Writers-for-Less: A Case Study on the Obscure Exploitation of a Young Filipino Writer

ABSTRACT

This paper aims to investigate the phenomenon of regular netizens turned into print professional writers through the facilitation of the blogging platform Wattpad, in a case study of a young writer's experience. The proponent had a one-on-one interview with Ms. ABC from publishing company A (name and publishing company name withheld) and she innocently related her encounter with the publishing company, from the moment she got an email that she would be hired as a professional writer, up to the basis of her compensation, and all her actual participation with the said venture.

The proponent, on the other hand, tried to investigate the phenomenon as he delved into the obscure or probable case of exploitation of the young writer, and relate it to the bigger picture of why publishing companies in the Philippines would go into such venture, and ultimately, its effects on the produced creative literary works by the seemingly growing industry based on the crossover between social media-blogging and book publishing.

This study will be limited to just one participant, but can be explored further on with more interviewees to actually create a collective narrative on the said phenomenon.

INTRODUCTION

In many places in the metro, or even in most provinces, a second-hand shop for books, popularly known as books-for-less, can be found. The book, though its value have already devaluated, can still be marketable even after a long duration of time, and is to be considered as one commodity that cannot be stale (Anderson, 1983), only if it would be revised, perhaps. Through this long and enduring process, the writer who made the book can, not only extend fully his or her influence, but also, make his or her work, or, him or her self eternal.

From the earliest papyrus scrolls from 2500 years ago ("Book History Timeline") up to the present era of the internet, books continue to bridge the psyche of the writer with that of the readers of his or her works, as the basic skills of reading and writing became very useful in every day life.

Libraries were created to house important scrolls or books and became a repository of knowledge, and now, the internet continues to get a hold on this role as it becomes a modern day library -- with its many functions, the internet has become a complete documentation of human life, culture, and activity. The only difference between the library and the book, aside from technology, is simple -- the library serves as a wider or broader collection of information and was capable of faster retrieval of such, but on the downside, not all contents of the internet are, to put it, with substance -- one should not always believe in every little thing that is to be seen in the internet, so to speak. This is for every netizen (Hauben, 1996) can actually write something and post it in the internet, but this does not mean that all netizen posts should be considered true or veritable. In contrast with books wherein information might also not always be true, one can always be sure that books undergo a certain process wherein writers, content, etcetera were screened to make sure the book to be produced is of calibre.

But all are different in the world of fiction books wherein the internet and books intersect for writers on both areas can always submit something that is personally crafted from imagination, and the only difference, perhaps, would be how the vita brevis (like experience and certain trainings or degrees) of certain writers in book publications were screened and considered, aside from pure talent-- which is unquestionnable-- in order for one to be published. The internet, on the other hand, is a wide horizon for netizens, with or without that vita brevis, to write and publish their own stories or other creative work on platforms such as blogs, and the like, which is accepted by everyone for the internet is a free and open source of information and all netizens must just learn how to discern legitimate from false information (Hauben,1996). The only problem on this equation arises when the internet becomes a recruitment ground for paid professional writing for books.

Aside from the disconnect between writers in print such as books, and netizens-cum-writers is that the latter is often viewed by society as somewhat amateurish rather than the first who are seen as professionals. More so, there is also a trend wherein a lot of netizen-writers are practically young, the bulk between age 21 to age 35 ("Inside Blog Demographics", June 2010) and so, if ever they shift towards professional print publications, netizen-writers can be perceived as people in a new job without real experience, for, writing in the internet for non-profit blogs and paid print publishing are two different things. In addition, a netizen-writer's resume (vita brevis) might or might not be appropriated for the job, except for the unquestionable passion and talent for writing. And so, the disconnect widens.

This paper is a sort of investigation on this phenomenon, a case study wherein a writer from an online blog who turned to be a writer in print, and why such normal phenomenon these days of the internet era is sort of leading into an obscure way of exploiting the creative sector, especially young writers. This paper would also like to lift the undisclosed narrative of the said obscure exploitation and transcribe it in a way where people will be more aware of it, as this case might not, and definitely, an isolated one.

The focus on this paper is the actual experiences of netizen-writer ABC from publishing company A The proponent of this paper has interviewed Ms. ABC recounted her personal journey from a netizen-writer for a blogging site called Wattpad, up to her discovery and current job as a writer for publishing company A. This paper's limitation and point of improvement is that it only involves one respondent. This can be improved by comparing Ms. ABC's experiences with that of other writers with similar stories in order to have a collective study on this phenomenon.

