Negotiating Collaborations: BookTubers, The Publishing Industry, and YouTube’s Ecosystem

Abstract

BookTubers (from the acronym book + YouTuber) have become key players for the publishing industry, given their influence on children and teens to promote reading and book consumption. Based on an 18-month digital ethnography that combines direct observation, digital interactions on YouTube channels, and other social media and semistructured interviews with 17 Spanish-speaking BookTubers, this study uses Pierre Bourdieu’s concepts of field and capital to analyze how BookTubers negotiate their practices with other agents of the publishing world. This article characterizes the challenges the Spanish-language publishing industry is facing in the context of digitalization to attract readers; describes the position that BookTubers have within the YouTube ecosystem, and how they relate with the platform’s actors, politics, and affordances; and analyzes the exchanges that BookTubers establish with publishers—often referred as collaborations—and their implications for their autonomy. This case study helps to understand how platformization allows new agents to transfer capital gained in social media to other cultural industries.

Studying Platforms and Cultural Production: Methods, Institutions, and Practices

“…So, too, has the need for a more robust understanding of non-US-based platforms—a challenge which a number of contributors have responded to by studying such European companies such as Soundcloud (Hesmondhalgh et al, 2019) and Spotify (Bonini & Gandini, 2019; Morris; Prey). In addition, various papers explore non-English-speaking communities engaging with platform companies, such as Spanish-speaking booktubers (Tomasena, 2019); Arriagada and Ibáñez’ explorative perspective on the interpretive processes of Chilean content creators; and Kim and Yu’s (2019) analysis of Webtoon creators in South Korea. Other articles, such as Duguay’s (2019) study of Instagram and Vine creators, benefit from the enlistment of international informants in Australia, Canada, Thailand, and the United States.…”

Nuevos mediadores de la LIJ: Análisis de los booktubers más importantes de habla hispana

“…Los BookTubers hispanohablantes son ávidos lectores que, desde muy jóvenes, comparten sus experiencias subjetivas delante de un ordenador: primero en blogs y ahora en YouTube (y otras redes sociales). En cualquier caso, consiguen congregar de forma periódica a millones de lectores para escuchar sus experiencias literarias, aunque tal y como señala Tomasena (2019) son muy pocos los que consiguen destacar. Para conseguir esto, y destacar en la comunidad BookTube, se necesita experiencia lectora, participación y recorrido.…”

“…Finalmente, la audiencia se concentra en un número reducido de creadores de contenido y se forma una distribución de larga cola (Tomasena, 2019): 10% de los BookTubers concentran 75,82% de los suscriptores y 80,74% de visualizaciones (ibid. ).…”

Kirja-arvostelut alustataloudessa – esimerkkinä käyttäjälähtöiset arvostelut Instagramissa

“…Käyttäjälähtöisiä kirja-arvosteluita on tarkasteltu yksittäisillä alustoilla, kuten kirjablogeissa (Steiner 2010), kirjallisuusarvostelufoorumeilla (Verboord 2010) ja YouTubessa, jossa kirjallisuusaiheista käytetään käsitettä BookTube tai KirjaTube (Tomasena 2019) sekä Instagramissa, jossa kirjallisuusaiheista käytetään yhteisönimeä Bookstagram tai Kirjagram ( Jaakkola 2020b( Jaakkola , 2019. Huomio näissä tutkimuksissa on ollut amatöörimäisen sisällöntuotannon piirteissä erotuksena ammattiarvostelijoiden tuottamasta kritiikistä (Kammer 2015;Steiner 2008Steiner , 2010.…”