'New Authorship' presented IAMCR 2011 Istanbul

‘New Authorship’:search project:The ‘New Authorship’David Brake
Amateur authorship, digital media and the field of literary publishing
David Brake, Senior LecturerDivision of Journalism & Communications
Presentation at IAMCR Instanbul, 14-17th July 2011

What is ‘old authorship’?
Publishing industry

Simplistic author-industry-audience relationship
Author writes what s/he thinks audience will want in order to get money
Publisher looks for authors best able to interest audiences to maximise sales

Bourdieu:“The Author’s Point of View”
Authors and publishers clearly sometimes act counter to this model.
He proposes “an economic world turned upside down” (still an economic world)
Authors (and some publishers) seek symbolic profits
They compete for these in a more or less autonomous ‘field’ with its own rules.

Symbolic profit
Artists are recognized “by their peers and only by them (at least in the initial phase of their enterprise) and owe their prestige, at least negatively, to the fact that they make no concessions to the demand of the ‘general public’ (p. 217)
Symbolic profits, “are themselves capable of being converted, in the more or less long term, into economic profits.” (p. 216)
But does it all come down to profit in the end? Is it always based on competition? And are the fields of authorship changing?

Publishers turn to blogs

Bloggers do their own books

Print on demand &ebooks take off
New conventional books in US – est. 316,480 in 2010.
2,776,260 titles were estimated produced ‘non-traditionally’ in 2010, up 169% on 2009 – was 22,000 in 2006.
Self-published ≈ 133,000 from top 6

E-books on the rise
Kindle and iPad raise profile of e-book readers
As of Jan 2011, 12.7% of US readers, 3.3% in UK had bought ebooks.

‘New Authorship’
POD
Publisher
Author
General Public
Genre Fans
Agent
Publisher
Website
E-book
Friends/Family
Friends

Worlds of artistic production
We appear to lack both widely accepted categories and figures
This division could apply to any medium not just text

What fields are authors in?
Bourdieu, 1990 (Photography)

Research questions - Bourdieuinspired
What are the fields of new authorship?
What are the ‘rules’ and capitals in each field and the power relations between actors? What are relationships between these fields and traditional authorship?
What habituses do ‘new authors’ have? Are they different from traditional authors? (stats needed!)
Are there clear capital prerequisites to success in these fields?

Tentative hypotheses
Fields include conventional writers dabbling with online, online writers angling for print success, writers aiming at online audiences (for profit? for esteem?), writers writing principally for themselves alone (as thesis found)
Writers who want to be conventionally published are dependent on various authorities. Not clear to what extent writers who write online are beholden to/responsive to audiences

Tentative hypotheses
Successful writers online and offline highly educated, middle class but online might open participation to people with lower cultural but higher ‘technological’ capital.

Small-scale quantitative methods
Surveys of different author groups
Initially via National Association of Writers' Groups (to deal with digital divide bias), reach broad range of ‘conventional’ writers and would-be writers
Supplement with data via Author Licensing and Copyright Society or Society of Authors (for established authors)
Also surveys of http://youwriteon.com/, http://authonomy.com/, [some UK fan fiction communities or online writing communities or blog/journal ‘writing circles’ – which?] – to find ‘new authors’

Qualitative methods – author samples
Interviews with range of authors at different stages based on survey responses
(Conventionally) published authors
“Successful”‘new authors’ (who have significant incomes or readerships or both)
Unpublished authors on ‘conventional’ track
‘New authors’ with low readerships and no/little income from writing.
Might start with ‘new authors’ only

Qualitative methods – industry samples
Elite interviews with:
‘Conventional’ literary editors
Literary editors specialising in online-sourced publications (Friday Project, Authonomy)
Print on demand and e-book publishers
Agents? Book reviewers?
How do they see industry changing? How do they view ‘new authors’ fitting in?

Outstanding issues/queries
How to define ‘new authors’? What level of engagement raises one from everyday blogger to writer/blogger? Is it self-defined? Are there prior definitions that take into account non-published writing practices?
How do we classify ‘new author’ practices?
What do we know already about people who think of themselves as (partly or completely) writers but who are not published or only self-published?

Have there been qualitative studies of the fiction publishing industry analogous to those of newsrooms or TV studios?
Are there qualitative studies of authors analogous to those of UGC producers?

Which fan-related texts are most likely to be useful? Are there other relevant non-fan key authors/theories I am missing?
What groups should I use otherwise to assemble my sample and how concerned should I be about representativeness?

Thank you for your attention
Dr David R Brake, Senior LecturerDepartment of Journalism & Communication
davidbrake@gmail.comhttp://davidbrake.org/

'New Authorship' presented IAMCR 2011 Istanbul

by David Brake

Accessibility

Categories

Upload Details

Usage Rights

Statistics

’New Authorship’ presented IAMCR 2011 Istanbul Presentation Transcript