Why the Gatekeepers of Book Publishing are Losing their Gatekeeping Status

In our technologically advancing world, with the rise of new storytelling platforms, self-publishing opportunities, and online spaces for socializing and crowdfunding, the gatekeeping status of traditional book publishers (and other book-publishing gatekeepers) is weakening. (Read more about the people who are considered the gatekeepers of book publishing and why they’re considered gatekeepers here.) Online publishing platforms and other online spaces, including social media spaces and crowdfunding sites, threaten their gatekeeper status in many ways.

Here are just a few of the ways online advancements are weakening the gatekeeping status of gatekeepers of book publishing.

Direct access to readers

Online publishing platforms like Wattpad provide writers with direct access to readers, allowing them to bypass traditional publishing gatekeepers, such as agents and editors. This enables authors to publish their work more easily and quickly, and can also help them build a following and establish an author brand. Content on these platforms might succeed greatly despite being rejected by the gatekeepers of publishing. This might call into question whether the book-publishing gatekeepers truly understand the market.

It also exposes the fact that there is a difference between preferences of the book-buying market and the reading market at large (i.e., the market of people who read but aren’t buying hardcover books right as they are released / aren’t buying books at all). The publishing industry, of course, caters to the book-buying market, as they have profits in mind. But platforms like Wattpad are allowing preferences of the reading market at large to be highlighted, popularized, served up in more stories, and made accessible to the larger market.

Democratization of the publishing process

Self-publishing platforms like An Archive of Our Own give everyone the opportunity to create and share content, regardless of their background or connections in the publishing industry. This can level the playing field for aspiring writers who may not have access to traditional publishing channels. This includes everyone from amateur authors who simply want to share their writing with a larger audience; to seasoned writers who have continuously faced rejection from gatekeepers; to writers who live in places where becoming a writer might not be considered a good, realistic, or culturally appropriate goal. Because these platforms are often globally accessible, writers outside of America and Europe can post content for American and European readerships and vice versa.

Wattpad uses data-driven content, AI, and machine learning to determine true reading trends and to capitalize on those trends. Through data analysis, resulting in-site marketing, and partnerships, Wattpad has launched many of its writers into fame. It has even begun to infiltrate other sectors of the entertainment industry, with several Wattpad hits being adapted to film.

Emphasis on what readers want

Many new publishing platforms are all about what readers want rather than what publishers think they want. Furthermore, gatekeeping for “quality” content is out. Book publishing gatekeepers comb through manuscripts to ensure the publication of quality literature, but how much content that readers actually desire is lost in this process? How much do the gatekeepers’ criteria for quality match up with the readership’s criteria? With new publishing platforms, that process—weeding out low-quality content—no longer exists.

For example, the self-publishing website and mobile app InkItt is marketed as “The World’s #1 Reader-Powered Publisher.” The founder Ali Albazaz has said, “We never, ever, ever judge the books. That’s not our job. We check that the formatting is correct, the grammar is in place, we make sure that the cover is not pixelated. Who are we to judge if the plot is good? That’s the job of the market. That’s the job of the readers.” In other words: the readers determine what succeeds. (Well, mostly. There’s a caveat: these platforms still use recommendation systems, which rely on algorithms shown to suffer from feedback loops and amplify bias, including popularity bias.)

Viral content

Social media platforms like TikTok have the potential to create viral content, which can spread quickly and reach a large audience. This can make it more difficult for publishers to predict which books will be successful, as trends can emerge and change rapidly. Nothing evidences this more than BookTok, a niche of readers on TikTok who follow the hashtag of the same name and share content on books.

In addition to causing a resurgence in popularity in books like The Song of Achilles, BookTok has created viral hype around books that were self-published because either traditional publishers (or other gatekeepers) rejected them or the authors never tried to traditionally publish on the assumption their book didn’t “fit” the traditional publishing model. Viral success stories include the science fiction romance Ice Planet Barbarians, which features a group of women trapped on an ice planet with blue aliens (and lots of sexual shenanigans). Ruby Dixon self-published this and many other books in the same series before becoming an overnight success due to the word-of-mouth discussion of the book that organically happened on BookTok.

