Inequalities of Platform Publishing

Parnell shows that two self-publishing platforms - Amazon and Wattpad - are not the democratizing utopian platforms they would like to be known as, and through interviews and case studies the author shows that these platforms tend to replicate the inequalities found offline in the traditional industry. This book adds a new, necessary depth of research into the world of publishing on platforms that were supposed to bring equality, but, in fact, exacerbates inequalities in the name of monetization.” - Miriam Johnson, author of Books and Social Media: How the Digital Age is Shaping the Printed Word

“This delightfully detailed book exposes these platforms’ techno-cultural and socioeconomic infrastructures that promise a democratization of cultural production, but that perpetuate and add to power hierarchies inherent in traditional publishing practices informed by conglomerate and platform capitalism. Through meticulous and effective argumentation via findings and individual stories, the author successfully convinced this reader that new technologies don’t create new realities for marginalized writers.” - DeNel Rehberg Soto, coauthor of Reading Beyond the Book: The Social Practices of Contemporary Literary Culture

Claire Parnell is lecturer in Digital Publishing at the University of Melbourne. Her research has appeared in Media, Culture & Society, Publishing Research Quarterly, Creative Industries Journal, and more.