Image: ‘Caio’, Pexels
It has been ten years since it was reported that ebook sales surpassed print book sales on the Amazon platform. The lead-up to this milestone could be characterised by constant handwringing about the death of the printed book, the death of the novel and a wholescale reimagining of what we understand to be book culture. Many predicted that devices like Amazon’s Kindle and Apple’s iPad would bring about the end of the book as it was commonly understood. Speaking of the death of the print book at the Techonomy Conference in Lake Tahoe in 2010, Nicholas Negroponte, Chair of the MIT Media Lab, said ‘It’s happening. It’s not happening in ten years. It’s happening in five years’. The definitive tenor of Negroponte’s prediction was commonplace at the time and people in both the tech and the book publishing sectors spoke about the relationship between digital and print in concrete, zero sum terms.
This technophoria was accompanied by a similarly intense technophobia; ‘of course you like your libraries,’ Negroponte said. Through the first half of the 2010s, readers declared their love of print through endless discussions about the smell of books, and carefully curated Bookstagram posts that celebrate the materiality of the paper page. During this period, a false narrative emerged that pitted the tech industry against the book publishing sector: you were either an ebook or a p-book reader. The reality in 2021, like much of post-digital book culture, is that the entire field is a mix of old and new technologies and, although change is a constant feature of all publishing industries, publishing has evolved with digital technologies into a new paradigm.
The discussion of book culture, and the rituals and practices that surround book publishing, is a constant presence on social networking platforms, in cultural magazines and journals, and within the pages of major broadsheet newspapers. A digital magazine like Kill Your Darlings is a participant in and vessel for the discussion of books within contemporary culture, one that functions as a vital part of the post-digital literary ecology. As we emerge into the third decade of the twenty-first century, the long-standing narrative tension around notions of ‘digital publishing’ and the bound printed codex has eased as our post-digital present takes root. What characterises our post-digital present is a co-existence of old and new, and the sense that the more things change the more they stay the same.
The notion of the post-digital was perhaps popularised by the German theorist Florian Cramer, who called it ‘a term that sucks but is useful’. Cramer observes that the contemporary post-digital age is one characterised by a ‘disenchantment with digital information systems and media gadgets, or a period in which our fascination with these systems and gadgets has become historical’. He explores the notion of the ‘post’ in post-digital as being akin to the ‘post’ in post-punk, or post-feminism: post-digital is not necessarily ‘after’ digital, but can be understood as ‘the state of affairs after the initial upheaval caused by computerisation and global digital networking of communication’. The field of book publishing and the culture of books has well and truly entered this post-digital state of being, where the fascination/fear/fetishisation of digital tools has tempered, and the operation of the literary field occurs against the backdrop of continual disruption and evolution.
What characterises our post-digital present is a co-existence of old and new, and the sense that the more things change the more they stay the same.
The development of consumer-friendly digital networking technologies was accompanied by promises about the democratisation of communications, the flattening of hierarchies and the reversion of top-down media influence. The traditional gatekeepers of publishing were obsolete, promised Apple, Amazon and other players—now with their digital tools the conduit between author and the reader was shorter than ever. Padmini Ray Murray and Claire Squires demonstrate the myriad ways in which readers could establish power as influential agents in the publishing industry as digital technologies forge new links between publishers and readers beyond the field of cultural production. Bibliocentric social networking platforms such as Goodreads, and the use of social networking platforms to discuss books and reading, make visible the once invisible discussions of book culture among readers. Goodreads reviews, Bookstagram communities and the endless discussion of literary prizes on Twitter are all examples of this visibility. However, instead of the top-to-bottom disruption to the structures of power and rigid hierarchies that defined the digital and pre-digital publishing sector, the increased visibility of readers in contemporary book culture is often categorised using the language of fandom, rather than the language of cultural production and influence.
