Beyond the Algorithm (Or Why I Don’t Trust TikTok to Build a Career)

Finding stability in a world built on feeds and trends

I gave a talk recently called Beyond the Algorithm: Building Authentic Author Brands in the Age of TikTok and AI. Which sounds very neat and tidy, very “industry panel,” but what I really meant was this: stop trying to play a game that was never built with authors in mind. The algorithm does not care about you. It does not care about your book. It does not care about your years of effort. It only cares about keeping people glued to their screens, and sometimes that means your book gets caught in the current, while at other times it sinks without a trace.

From my side of the desk, I see how brutal this can be. I can tell when an author has checked their TikTok analytics before they have had their coffee because the panic shows up in my inbox by 8 a.m. A video went viral last week and now the new one is flat. Or they are asking if we can “boost” something, as though I have a backdoor key to TikTok HQ. I wish I did. I would use it first thing on Monday mornings when the dread emails come in. I do not. None of us do. And the truth is, there is no secret hack. What worked yesterday might not work today, and what is working today will almost certainly stop working tomorrow.

What worries me more than the platform shifts is what it does to the authors themselves. I have had writers tell me they feel like they are failing because their videos are getting fewer views. I have had others admit they cannot even hear trending audio anymore without getting anxious. And these are people who should be writing, creating, resting, living, not bending themselves into shapes the algorithm happens to reward this week.

It turns into an unhealthy cycle. You start believing that your success as an author, your entire future, is hanging in the balance of whether an app decides to show your video to strangers in Ohio at two in the afternoon on a Thursday. That is not a career plan. That is emotional roulette.

And here is the kicker. Even when discovery happens, it often does not stick. A viral video can push sales up overnight, but it does not guarantee readers will stay with you. I have seen numbers spike and then crash, sometimes even lower than before, because virality does not equal loyalty. You can almost hear the balloon pop. Compare that to Colleen Hoover, who already had a dedicated readership before TikTok found her. Or Taylor Jenkins Reid, whose name alone signals a certain kind of story to her readers. When their books land on BookTok, it adds fuel to a fire that was already lit.

I often think about TikTok’s own failed experiment. They launched a publishing arm, 8th Note Press, with all the resources and algorithmic power in the world. If any company could have bent the system in their favor, it should have been them. And yet it did not work. Except even TikTok could not manufacture loyalty out of thin air. Algorithms can put a book in someone’s feed. They cannot make that person trust the author enough to buy the next one, and the one after that.

That is the thing I keep coming back to in my own work. Discovery is important, yes, but discovery is just the start. What lasts is brand and trust. That does not mean shiny logos or perfectly curated aesthetics. It means showing up consistently as yourself, in whatever form that takes, and letting readers connect with you as a human being. It means understanding what your books are really about, the themes, the tone, the worldview that makes them uniquely yours, and letting that be the through line across platforms.

I tell my authors all the time that they do not have to do everything. Please do not. You do not have to be the loudest voice on TikTok and the funniest voice on Instagram and the most thoughtful voice on Substack and the most insightful guest on every podcast and the person showing up at every book festival on the planet. That way leads to burnout, not branding.

Choose the places that feel like you. Choose the ways of connecting that you can actually sustain. If you love long-form writing, newsletters might be your best tool. If you thrive in conversation, podcasts make sense. If you want the intimacy of face-to-face connection, bookstores, festivals, and libraries are still powerful. There is not one right way, and the algorithm is never the only way.

One of my authors had a viral TikTok last year. It was a clever little video that caught a wave and racked up hundreds of thousands of views. Sales jumped, briefly. Then the algorithm moved on, as it always does. What was left was not a new loyal readership. It was disappointing.

Another author, who barely touches TikTok, grew steadily through her newsletter, her website, and her willingness to show up for small bookstore events. No spike, no viral moment, but now she has a reliable base of readers who will preorder her next book the moment it goes live. Which career would you rather have?

Publishing doesn’t make it easy. We all lean on algorithms, whether it is TikTok or Amazon’s “customers also bought” carousel or Instagram’s reel recommendations. We rely on systems that were not built with books in mind, and then we blame ourselves when they do not work. I get frustrated because, as a publisher, I have to answer questions I don’t actually control. I cannot tell TikTok who to show your video to. I cannot promise Amazon will surface your book in the “hot new releases” section. I can only help you build a brand strong enough that when the algorithm ignores you, your readers will not.

The truth is that AI already shapes so much of what readers see. It measures clicks, watch time, shares, and comments, and it makes cold decisions about what stays visible. You cannot beat it, but you can outlast it. That is the part I wish more authors would hold onto. AI can amplify, but it cannot make people care. Only you can do that by showing up consistently in a way that is authentic to you.

So if you are reading this and wondering if you are doing enough, let me be blunt. Stop thinking in terms of “enough.” The goal is not to feed the machine. The goal is to build something sustainable that actually feels like you. The platforms will keep changing. They always do. But your brand, the thing only you can create, can last longer than any algorithm. That is what will carry you through.

And if you have ever felt like you are on the hamster wheel of content creation, wondering why the rules keep changing and why you cannot keep up, I promise you, you aren’t alone. I feel it too, every time I have to talk an author down from despair after another algorithm shift. It is not you. It is the system. And the only antidote is to build something that does not depend on it.

That’s the work. That’s the hope.

Subscribe if you want to keep talking about books, publishing, and figuring this out together.