These are curious times, to say the least, for human writers navigating an increasingly digital book world. Technology mediates every facet of a book’s publicity, promotion, sales, and connection to readership—not to mention what makes it to the page. Out of the immediate questions that writers face in sharing their work and protecting their rights arise more intangible, existential ones: How has technology changed the way writers reach readers, and is it shaping the way we write? What’s lost—and what’s gained—as literary culture shifts to the digital, if we trade bookshelves for online browsing, print for Substack and social media, the quick answers of AI for the labor of writing? And as an ever-stronger undercurrent resists the digital, how will literature continue to be a force for good, connecting us to meaning, deep thinking, and our own humanity?
In this special section:
• Touching Grass in the Age of AI: Surprise and Discovery Among the Tall Sedges by Alexandra Kleeman
• What the Algorithm Hath Wrought: Book Discoverability in the Digital Marketplace by Laura Bogart
• Have You Been Listening? The Neuroscience of Audiobooks and Its Implications for Writers and Publishers by Juliette Han
• Cutting Out the Middleman: How Substack Connects Writers to Readers, and What That Means for Legacy Publishing by Katie Arnold-Ratliff
• The True Measure of Engagement: What Social Media Got Right—Then Woefully Wrong—and How Real Connection Is Still Attainable by Rob Spillman