As of the moment, let the focus be Ms. ABC experiences in publishing company A and as this paper checks whether or not exploitation on her part is present, or is it simply obscured from a mere observer's point of view.

RELATED LITERATURE

The first blog was birthed in 1994 as Swarthmore student Justin Hall created Links.net even though the word blog was not yet conceptuslised. In December 1997, it was online diarist Jorn Barger coined the term 'weblog', meaning "logging into the web", and soon the term was also corrupted and made into the term 'blog' by Peter Merholz (Thompson). Ever since, blogs have transformed the lives of human beings; from a mere mode of self-expression up to digital dailies, up to blogs which were made into books and movies. Right now, blogs are also used to be marketing platforms as ads were in place and specifically appropriated with the content of each, just like when Google made AdSense in June 2003 (Thompson), and because of this, hundreds of blog platforms were already populating the world-wide web.

Among all these, there is one that is characterised as the "Youtube for writers" as it gives a netizen-writer the chance to be in the literary limelight in the internet. This website is popularly known worldwide as Wattpad. Wattpad was created in 2006 and the concept was to create a blogging website wherein netizen-writers can "publish" their works while the readers may interact, as well -- innovating the typical book experience. According to Canadian author Margaret Atwood, Wattpad offers anonymity to writers -- no age or sex, just pure talent to contend with, but it is thriving with young authors as it becomes a breeding ground of future generation of writers. It is just, nevertheless, biased to the "west", according to Atwood for it is there that they have the facility to maximise such technology. This statement, however, is questionnable, for far from Atwood's "west" lies a country in the "east" that is second to the United States in terms of Wattpad traffic and usage -- it is none other than the Philippines ("How a Site for Publishing Stories is Changing Philippine Publishing", October 2013 ).

As the second most represented country in terms of Wattpad usage, and with almost a total of 20 million users recorded every month, the Philippines is considered to be e huge market by the blogging platform. With its wide array of users -- writers, readers, and writer-readers write, read, and exchange stories with one another in a variety if genres the users also generated ("Book History Timeline").

To give a brief introduction on the interface and ergonomics of Wattpad, one user can always sign-up with a single email. The user can then already do a variety of things -- one, read the content "published" by other netizens on their blogs; two, write your own stories and start publishing them in your own page; three, interact with other netizens using Wattpad to increase readership or to comment on a certain story, or to just make friends on the internet as one can always send a direct message or a comment on a certain post. In August 2013, 1.3 million messages were exchanged in the blogging platform ("Book History Timeline"), certifying its role as a social networking site about a community that shares ideas, stories, and the love for reading. There was even an option wherein newsletters and updates can be forwarded to the user's mailbox for faster identification of notifications.

The popular genres in Wattpad among Filipino users are the following: romances, comedic, swoon factors (kilig), teen fiction, and fan fiction -- the last being the one with the bulk of stories among all genres with more than 1500 stories created, as the teen love-team Kathryn Bernardo and Daniel Padilla became one of the most favourites fan fiction subjects (How a Site for Publishing Stories is Changing Philippine Publishing", October 2013) -- another proof that the blogging website caters a younger threshold of audiences.

In terms of age of users using Wattpad, a more detailed summary was yet to be created but on bloggers in general, a study by Sysmos.com had already yielded similar results with the earlier presumption. In more than 100 million blogs analysed in June 2010, 20.2% are users age 20 years and below; the bulk of users aged 21 to 35 years has a whopping 53.3%. Bloggers age 36 to 50 years are 19.4% of the population, and the remaining 7.1% are from age 51 years and up ("Inside Blog Demographics", June 2010).

From the same web report, it was also noted that the rate of bloggers in terms of gender has an equal distribution with around 50.9% female bloggers, and the other half of 49.1% are male bloggers. It can be noted, nevertheless, that given such genre of Wattpad content awhile ago, one can already presume the dominance of the feminine touch on the said stories, and maybe because of such huge potential in the market, around 4 publishing companies in the Philippines are in the venture of turning blogs into printed books, "to give the readers a sense of property on the stories they love", Mr. Arnel Gabriel, publisher of PSICOM recounted. As of now, Summit media, and two more new publishing companies have locked on the venture of printing Wattpad-generated content in the Philippines.

This, however is not an isolated case in the world. In the US, where Wattpad's number one market is, deals have been struck between Wattpad and publishing companies. Case in point is the recent tie-up between Sourcebook and Wattpad to publish young adult genre books in September 2013 ("Sourcebook and Wattpad team up for agile publishing partnership for young adult books", September 2013), though in this case, not print books but ebooks, which is a growing trend abroad that publishing companies go paperless by printing or publishing online.

