Best Sellers Sell the Best Because They’re Best Sellers

source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/19/books/penguin-random-house-madeline-mcintosh.html

We have the biggest list of #books, we have access to the most data, so we could have a very accurate view on a daily basis of how #consumer demand was shifting. We could see right away when #people were grabbing the sourdough bread book, or the birding book, or the inspirational #book, or the book that put this moment in the context of #history.

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algorithmic #marketplace that serves up mostly the hits, driving a #cycle so self-fulfilling it’s nearly tautological: Best sellers sell the best because they are best sellers.

Unfortunately, marketing in its profit mania is mentally unable to recognize that in this case only books are written for the #algorithm. Similar to YouTube, where the big ones only produce videos on topics that are currently trending. This leads to a one-size-fits-all approach that kills any creativity and prevents new upcoming creative thinkers from evolving at all. These new thinkers could improve the world, but they have too few followers to be detected by the algorithm.

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#market #economy #creativity #news #ai #software #algorithms #marketing #capitalism