We often think of reading as a solitary act. The act of opening a book is to place yourself into a space where it is you and the words in front of you. Yet, like people of any other hobby, readers want a community. They find themselves at home in libraries, book shops, book clubs, English classes, poetry readings, and creative writing groups. Basically, any public space where the topic is books. Online is no different, with the communities for readers becoming more available and widespread.
For me, my first online book-ish community was as a middle schooler on a Scholastic message board centered around their book series The 39 Clues. The 39 Clues message board, or, T39C MB, as we "cool kids" with our acronyms called it, was created as a space for 39 Clues readers to talk about these books with like-minded kids. However, it became so much more. It was its own community with heated discussions about what 39 Clues characters belonged together or who shouldn't have died, but it was also full of conversations about other books, ourselves, and our own creative work with our fellow MB friends. Scholastic hosted Fanfiction Fridays and story contests where kids posted their contributions, created games, and ran roleplays so elaborate that it was like reading a novel, written by 12 authors. It was a place where a kid on a first name basis with their librarian could find a place for themselves.
As a site for kids, by 14, I was officially an "oldie" who remembered the "good old days" of the T39C MB. Almost everyone I knew had left for the ever-growing fanfiction sites: fanfiction.net, Wattpad, and Archive of Our Own (AO3). These sites, like the T39C MB, exist as creative spaces to read, write, and interact with pieces of media, as well as other readers and writers interested in the same media as oneself. They are sites with a niche for anyone wanting a good story with their favorite familiar characters. You can read and comment or publish a story yourself, but fanfiction websites are their own communities with their own jokes and acronyms.
At the same time, I joined social media. I followed book pages, publishers, and authors, but social media was not a place with a huge reading community, until recently. In the last few years, we have seen the rise of Bookstagram and Booktok, corner spaces of larger apps where readers have carved a space for themselves to share recommendations, aesthetic shelf pics, and memes about reading. They are easy to stumble onto in your scrolling, short to consume, and simple to interact with. For many readers, these social media platforms are to blame for long bookstore receipts and piles of To Be Read (tbr) books. For the modern young audience, it is the perfect community.
The Scholastic Message boards became incorporated into a larger Scholastic book community and gaming platform called Home Base in 2019. Fanfiction is sparking more and more conversations and the sites that house these types of works continue to have a steady readership. The success of Booktok and Bookstagram has created bookclubs and new marketing campaigns by publishers. How these communities will continue evolve is anyone's guess, but for now they are vibrant, active communities proving readers aren’t has solitary as they seem.
Commentaires