WRITERS-FOR-LESS: Data presentation and Analyses

In the Philippines where Wattpad has its number two market in the world, it can already be deduced that the blogging platform and local publishing companies would also replicate trends that are popular in the number one market, to expand its productivity and influence. In this whole seemingly perfect picture an unspoken voice emulates from writers who are used to facilitate the whole machinery.

According to Margaret Atwood, Wattpad can already be a pool of writers, that could somehow be translated with a place where professional writers can come from, but this study would like to dissect that status quo and check whether this is true in the story of netizen-turned-writer Ms. ABC.

Vita Brevis

Netizen-writer ABC is a 22-year old graduate of Communication Research in PUP Sta. Mesa, and has started using Wattpad as a place to write her stories way back in 2010 when Wattpad is not as popular as today. Even if her university degree is related in communication, she claims to have no formal training in writing, and her talent is pure and innate. Starting from her grade school years, up to her secondary school, she has been "trained" when she was assigned or when she volunteered to make a script for classroom plays and the like -- nothing really big, as she described it as "simple".

When she was in college, she discovered Wattpad when her friends and classmates introduced it to her in December 2010. She claims that she became a reader first before she became a writer in Wattpad, as she was inspired by most works she had seen on Wattpad. She was, nevertheless, amazed by how Wattpad became a "Facebook for writers" where people can also interact and connect with the obvious common denominator and interests.

Life as a Writer

ABC's life turned around from a simple student-cum-netizen writer to a full-fledged professional writer when the publishing company A's editor KG called her and sent her an email. She was so surprised for her first work was just a simple young adult book filled with swoon factors depicting a new way of dating in the internet era through social media, and more importantly, it is just something she made "for fun lang" (only for fun) and a stress reliever, and she even doubted her self as she called her work "hindi for publishing purposes" (not for publishing purposes) -- that she is even aware and humble to admit that her work is not of the publishing calibre.

Soon after the email and call from editor KG, she became one of the pioneer Wattpad writers to be published by publishing company A. They were seven writers in all -- all females, with almost the same age range from 20 to 25. They were dubbed as the Gold Writers. She was all so curious about how she was selected from among several hundreds or thousands of writers in the Philippines, as her work according to her was not of the publishing type, too. Her questions have been answered when she saw her other friends online as part of the seven Gold Writers, too! She then only knew that she was selected through the referral of her friend AD whose work was the first one to be published as a book; she was first selected for she was among the top 5 most "read" and liked item on Wattpa.

She knew, as well, that her work was considered because of her disposition and good character as a writer -- other demanding netizen-writers were dropped because they were too arrogant and demanding from the publisher that the publisher terminated whatever relationship they had for they cannot picture the future of working together for a project.

When her book came out in print, she. Was surprised to see the outcome of her work. Most parts have been edited for technicalities, such as grammatical errors -- all screened and modified by editor KG. "Ibang-iba yung sinulat ko sa Wattpad sa libro." (My previous work is very different from that in the book.) Though, ABC claims the plot of the story is still it, no characters deleted or added, or part added or changed, as she was very thankful of editor KG's effort to fix the book, and because of this, she was encouraged to write more stories.

After her book has been published in print, ABC continues to work on her second project -- a sort of suspense-thriller according to her for they have the "power" to tell publishing company A which to edit and print, as long as they follow the guidelines of the publishing company.

When asked about how she was compensated, she said they were to be paid in royalty basis depending on sales but did not specify the per cent of share but probably just like the regular scheme, the editor and whoever made the formatting or cover will also share with that per cent of royalty. They also signed a sort of contract per book, not on how many books they would have to write to fulfil the contract.

Future Prospects

Aside from writing her book, ABC will undergo training on creative writing, grammar, and all just like all writers in her Gold Writers batch, but these were all mere plans of publishing company A, and have no dates to specify when these would materialise. As of the moment, she enjoys going around the country's major cities to promote her book, as the previous week prior the interview, she went to Cebu for a book signing.

More so, she sees more Wattpad writers coming up front as publishing company A sourced more writers and has created a new batch of writers. Another batch has recently been dubbed as ICONS, or one that is made entirely of males. More than that, she revealed a move done by publishing company A to source writers from other blogging sites such as Tumblr.com, and a movie to be based on some books published by her batch-mates in Gold Writers.

