Digital fiction: The modern alternative to traditional publishing
by Grace Clark
Aspiring authors are finding more and more creative ways to distribute their work, reach readers, and gain exposure. The act of digitally self-publishing one’s fiction is becoming a viable option for those hoping to enter the publishing world, but who may also have issues with traditional publishing methods. With a rising amount of online services and platforms that cater to hopeful authors, digital self-publishing is not only a more convenient way to broadcast one’s work, but it is igniting an evolution in publishing. Digital Fiction: The Modern Alternative to Traditional Publishing explores this distinct modernization of the publishing world by discussing the rising popularity in digitally self-published fiction, the many services that have been produced to accommodate this trend, and some success stories such as E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey and Andy Weir’s The Martian.
From its humble beginnings on blogs and online boards, the rise of digitally self-published fiction has influenced the development of many online services aimed to help authors produce and circulate their work without the rigidity and risk of rejection commonly seen in traditional publishing houses. Currently, options for authors looking to self-publish their fiction have grown beyond blogs and common fan-fiction websites such as Archive of Our Own, WattPad, and FanFiction.net, and now include more professional services such as Amazon’s Kindle Worlds, Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing, Lulu, CreateSpace and more. Self-publishers are now being offered help editing their work, distributing it globally, collecting royalties, and advertising to readers (Finder, 2012) – and generally for a low cost. The growth of options and services for digital self-publishers is leading to a rising number of self-published titles, which is steadily increasing each year according to Bowker’s statistics (Albanese, 2010), and even competing with the number of traditionally published titles (Bradley et. al, 2011). While it’s difficult to say whether or not traditional publishing houses are being threatened by these numbers and the ever-growing popularity of self-publishing, they have recognized its popularity. Not only were some publishing houses mimicking aspects of self-published work, such as rejacketing romance novels to better emulate E.L. James’ cover design (Petersen, 2015), but larger publishing houses such as Penguin (Finder, 2012) and Random House (Vadde, 2017) were noted to have purchased and now control several self-publishing services.
With the large number of digitally self-published fiction being produced, there have been some success stories that have lead aspiring authors to acquire deals with large publishing companies and even movie adaptions, such as E.L. James’ Fifty Shades of Grey and Andy Weir’s The Martian. James’ work began as a digitally published fan-fiction of Stephanie Meyer’s Twilight (Vadde, 2017), but later lead to printed publications and three movie adaptions. Similarly, Weir’s work was originally posted on his own blog and then as an e-book before being picked up by Random House and then made into a popular film (Dickerson, 2015). While these successes are uncommon, they offer some level of legitimacy to this publishing method, and no doubt encourage other self-publishers to consider broadcasting their work online and through digital platforms. With the rising number of services available to self-publishers, along with the few occasional success stories, digitally self-publishing one's fiction is not only becoming an increasingly popular publishing method, but is managing to change the common understanding of the publishing world.
Further reading:
Albanese, A. (2010). BiblioBazaar: How a company produces 272,930 books a year. Publishers Weekly.
Bradley, J., Fulton, B., Helm, M., & Pittner, K.A. (2011) Non-traditional book publishing. First Monday, 16(8).
Dickerson, K. (2015). The surprising story of how Andy Weir's 'The Martian' topped best seller lists and got a movie deal. Business Insider.
Finder, A. (2012). The joys and hazards of self-publishing on the web. The New York Times.
Green, H. E. (2014). Publishing without walls: building a collaboration to support digital publishing at the university of Illinois. Fire!!!, 3(2), 21-36. doi: 10.5323/fire.3.2.0021
Grobelny, J.D. (2015) Self-Publishing: A bibliographic essay. In. R. P. Holley (Ed.), Self-Publishing and Collection Development: Opportunities and Challenging for Libraries. (pp. 171-178). Indiana: Purdue University Press.
King, C. (2016). Social media: choose it and use it, self publishers! IngramSpark.
Nardini, B. (2015). Book vendors and self-publishing. Self-publishing and collection development: opportunities and challenges for libraries. (pp. 65-82). West Lafayette: Purdue University Press.
Petersen, H. E. (2015). Fifty Shades of Grey: the series that tied publishing up in knots. The Guardian.
Vadde, A. (2017). Amateur creativity: contemporary literature and the digital publishing scene. New Literary History, 48(1), 27-51.