Fandom in book culture is not a digital or post-digital phenomenon, and is often understood as existing within, or being defined to, particular genre communities. With the increased visibility of the reader in post-digital book culture, the characteristics of fandom can be observed beyond the confines of particular genres and is an increasingly important part of book culture. In this sense, fandom can be understood as a kind of amateur labour. For readers, post-digital literary fandom can be conceptualised within a model of concentric circles. The innermost circle consists of readers and fans whose labour is in service to the community: writers who contribute fan fiction to platforms like Archive of Our Own or audio recordings to crowd-sourced platforms like LibriVox. This fandom is often rooted in particular books, characters and authors. Participation in the next circle out can be understood as being less dedicated to particular genres or story worlds and more aligned to engagement with the broader literary culture: writing Goodreads reviews, book blogging, participating in Bookstagram, tweeting about the Stella Prize shortlist. Participants in the next circle out engage in book culture by attending events like literary festivals and author readings, often tweeting or instagramming the experience. And finally, the outermost circle is characterised by people who engage in ‘book culture’ more tacitly or privately, as readers.
The development of consumer-friendly digital networking technologies was accompanied by promises about the democratisation of communications and the flattening of hierarchies.
This model is imperfect but it does demonstrate the various modes of contemporary literary engagement and the ways in which the digital and the non-digital are intrinsic to post-digital book culture. Moreover, it highlights the different ways readers participate in book culture and fandom, where labour morphs into participation, and the ways that this participation is separate and apart from modes of influence that characterise the contemporary literary field.
Similar to other sectors, technological interventions in the contemporary publishing industry regularly over-promised and under-delivered on the suggestions that these interventions would transform structures of power and bring about greater equality. Self-publishing platforms like Wattpad, the assumed affordability of digital publications, and even the perceived lower barrier to entry presented by social networking platforms like Twitter seemed, at least on the surface, like the method by which traditionally marginalised voices would be heard. Moreover, the fact that communications between publishers, critics, authors and literary institutions was increasingly being conducted out in public on platforms like Twitter established a misguided sense of openness and transparency. This notion of transparency obfuscates the very closed nature of the industry, where white, middle-class university graduates fill the majority of publishing industry roles.
Today there is not always an easily observable, clean distinction between readers and publishers, editors, authors and institutions—but this distinction does exist. From the outside, it might appear as though the digital literary utopia has been realised with readers and literary critics interacting online in a beautifully flattened field. And while this engagement does occur, not all engagement is created equal. ‘Book Twitter’ is an excellent case study for understanding how the structures of power in the post-digital literary field very closely resemble the structures of power in the pre-digital literary field. It is the particularities of this platform that not only make it popular among those working in the publishing sector, but also make it the perfect place for maintaining long-standing structures of power. As an open platform, Twitter is a great place for establishing communities and demonstrating established relationships and networks. Due to the nature of the platform, these relationships and networks are also visible to those who exist outside of them. In this way, the tastemaking influence of literary institutions, critics and publishers are modelled and maintained.
Observing the machinations of post-digital book culture reveals the ways in which old structures have been supplanted onto new platforms.
This is evident in the way that publishers and associated actors operate on Twitter. Due to the unquenchable thirst for content on platforms like Twitter, publishers, authors, critics, editors and literary institutions nurture their digital networks through the constant discussion of books and book culture. The literary calendar—structured around near-constant festivals, prize announcements and launches, and the occasional scandal—feeds this discussion and helps maintain the legitimacy of the book publishing institutions who engage in it. A festival will retweet an author, which will prompt a reply from a publisher, which will then be retweeted by an author and a publicist, and then liked by a literary prize. Readers can observe the banter between the Wheeler Centre, the Melbourne City of Literature, the Emerging Writers Festival, the Stella Prize and Text Publishing, and the deeply interconnected nature of the Australian publishing sector, but being able to observe industry culture at play does little to dismantle or demystify the structure—rather, it casts it as an aspirational and powerful tastemaking force.
Rather than subvert dominant structures of power, in our current post-digital context these structures have just become visible, set behind glass instead of behind stone. Like with readers, we can see the ways that networks operate and relationships are formed. And as with readers on Goodreads and posts on Bookstagram, visibility of these networks allows us to see what is being discussed, criticised and celebrated beyond the legacy institutions. Despite the promise of interconnection, post-digital book culture operates as a divided space between readers and industry. Whether transparency and visibility will eventually bring about any kind of meaningful change to the location of power feels unlikely, and I am dubious that a new technology or platform will bring about the equality in book culture that is needed. Observing the machinations of post-digital book culture reveals the ways in which old structures have been supplanted onto new platforms. Shifting the centre of power and how that power circulates in book culture will take more than a transformation of communications structures.
