culture as an extension of the creative industries ...................................................... 13 The roles of users and producers in participatory culture production ............................................. 14 Participatory culture beyond social collaboration ............................................................................ 15 Challenges for the cultural industries ............................................................................................... 16 Methodology ......................................................................................................................................... 17 Shift to platforms............................................................................................................................... 17 Platform-specific methodological approach ..................................................................................... 18 Taxonomy of participation ................................................................................................................ 19 Selection of case studies ................................................................................................................... 22 Methodological apparatus ................................................................................................................ 22 Analysis .................................................................................................................................................. 25 Swoon Reads – crowdsourced publishing ......................................................................................... 25 Epic Reads – the YA social reading experience ................................................................................ 33 Amazon Kindle Worlds – (self)publishing fan fiction ........................................................................ 38 Influence of online participatory culture on the book publishing industry .......................................... 43 Situating the platforms ...................................................................................................................... 43 Transforming culture with affordances ............................................................................................. 43 Implications of social reading integration in platform launched by publishers ................................ 44 Participatory practices in book publishing ........................................................................................ 45 Trends in book publishing ................................................................................................................. 46 2 Issues of book publishing and methodological insight...................................................................... 47 Conclusion ............................................................................................................................................. 50 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................................... 54 3 Introduction "Someone ought to publish a book about the doomsayers who keep publishing books about the end of publishing" (Evgeny Morozov in To Save Everything, Click Here: The Folly of Technological Solutionism, 2013) "Publishers and would-be publishers must be equally prepared to face the future and become not just instruments of publication but instigators and innovators in their own right." (Adrian Moore in A Short History of Future Publishing, 1972). The two quotes pose interesting questions in terms of the topic of this research. The ever critical Evgeny Morozov states that scholars and professionals alike should rethink the idea of the end of the book publishing industry. Moore explores the role of the publisher as an innovator of the industry. Book publishing is one of the oldest creative industries with Gutenberg's invention of the printing press in the middle of the 15th century. Nowadays the publishing business is proclaimed to be slow in terms of innovation and inadequate to the current new media environment (Carmody, 2012; DBW, 2015; Hofferder, 2015; Wiker, 2012). However, book publishing is expected to grow and expand (PWC, 2015). Observers state that the industry is becoming more and more competitive (Coker, 2015). The reason behind the steady development is that professionals use technologies and innovations to facilitate the process of publishing and to cater to readers (Hyrkin, 2014; Illian, 2016). Nowadays readers are also new media users. Hence, the readership needs interactive, collaborative and personalized experience with media (digital or traditional) (Malama, Landoni, Wilson, 2005; Krozser, 2013). They want to participate actively in culture production – the main concept of participatory culture. The term refers to the changed relations between the audience and the media producers, where the lines between them are blurry (Jenkins, 2006: 3). Participatory culture is activated by the collective intelligence of users who create cultural meaning together. Moreover, participatory culture features became a requirement for a successful media venture. O'Reilly states that industries are propelled towards innovation in their business (2007). The development of Web 2.0 business is not technology-driven, but user-led. Nevertheless, the book publishing industry is not fully 4 explored as a field affected by online participatory culture. For example, a search on Google Scholar does not return relevant results on the topic. Publishers are defined as gatekeepers rather than participatory facilitators and intermediaries of innovations of the reading experience (Lee, 2010; Coser, 1975; Simon and Fyfe, 1994; Thompson, 1984; Pham, 2010). For this reason I chose this topic to explore in my master's thesis. Research question The main research question which I aim to answer is: How does the phenomenon of online participatory culture influence the book publishing industry? The objective of this thesis is to investigate the influence of participatory culture on the book publishing industry, its challenges, implications, and trends. The contribution of the research will combine theoretical insight of how to study user participation in cultural industries with contemporary analysis of social reading affordances. To achieve the goal of the research, I pose four concrete subquestions which will guide the study. The first is: How does participatory culture challenge the cultural industries? Here, I will focus on the issues, which the industry faces to meet the active user/reader demands for engagement and participation. These challenges are overcome by specific practices. They are the focus of the second subquestion: What participatory practices are incorporated in the book publishing business? I will explore these practices through three case studies. This approach will answer the third subquestion: What are the main trends in the book publishing industry? Finally, I will investigate the issues which these cases articulate. Based on the research of these four aspects, I will attempt to answer the main research question at the end of the thesis. Methodological approach To answer the research question I will use theoretical and empirical methodological approach. The thesis will interpret the works of Jenkins and Schaffer on participatory culture, Bruns' ideas on produsage, O'reilly's Web 2.0, Gillespie and Langlois' platform studies and Weltevrede's and Helmond's insight into affordances to build a theoretical framework of the new media environment, where contemporary book publishing

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