Exit Interview: The Life and Death of My Ambitious Career

by Kristi Coulter

Second, Amazon discovered that letting an algorithm make recommendations for customers resulted in many, many more sales than an editorial recommendation. Which makes sense: an editor’s pick is aimed at what you “should” like, while an algorithmic recommendation is based on what you’ve actually bought.6 Plus, if Amazon shows a Regency romance novel to millions of customers, maybe a handful of them will click or buy it. But if it shows the same book to just a few thousand people who’ve bought multiple other Regency romances, maybe half of them will click or buy, making the latter strategy a much smarter use of digital shelf space. On top of that, algorithmic recs don’t need custom-written copy, just a template headline like “Recommended for You” or “Customers Who Bought This Also Bought.” After the algorithm is done serving up the “perfect” recommendations, all that’s left for the people who used to be Amazon’s prized critics and tastemakers to do is to make the automated widgets and vendor-purchased placements show up in the right places on the site. When their tools are working, that is.