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I give all this background information because I do not think one can assess a writer’s motives without knowing something of his early development. His subject-matter will be determined by the age he lives in ­– at least this is true in tumultuous, revolutionary ages like our own – but before he ever begins to write he will have acquired an... See more

So it is clear what kind of books I wanted to write, in so far as I could be said to want to write books at that time.

I had the lonely child’s habit of making up stories and holding conversations with imaginary persons, and I think from the very start my literary ambitions were mixed up with the feeling of being isolated and undervalued.

“Enshittification,” coined by the prolific technology critic and author Cory Doctorow, is one of these. Doctorow came up with the phrase, in 2022, to describe how all the digital services that increasingly dominated our daily lives seemed to be getting worse at the same time.

With over 50 million people worldwide identifying as influencers, and 2 million of them earning $100,000 or more annually according to Goldman Sachs, influencers have emerged as a transformative power in marketing.

For brands, micro-influencers present a compelling proposition. They are often eager to collaborate, less demanding than celebrities and more accessible. This dynamic allows brands to reach highly specific audiences while maintaining manageable campaign budgets.

When your brand aligns itself with an influencer, you’re aligning yourself with their voice and their content creativity abilities (and then hoping to grab some of their audience along the way).

But as social media expands its cultural dominance, the people who can steer the online conversation will have an upper hand in whatever niche they occupy — whether that’s media, politics, business or some other field.

In part because of their self-perceived outsider status, romance authors frequently see themselves as businesspeople as well as artists, responsible for their own survival and financial future. In contrast with fans of other genres who expect stars to drop a thick new novel every half decade or so, romance readers expect their favorite authors to... See more