The socialization of reading and writing: fandom, networks and publishing visibility

Abstract

Reading practices have undergone meaningful transformations in recent years, characterised by changes in the behaviour of the reading public, as well as in the manner in which material is accessed and consumed. One of the most significant developments has been the increasingly active role played by readers in the reception process. Readers now have more of an influence owing to opportunities to intervene in the form of comments, recommendations, and exchanges of various kinds of information among readers. At the same time, readers are also organised into interest groups based on a text or an author, forming fan clubs. Through this network, readers not only discuss, participate, and initiate events to promote plot and scene development, but also feed the corpus through their own creations or anticipated translations. As a result, the visibility levels of works and authors are increased, favouring their dissemination and indirectly contributing to the publishing process, which has shifted part of its promotional work in light of this new situation. This article analyses the incidence of these processes from the point of view of both quantitative and qualitative parameters provided by different databases, as well as their impact on creative and editorial activities.