The internet is ever-present, a background hum to our daily lives that has infiltrated every aspect of modern existence. It has created ever more competition for burgeoning authors, but also ever more opportunities for literary celebrity to emerge and to flourish.
One of the most unique, and sometimes controversial, beginnings for an author in the age of the internet is fanfiction. E.L. James’ infamous Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fanfiction; Anna Todd’s After series, which has spawned multiple film adaptations, rose to fame on Wattpad, where her leading character Hardin Scott was known as Harry Styles. The internet, and fanfiction culture in particular, has made it easier than ever to share writing with the world, and so it stands to reason that many authors first cut their literary teeth in the shadowy archives of Wattpad. It also makes sense that these authors would have appeal to agents and publishing companies; an adaptation of a successful fanfiction comes with a prefabricated reader base, a guarantee of sales and support in a world where it can often be difficult for books to gain traction amongst the endless sea of traditionally- and self-published titles.
However, Wattpad is not the only route to literary celebrity. Many people are no stranger to the concept of Booktok (or Booktube, or Bookstagram…), different variations on the same beast that has infiltrated the broader influencer sphere. The phenomenon generated vast churn of book recommendations and critiques that can catapult a previously unknown book to best seller status. Authorial internet presences can also boost sales, building a loyal base of readers who will support and promote their new novels. Colleen Hoover boasts 1.9 million followers on Instagram, and although she may be a contentious figure to many, there is no denying her stupendous success in the literary mainstream, with a flurry of popular novels and film adaptations to her name. Her literary success is inextricable from the internet, with her career beginning with self-published titles on Amazon and then finding increased visibility following a favourable blog review which boosted her sales. Emily Henry, another romance author, has a smaller but still very much substantial 666 thousand Instagram followers, and similarly has enjoyed great commercial success and a newly released Netflix adaptation of her novel People We Meet On Vacation.
Success born of the online world can be somewhat more subtle, too; the rise of Sally Rooney, arguably one of the defining authors of the current age, is in part due to the internet despite her lack of a public-facing personal social media. The internet may not have made her—an agent reached out to her after reading her personal essay ‘Even If You Beat Me’—but it did propel her to the dizzying heights of literary celebrity, due to her novels’ popularity online and the virality of the Normal People TV adaptation. Her success is therefore perhaps easier to recognise and accept in the traditional sense, still more tethered to the world of literary prestige: her Wikipedia page lists her as the recipient of no fewer than seven different awards for her writing, and her intellectual heft is made apparent through the marketing tagline “Salinger for the Snapchat generation.” Despite Rooney’s own apparent ambivalence towards the fast-paced world of social media, there is no denying that it is the era which for many people her writing defines, and the audience which voraciously consume her novels.
Given how pervasive the internet is, it is now impossible to conceptualise modern literary stardom without it. A critically acclaimed novel can be published without the backing of Booktok, but to break into the world of mainstream literary success some form of online backing is almost always required. The internet has become an unprecedented tool, swiss army knife-like in its range and efficiency, in pushing authors under spotlights.
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