Acknowledgments

This textbook stands on the shoulders of a substantial and growing body of scholarly and journalistic work on creator labor, platform power, digital entrepreneurship, and media economics. We are grateful to the researchers, writers, journalists, and creators whose documented work — published in academic journals, platform transparency reports, investigative journalism, and creator-authored case studies — makes a rigorous education in this field possible.

Academic contributors. Brooke Erin Duffy's work on the "not-quite labor" of aspirational creative work, particularly Not Working: Gender, Race, and the Hidden Cost of Self-Branding (Yale University Press, 2017), established foundational frameworks for analyzing the invisible labor and structural inequities of creator economies that this textbook builds on throughout. Researchers in platform studies, including Tarleton Gillespie (Custodians of the Internet, 2018) and Nick Srnicek (Platform Capitalism, 2017), provided the analytical vocabulary for understanding how platforms shape the conditions of creator work. Scholars working in digital labor studies — including Trebor Scholz, Miriam Cherry, and the growing field of gig and platform labor research — have documented the economic conditions that this textbook addresses honestly rather than euphemistically.

Creator economy researchers and journalists. The ongoing work of Li Jin, formerly of Andreessen Horowitz and founder of Atelier Ventures, on the economics of the creator middle class provided crucial quantitative grounding for our monetization chapters. SignalFire's Creator Economy market research reports documented the income distribution realities that underlie our chapter on equity and access. Liz Pelly's journalism on algorithmic suppression of LGBTQ+ and BIPOC creators, published in The Baffler and elsewhere, is cited in our equity chapter and informed our coverage of algorithmic bias throughout the book. The DoorDash/Influencer League research on racial disparities in creator brand deal rates is directly cited in Chapter 38 and informs the equity callouts in every monetization chapter.

Platform transparency. We acknowledge the partial and imperfect nature of platform transparency reports, while crediting YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, and Twitch for the policy documentation they do make publicly available. The gaps in that documentation are themselves analytically significant and addressed in the text.

The creators whose candor made this possible. Thousands of creators have spoken publicly and with unusual candor about the economics of their work: revenue figures, brand deal rates, burnout experiences, platform suppression, and the gap between public narrative and private reality. Hank Green's public writing about creator economics, Emma Chamberlain's documented career transitions, Rhett and Link's explicit discussion of their media company evolution, and dozens of other creators who have shared their business realities rather than only their highlight reels have made a textbook grounded in realistic examples possible. We have cited specific creators in context throughout; the broader culture of creator transparency that has emerged over the past decade is a collective resource this textbook draws on gratefully.

A commitment to equity. This textbook was designed from the beginning with the understanding that creator education has historically served some students better than others — those with existing capital, those whose identities are amplified rather than suppressed by algorithms, those whose communities are prioritized by advertiser spending. We have tried to write a book that names these disparities explicitly, presents documented evidence rather than anecdote, and provides both structural critique and practical strategy. If we have fallen short of that standard anywhere in these pages, we welcome the correction.

February 2026