New business models

Online publishing platforms like Wattpad and social reading apps like Dreame have developed new business models that differ from traditional publishing’s. For example, Wattpad has a paid subscription service that allows readers to access exclusive content and support their favorite writers. This can create new revenue streams for authors and may also challenge the traditional publishing model. (In fact, in 2022, Wattpad introduced a creator program through which some of its authors can receive up to $25,000 in cash stipends for making their stories exclusive to Wattpad. Reminder: these writers who aren’t “traditionally” published.) Many new business models provide digital content for much cheaper than the cost of a physical book, or they charge for coinsthat can be used to “unlock” content, one chapter at a time.

These business models are reader- and trend-fueled, as the platforms give the most opportunities to topics that are trending (including topics that might be shunned by traditional publishing, like werewolf erotica), and they give readers the opportunity to support the content they most want to read, typically one chapter at a time.  

New funding opportunities for authors

Additionally, there are many other ways for authors to be funded for their writing without receiving money from publishers, and this is usually done through crowdfunding sites. The YouTube channel Subscriptions for Authors makes videos that talk about how non-traditionally published authors can and do make money through paid subscriptions. For example, one video talks about how Wattpad author Emilia Rose makes money through Patreon. After initially creating a fanbase on Wattpad, she began releasing her Wattpad content early to her patrons (i.e., Patreon subscribers), and this model led her to making six figures!

This tactic isn’t only used by non-traditionally published authors. Brandon Sanderson recently made waves by raising $6.8 million on the crowdfunding site Kickstarter to essentially self-publish four secret novels. While Sanderson’s move was not without criticism, he said in a phone interview with the New York Times that he wanted to weaken Amazon’s status (Amazon, as a bookseller, is certainly a publishing gatekeeper); additionally, he wanted more selling options than traditional publishers would give him. For example, he wanted to be able to bundle his products together into one product. Operating outside of traditional publishing gave him more freedom.

What does the future of book publishing look like?

Overall, online publishing platforms and other online spaces are weakening publishers’ gatekeeping status. However, it is important to note that publishers still play an important role in the industry, as they can provide authors with editing, marketing, and distribution support that can be difficult for authors to replicate. While some authors will certainly find success on self- or hybrid-publishing platforms, these spaces are becoming more popular with writers and, as a result, more saturated with writing. They also require different efforts and skills from authors, including more self-promotion and socialization.

Additionally, some traditional book-publishing gatekeepers are trying profit from the success of the aforementioned phenomena, either by partnering with self-publishing platforms to traditionally publish successful books, or by seeking out and snagging creatives from these sites (which is what happened with Everina Maxwell), or by trying to incorporate once-organic marketing tactics (like BookTok’s viral marketing) into their own marketing strategies. They’re probably even factoring new data points from social media into their market analyses.

But whether traditional publishers can successfully harness these new phenomena remains to be seen. For now, we can appreciate the fact that the gates to publishing have opened wider, meaning there really will be more diverse content. Some of it will be sub-par, for sure, and the focus on what readers want is certainly allowing harmful topics to gain more traction in the literature world. (Such topics include glorified mafia romances, which usually feature a woman in a weird power dynamic with some mafia leader, only this relationship—including its super toxic, nonconsensual elements—is romanticized.)

But there are truly some diamonds in the rough that are finding or might find fame, which never would have before this golden age of self-publishing. I, for one, am excited to see what our new future of book publishing brings.

This trend isn’t relegated to just book publishing, either. The entire entertainment industry—every one of its sectors—is being disrupted by internet advancements, and those who used to be the gatekeepers of those sectors are also seeing their statuses shift. The world of entertainment is in transition, and were we to see its future now, it might look unrecognizable.