Digital Social Reading (Open Access book, MIT Press)

[Federico Pianzola]

I'm happy to announce the publication in print and Open Access of my latest book:

Pianzola, F. Digital Social Reading. Sharing Fiction in the Twenty-First Century. MIT Press, 2025.
https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262550918/digital-social-reading/

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How digital social reading apps are powerfully changing—and nurturing—the way we read.

Conventional wisdom would have us believe that digital technology is a threat to reading, but in Digital Social Reading, Federico Pianzola argues that reading socially through digital media can help people grow a passion for reading and, in some cases, even enhance text comprehension. Digital social reading (DSR) is a term that encompasses a wide variety of practices related to the activity of reading and using digital technologies and platforms (websites, social media, mobile apps) to share thoughts and impressions about books with others. This book is the first systematization of DSR practices, drawing on case studies from Wattpad, AO3, and Goodreads on a worldwide scale.

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“Digital Social Reading is a timely and important contribution to our understanding of emerging technologies and trends in contemporary reading cultures. Innovative in the range of methods used, and ambitious in scale, the study offers an insightful and refreshingly optimistic take on communities and practices all too often ignored or misunderstood.” (Bronwen Thomas, Emeritus Professor of English and New Media, Bournemouth University)

“Digital Social Reading is a triumph of synthesis. Ranging across countries, languages, platforms and methodologies, Pianzola surveys the past 15 years of fiction-reading technologies and forecasts how they will continue to democratize readerly authority.” (Simone Murray, Associate Professor of Literary Studies, Monash University; author of The Digital Literary Sphere and Introduction to Contemporary Print Culture)

“Pianzola gives us a brilliant and refreshingly international overview of the objects, institutions, and activities that constitute 'digital social reading' and a lucid guide to the ingenious new methods that have emerged to study it.” (James F. English, John Welsh Centennial Professor of English and Founder of the Price Lab for Digital Humanities, University of Pennsylvania; author of The Global Future of English Studies)