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Here's Why Book-Loving Communities Will Succeed Online In 2019

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In 2019, the closed social media community will succeed, thanks to its focus on slowing down, staying private, and going deep. Book lovers are a great example of the type of niche that's already thriving in more intentional communities, and they'll see even more success in the new year, as internet users everywhere start turning away from the information firehoses of today's social media giants.

What's the definition of a closed community? The relatively closed ecosystems offered by certain forms of media -- podcasts and email newsletters are the big two -- are defined by embracing the friction that more open social media platforms avoid whenever possible. "Podcasting’s 'bugs' — difficult to scan, share, comment on — are actually its features," RadioPublic CEO Jake Shapiro wrote recently for NiemanLab, "With Facebook and YouTube’s ceaseless sneezing, publishers are very much in need of podcasting’s antiviral cure." Once consumers have signed up, podcasts and emails will arrive on their smartphones in measured doses, trimming out the noise and giving an audience control over what they consume.

The rise of the subscription economy offers a different tack to ensure friction by requiring users to pay a subscription, which winnows out the trolls: Patreon and Substack are a few companies benefiting from this model in our current media environment. Either way, closed platforms deliver a curated experience both for consumers, who won't be inundated with a never-ending feed of posts, and for publishers, who will have more control over an information channel they own. It's a win-win.

When it comes to closed communities, book-lovers are ahead of the pack. They've long enjoyed forums and niche communities, from FanFiction.Net and Wattpad to mobile chat fiction apps and Facebook groups. The rising power of the online book club is worth mentioning, as their intentional, communal environment is driving their success, even if they are benefiting from open ecosystems like Instagram and Facebook. And there's one more big reason why book lovers are already prepped to enjoy more closed, relatively staid communities: They all love spending hours on end reading physical books, the oldest of the closed media ecosystems.

Audiences interested in diversity and inclusion would certainly do well to avoid open social media platforms for closed ones. Just look at two reports out within a week of each other. The first, a study from Amnesty International, confirmed that Twitter abuse cut across the political spectrum to disproportionately target black women, who were "84% more likely than white women to be mentioned in abusive or problematic tweets." The second report, from the online writing community Wattpad, found readers spent nearly 116 million minutes in 2018 reading stories in tags including #POC, #Diversity, and #DiverseLit, a number up 41 percent year-over-year. With 65 million users globally, Wattpad's trends are a bellwether for online book lovers that's not to be ignored.

Anxiety concerns, too, are a big reason users will switch to the low-stress environment of newsletters or podcasts. Anxiety is up everywhere, and getting worse: 36% of Americans told the American Psychiatric Association in 2017 that they felt more anxiety than in 2016, and this year that number grew to 40% of Americans who felt more anxious than in 2017. Sales of anxiety-related books rose 26% year-over-year in June 2018, according to Barnes and Noble. Communities that embrace their anxious members will thrive: Wattpad uploads of stories tagged with #Depression, #Anxiety, #MentalHealth, or #FreeMentalIllness rose 53 percent in 2018, totalling 138,000 new story uploads. 

In the upcoming year, user data breaches at big tech companies will remain a huge concern, and as the issue continues to press on consumers' minds, many are predicting we'll see a sustained backlash. Digital wellness is another reason to avoid the constantly updating news spout that Twitter and Facebook have become: The suite of wellness updates Apple added to iOS 12 heralds our growing interest in keeping the internet at a healthy distance.

To sum up, closed social media platforms are slower, more private, healthier, more inclusive, and less anxiety-inducing. When users keep deleting their Facebook accounts across the new year, they'll have podcasts and email newsletters to turn to in order to find the slower-paced community experience that book lovers are already enjoying.