Reading Bestsellers
Recommendation Culture and the Multimodal Reader

Readers don't need bestsellers, but, within contemporary recommendation culture, they can be created by responsive, multimodal readers.

Danielle Fuller (Author), DeNel Rehberg Sedo (Author)

9781108812931, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 27 April 2023

75 pages
17.8 x 12.7 x 0.6 cm, 0.106 kg

Readers are essential agents in the production of bestsellers but bestsellers are not essential to readers' leisure pursuits. The starting point in this Element is readers' opinions about and their uses of bestselling fiction in English. Readers' relationships with bestsellers bring into view their practices of book selection, and their navigation of book recommendation culture. Based on three years of original research (2019–2021), including a quantitative survey with readers, interviews with social media influencers, and qualitative work with international Gen Z readers in a private Instagram chat space, the authors highlight three core actions contemporary multimodal readers make– choosing, connecting, and responding– in a transmedia era where on- and offline media practices co-exist. The contemporary multimodal reader, or the MMR3, they argue, illustrates the pervasiveness of recommendation culture, reliance on trusted others, and an ethic of responsiveness.

1. Introduction
2. Choosing
3. Connecting
4. Responding
5. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Literary studies: general [DSB]