Romancing the Algorithm

Abstract

Many romance novelists have shifted to self-publishing mediated through online technologies, such as online retailer platforms for selling novels and social media for marketing. However, engagement with such complex algorithmic systems has posed challenges, including understanding continually changing algorithms, frequently changing silently, impacting novelists' successful professionalization and monetization. We conducted surveys and interviews with romance novelists to examine how they experience, interpret, and navigate algorithms. Our findings detail interviewees' efforts to comprehend algorithms, both individually and collectively, and leverage that comprehension to navigate and manipulate algorithms. We discuss how our interviewees constructed literacy of precarious algorithms on their work platforms, suggesting implications for designing algorithmic systems supporting digital work.