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Digital platforms have reshaped the creative industries and restructured relationships between media sectors. Creative writing and reading social media platforms like Wattpad are challenging what it means to publish fiction in the early 21st century, and digital streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu and others have begun looking to these platforms to source creative content for adaptation. Praxis on creative writing social media platforms is shaped by a complex and ongoing interplay between the technocultural and socio-economic conditions of platforms and their users. This article argues for an integration of publishing studies and platform studies by applying a media ecology framework to map behaviour on Wattpad, one of the largest creative writing social media platforms, and the relationships it has developed with other media companies. Specifically, it draws on and extends José van Dijck’s ((2013) The Culture of Connectivity: A Critical History of Social Media. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.) microsystem/ecosystem connective media model and proposes a broader conceptualisation of the entertainment ecosystem that incorporates adaptation of content across the book publishing and entertainment media sectors. Mapping these platforms alongside legacy media and publishing companies offers a productive framework for theorising contemporary entertainment media production within the platform media landscape.

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Bestsellers, defined by the high sales numbers they achieve and the hype they generate, are success stories that periodically galvanise the contemporary book industry. Most publishers actively seek to produce bestsellers, using a range of strategies. Contemporary bestsellers, particularly from peripheral markets and by debut authors, are produced through the strategic joining of two co-existing modes of capitalism: conglomerate capitalism and platform capitalism. This article analyses the publication pathways and reception of two debut bestsellers by Australian authors: Hannah Kent’s Burial Rites and Heather Morris’ The Tattooist of Auschwitz. To analyse these case study titles, we constructed publishing histories, collected five media reviews for each book from reputable publications and literary journals, and scraped the top 100 reviews on Goodreads. These case studies show how the particular textual qualities of each book, highlighted in publishers’ marketing material, shape the media and reader reception of each book, and the mechanisms and strategic alliances with traditional institutional and platform networks at work in producing success in post-digital book culture. Bestsellers show the logics and systems of an industry in flux, and the strategies that can support a debut work to reach a mass audience.

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