Here is how platforms die: First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.
Links of the week February 6 2023 (06)
The ‘Enshittification’ of TikTok | WIRED
The Bookseller - News - Joyful stories tipped for 2023 but darker, genre-busting books may have their moment
Agents have predicted continued demand in 2023 for feel-good stories as well as a romance and ‘romantasy' boom thanks to TikTok but say there could be a shift this year towards darker, genre-busting and challenging books.
Just the Facts? Not in Historical Fiction.
When I pitched One Woman's War: A Novel of the Real Miss Moneypenny in October 2020, I had no idea that Operation Mincemeat, a movie about the same subject matter, would be released in early 2022, just a few months before One Woman's War was due out.
Mysteries That Bring You Inside the Workings of Fascinating Minds ‹ CrimeReads
In a sense, every detective novel is about the inside of someone's head. What immediately captures the reader at the beginning of a Sherlock Holmes story is the tick-tock of Holmes mind: what brilliance will he conjure next, what detail will he pull out of an ordinary scene, who is this guy?
The Bookseller - Spotlight - It must be love: romance and fantasy heat up
Both Romance & Sagas and Sci-Fi & Fantasy had banner years, with Romance's £53m its best since 2012, the year of E L James and Fifty Shades, and Sci-Fi & Fantasy's £47m its highest since 2007. Colleen Hoover's It Ends with Us was the overall bestseller of the year, with four other Hoover titles in the top 10. Fellow TikTok-boosted authors Ali Hazelwood and Emily Henry joined Hoover at the top. It should be noted here that both Taylor Jenkins Reid's The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo and Delia Owens' Where the Crawdads Sing were coded as General & Literary Fiction.