Writers Have to Eat, the Algorithm Doesn’t

It is no secret that modern publishing is deeply reliant on algorithms—you can’t sneeze without the algorithm knowing about it and making a chart to predict when you’ll do it again—and it does it with increasing precision. It’s something that can’t be contested nor, regrettably, played. “May the odds be ever in your favor” rings as true as it did in 2008, when Suzanne Collins first introduced us to the Hunger Games—if perhaps even more so. The publishing industry has always been kept behind a lock and key, with gatekeepers overseeing who was good enough to play inside their gilded cage. Publishing houses used to be the ones that determined the course of the great literary sail—but no more.