Skip to main navigation menu Skip to main content Skip to site footer

Vol. 3 No. 1 Electronic Wastelands?

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2023): Electronic Wastelands? Information Management, Cultural Memory, and the Challenges of Digitality

The Hollowed-Out Bookstore: Amazon’s Promotion of Empty Discourses in Their Online Bookstore: Amazon’s Promotion of Empty Discourses in Their Online Bookstore

Submitted
June 10, 2022
Published
2023-04-05

Abstract

Amazon is considered the world’s largest bookstore but what kind of books hide on the ‘darkest’ digital shelves? By looking beyond the new titles and best-sellers, this paper finds evidence of a wasteland of titles composed of content-free titles, corrupted reprints, and dangerous misinformation. Changes to publishing in the twenty-first century and the pressure of the market on Amazon can help to explain how this wasteland formed, but this paper also explores how this wasteland provides for specific audiences who live in their own cultural bubbles.