How is Technology Repopularising Serial Publication? A Case Study of Wattpad
Date
2024
Authors
Mee, Chloe
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Publisher
University of Victoria
Abstract
In my JCURA project, I investigate Wattpad’s online social media platform as a case study to examine how technology is repopularising the serialised novel. The serialisation of novels was a nineteenth-century British Victorian invention. Instead of publishing novels in the standard three volumes, each chapter was an instalment published on a schedule. Some authors who used this method include Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This inventive new form encouraged collaborative authorship between professionals such as illustrators, authors, editors, and publishers. Not only were there formal collaborators, but the readers and reviewers of the text responded to each instalment, thereby producing an informal feedback system and changing the novel’s plot. The Canadian founders of Wattpad started the platform in 2006, wanting to disrupt the publishing industry. Like Victorian periodicals, Wattpad uses the serial publication of texts. Not only has Wattpad produced published print authors, but famous writers like Margaret Atwood have also written on the platform. The social media platform allows readers to comment on each paragraph, directly shaping the texts through their engagement. Wattpad facilitates a democratic reading culture and illustrates what readers want to read to publishers.
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Keywords
Victorian Era, serialised novels, reader response, technology, publishing industry, collaborative authorship