Platform Paratext: Reading Amazon Book Product Pages

Digital technologies have transformed reading experiences, from the formats we read, the hardware we use, and the ways we approach texts. The technical inability to separate ebooks from the platforms on which they are sold, distributed and accessed renders these dot.com domains important sites of paratext and the information etched into them part of the interpretive experience of the text. Building on scholarship that updates paratext theory for the digital age, this article theorizes platform paratext and examines resultant changes to the authorization, locality and functionality of paratext due to platformization. Using a grounded theory approach and drawing on a sample of 40 Amazon product pages of romance and bestselling titles, it explores how platforms’ affordances, interface design and algorithms contribute to new forms of paratext and modify and mediate author, publisher and user-generated paratext. Platform paratext on Amazon product pages demonstrate the influence of algorithms, datafication and commercial imperatives on the production and manifestation of paratext.