Booktubing and Bookstagraming: The Boundary Spanning and Disembedded Nostalgia of Shelfies

This chapter examines the online practices of young booktubers and their boundary-spanning activities. The chapter focuses on the bedroom, the preferred space from which microcelebrities produce their vlogs on Booktube and related posts on #Bookstagram. The chapter outlines the network-making and community-building effects of their online interactions which lead to the formation of a transnational community that crosses time zones, geographical spaces and cultures and modifies our traditional understandings of privacy, publicness and professionalism. The chapter also analyzes the emergence of a new digital language and aesthetics, which spreads beyond YouTube, Instagram or Pinterest, and which creates a transmedia correspondence between booktubing, the publishing industry and home design, as part of established neoliberal trends in the creative industries.