From cultural entrepreneurship to economic entrepreneurship in cultural industries: The role of digital serialization

Abstract Digitization has provided entrepreneurs direct access to consumers in cultural industries while offering intermediaries an alternative to critics' reviews when deciding whether to invest in creative products. Using data from the Chinese online self-publishing industry, we examine whether and how intermediaries use popular acclaim when deciding to invest in self-published books. We then flip the script and examine whether cultural entrepreneurs generate intermediary investment through popular acclaim and to what extent they do so through a digital serialization strategy. We find that, by encouraging both popular acclaim and intermediary investment, digital serialization emancipates cultural entrepreneurs from the indirect and uncertain reciprocity historically described by cultural entrepreneurship theory. Instead, digital serialization allows cultural entrepreneurs to generate consumer attention directly through economic entrepreneurship and to alter the power and roles of intermediaries and entrepreneurs in the cultural production process.