Digital Authorship. Publishing In The Attention Economy

Elements in Publishing and Book Culture edited by Samantha Rayner University College London and Rebecca Lyons University of Bristol DIGITAL AUTHORSHIP Publishing in the Attention Economy R. Lyle Skains Bangor University University Printing House, Cambridge CB2 8BS, United Kingdom One Liberty Plaza, 20th Floor, New York, NY 10006, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia 314–321, 3rd Floor, Plot 3, Splendor Forum, Jasola District Centre, New Delhi – 110025, India 79 Anson Road, #06–04/06, Singapore 079906 Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge. It furthers the University’s mission by disseminating knowledge in the pursuit of education, learning, and research at the highest international levels of excellence. www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9781108444484 DOI: 10.1017/9781108649537 © R. Lyle Skains 2019 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2019 A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library. ISBN 978-1-108-44448-4 Paperback ISSN 2514-8524 (online) ISSN 2514-8516 (print) Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate. Digital Authorship Publishing in the Attention Economy Elements in Publishing and Book Culture DOI: 10.1017/9781108649537 First published online: January 2019 R. Lyle Skains Bangor University Author for correspondence: [email protected] Abstract: This Element looks at contemporary authorship via three key authorial roles: indie publisher, hybrid author, and fanfiction writer. The twenty-first century’s digital and networked media allows writers to disintermediate the established structures of royalty publishing and to distribute their work directly to – and often in collaboration with – their readers. This demotic author, one who is “of the people,” often works in genres considered “popular” or “derivative.” The demotic author eschews the top-down communication flow of author > text > reader, in favor of publishing platforms that generate attention capital, such as blogs, fanfiction communities, and social media. KEYWORDS: indie publishing, demotic author, fanfiction authorship, hybrid authorship, self-publishing © R. Lyle Skains 2019 ISBNs: 9781108444484 (PB), 9781108649537 (OC) ISSNs: 2514-8524 (online), 2514-8516 (print) Contents Introduction 1 1 The New Digital Author 11 2 The Power of the Demotic Author 42 3 The Rising Underclass of the Fanfic Author 61 Discussion and Conclusions 83 References 95 1 Digital Authorship Introduction I wrote my first story when I was nine years old. It may, of course, have been my hundredth or thousandth story, for all that I am capable of remembering those long-ago scribblings. I think of this one – a few hundred words, written in the style of my then-favorite author, Judy Blume – as my first simply because I still have it: my fourth-grade teacher, Miss Eileen, typed it up, pressed it into photo album pages, and bound it with ribbon into my very first “book.” To me, an avid reader and aspiring writer, this packaging of the words I had written made me something more. It made me an author. For most of recent memory, to be an author was somet