Is an Algorithm the Answer? Wattpad Books’s Challenge to Publishing Infrastructures

Abstract

This article explores Wattpad’s algorithmically defined publishing arm, Wattpad Books, and its claims to be a neutral and unbiased alternative to traditional publishing selection processes. Removing editorial bias with an algorithmic selector, however, does not eliminate bias entirely; rather, it shifts bias from editors to the creators of the algorithm. Wattpad Books thus presents a new and insidious bias in publishing, claiming a neutrality in its data-driven proprietary processes that it does not have.