Another Double Shift? Australian Authors, Digital Media and Gendered Promotional Labor

Abstract With falling revenues from book sales, industry-wide and publishing house restructurings, declining marketing budgets, and the affordances of digital media, the promotional labor associated with books is increasingly being shifted onto individual authors, and usually on an unpaid basis. This article discusses the findings of an all gender online survey of Australian authors conducted in early 2025—the first stage of a larger project on Australian women writers and digital media. We examine the gendered and genre differences in authors’ use of digital media for their careers, including preferred platforms, time spent using digital media, the rationale for using it, the support available, and attitudes towards this work. In addition, we detail respondents’ reported experiences of online harassment and misogyny and how self-censorship becomes a way of negotiating such limitations. Our findings suggest that digital media is an unquestioned, if not necessarily effective, part of the field of literary production, and that its use is highly gendered. Moreover, the early promises of digital media as an expanded and liberated form of public sphere are shown to be hollow, instead subjecting authors to more unpaid work and limiting the types of public conversations in which they can participate.