Analyses

One can already see the great disconnect between the selection of writers and the agenda of publishing company A to source writers online. The question that lies in between would be about why would such a publishing company try to harness a group of writers from young netizens wherein they can always accommodate submissions from professional writers who pass works of fiction to be published. The answer would be simple -- perhaps there is no substantial submission from writers can be found -- in content and in numbers, or the publishing company's goal -- just like any enterprise -- is not to promote literature but to gain profit in an easy and less-expensive way.

Let one look at the reason why there is probably no substantial submission sent on a publishing company. The reason behind this would probably be two things -- first, the publishing company's reputation or credibility is not yet built due to the longevity of years the company is running, or second, the quality or content of printed materials that are published are not too attractive for other writers to submit to the company, or simply put, there are other publishing companies that writers can choose to submit before they select publishing company A.

Secondly, consider the fact that publishing company A is created only for profit. The layman's theory of social exchange is to increase the gain and lessen the expense in a transaction. Maybe publishing company A's goal is to merely profit in the process as it cut down costs on compensating professional, well-known, and experienced writers. Thus, source writers in a potential "pool" -- netizen-writers.

This move can clearly be attributed to the supposed increase in production of publishing company A's array of books to sell to the market, and probably be also market-driven for there is a clear competition between several publishing companies catering Wattpad or netizen blog writers.

More than this, one can see the change in the mode of production (Marxists.org) of books, as though hurrying it in order to increase the profit of publishing company A. To illustrate this using simple metaphors, one should look at the traditional way of writing a book like that of the traditional farming method. As the landowner (publishing company A) changes the mode of production and shifts in using tractors (netizen-writers) in yielding crops (books published) rather than human power, the profit would be greatly be increased. However, unlike farming for crops, books have a content that lies not only in the way the commodity has been produced, but also of a quality to uphold. This now goes to the issue of quantity over quality, as the use of a batch of Gold Writers makes seven new titles of books rather than individually screening a single author submitting his or her own manuscript. Thus, the writer can be seen as someone used by the publishing company only to increase their own profit as the product becomes a highly-marketable, popular form of popular culture -- even though the writer ABC admits her work is not at par with the quality of published books she had adored as an avid reader.

More than this, writers can become one-day celebrities, often treated as a commodity that can easily be replaced in the future. Chris Rojek, as mentioned in Turner (2010), said celebrities of this style can be characterised as "celetoids", or "accessories of cultures organised around mass communications and staged authenticity. Examples include lottery winners, one-hit wonders, stalkers, whistleblowers, sports’ arena streakers, have-a-go-heroes, mistresses of public figures and the various other social types who command media attention one day, and are forgotten the next." A strong proof for this is the fact that publishing company A hires new batches of writers wherein in a batch, there would be an obvious outlier who would excel in creating a bigger market or fan base, and so, the other who cannot cope to keep up can always be dropped for the "pool" of writers in Wattpad have thousands more of potential writers.

The fact that netizen-writer ABC still has difficulty in the grammatical command and technicalities in her composition of stories, there is no promise that she will be in a sustainable situation if she fails to improve her own writing skills in the future, most especially for the market for writers seems to widen and the competition to be published seems getting more narrow by the minute.

CONCLUSION

There is an obvious case of obscure exploitation in netizen-writer ABC's case. She was selected not because of skill but because of referrals of friends and her story was just rejuvenated by the efforts of editor KG who edits all of the stories to be turned as books. She might have innate talent or passion for writing but that is not of the question -- she was merely harassed in believing she could write a book even without the fundamental skills of a writer, as her creativity was eclipsed by the vita brevis and experience of a professional writer that she lacks.

Publishing company A, on the other hand takes this opportunity to maximise its gains by cutting costs and sourcing a pool of writers from netizens with the inclination or potential to become writers. Publishing company A speeds up its mode of producing books as it selects a pool of writers that makes stories that are profitable and are belonging from a popular genre like young adult stories with swoon factors. It therefore exploits its writers by making them one-day celebrities also known as celetoids from the term coined by Chris Rojek, making a name today but will soon be forgotten without making an impact or ample contribution to his or her field.

Though speaking from a singular point of view with just one respondent for this case study, this can already be treated as a microcosm of the pool of writers sourced by publishing company A. More so, further studies on a way larger scale should be explored to verify or nullify findings on this case study.

REFERENCES

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Hauben, M. (1996). Chapter 18: The Computer as a Democratizer "Netizens Netbook", page 3. Retrieved from http://www.columbia.edu/~hauben/book-pdf/

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