{"id":10950,"date":"2026-05-11T13:54:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:54:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/?p=10950"},"modified":"2026-05-11T13:54:46","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T20:54:46","slug":"authors-and-the-algorithm","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/2026\/05\/authors-and-the-algorithm\/","title":{"rendered":"Authors and the algorithm"},"content":{"rendered":"

I attended a sobering talk last week sponsored by Sisters in Crime<\/a>, a wonderful organization for writers. The speaker was Adam Chromy, an agent who works with authors to sell their book idea to publishers.<\/p>\n

He told us that far more books are published now than ever before (400% increase in the last 10 years), and that publishers no longer have the same job. Where they used to be the gatekeepers, selecting authors whose books had potential, today they are only interested in boosting authors who have social media cred. In search of a guaranteed best-seller, publishers want authors who already have a significant and meaningful social following, who already fill up events with guests who love their books, and who write trendy books. They are, in his words, “at the top of the algorithm”.<\/p>\n

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Created on Giphy by <\/span>SpecksofDust<\/span><\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The literary trends were the first shocker. As we have all seen, people read fewer books, and instead spend hours each day scrolling social media on their phones, looking for things that will make them feel something in seconds (or less). The books they like have a similar, longer-form feel: quick chapters that each have a little cliff-hanger, a protagonist who gets into worse and worse trouble with each chapter, a whiz bang ending that makes the reader feel something strongly, and a leit motif that holds it all together.<\/p>\n

Since the talk was on the state of publishing today, I’m quite sure Mr. Chromy knows exactly what he’s talking about, and I’ve seen the signs of everything he mentioned. It was simply unnerving to hear it spoken so plainly.<\/p>\n

The talk answered a lot of questions for me, like why my local bookshops pretend to be interested in me doing an event but don’t follow up. Why having a few hundred followers means nothing. Why writing slow-burn, immersive, historical books that demand sustained attention will never find a publisher. Why my fellow authors who are traditionally published complain that they still have to do all their own publicity. Why so many authors write posts ending with a question to desperately encourage “engagement”. And, yes, why everyone is writing on Substack as if it were an audition for Broadway.<\/p>\n

\"\"The implications for writing are clear. The algorithms, which are a combination of popularity and viral luck, determine not only the marketing but the content of published books. When asked about cozy mysteries, we were told they are dying out because (1) the audience for cozies is aging and dying, (2) they create a feel of community that people enjoy but that for younger people exists now in social media,\u00a0 (3) they are now in the “feel good” category, and (4) they’ll die now that mass market paperbacks are dead.<\/p>\n

What I heard helps explain how the binge watching of “series”, the scrolling and clicking on phones, and the quick emotional climax people want, are all connected. So is what I saw increasingly in the college classroom: just give us the gist, leave out the boring stuff, don’t make me accountable for something we talked about last week. It’s why students enjoyed my lecture and my classes but learned so little history. It explains why I tend to keep older books, but give away recent fiction because most of it is fluff.\"\"<\/p>\n

But although the tricks Mr. Chromy stated might indeed be what’s necessary to get an agent and publisher, part of me doesn’t buy it. There are readers who want an involved, escapist tale. There are people who want to be up all night reading, not because of cliff-hanging and page-turning, but because they want to stay with those characters and that story.\u00a0 Not every child, to reference the old experiment on patience and impulsivity, wants one marshmallow now rather than two marshmallows later.<\/p>\n

For authors, to prove yourself first as a social media “personality” may have very little to do with the quality of your work. As you know if you read my blog, having expressed a warm, giving, professorial persona for 34 years, I am ambivalent about creating a new one for being an author. Considering the emphasis on being “authentic”, I find it ironic that the only way to succeed as an author is to not be ones true intense, introverted self, but rather cater to the algorithm.<\/p>\n

Is it possible to do it another way? Well, I recently read that Hemingway was a great self-promoter, showing up at everything and deliberately creating his grumpy, slovenly, drunken, holding-up-the-big-fish persona. He did this even though he balked at Scribner for making him do interviews. But he wrote his way. Perhaps that’s the model for this new age as well.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I attended a sobering talk last week sponsored by Sisters in Crime, a wonderful organization for writers. The speaker was Adam Chromy, an agent who works with authors to sell their book idea to publishers. He told us that far more books are published now than ever before (400% increase in the last 10 years), […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[84,73],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-writing"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10950"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10961,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10950\/revisions\/10961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10950"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10950"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lisahistory.net\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10950"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}