ABSTRACT
New authors have dwindling opportunities within the contemporary publishing industry, but some innovative self-published authors have used online platforms to directly connect with a readership, bypassing the traditional route of publication. In this chapter, I examine digital platforms for self-publishing—Instagram, Wattpad, and web serials—where new authors can crowdsource the economic, marketing, and human capital usually derived from publishing houses and literary agents. Examples of successful online self-publishing include web serials such as Wildbow’s Worm (2011–2013), Pirateba’s The Wandering Inn (2016–), and D. D. Webb’s The Gods are Bastards (2014–); and Instapoetry by Nikita Gill, Mazadohta, and Beau Taplin. In these cases, self-published authors cultivate reader networks who are fans of niche genres to crowdsource word-of-mouth marketing, feedback and editing, and sometimes even a wage. Further, as Rebecca Tushnet suggests, when a community of readers become part of the creative process, they nurture writers’ skill development through the practice-led creative process. Crowdsourcing gives authors an alternative publishing process to that offered by traditional publishing houses. The traditional and alternative processes draw on each other, with authors transferring from digital platforms to established publishers, and trade publishers using self-published material as an online slush-pile. This chapter demonstrates how online self-published authors access communities of readers, creating an alternative publishing process for the digital age.
