Authors and Algorithms

Discovery is a persistent challenge for many types of online commerce. In the digital environment, where inventory is nearly unlimited, consumers need help to discover what will interest them.

Agents and publishers want to find authors. Authors want to find readers. And readers, they want to find books. Helping make these discoveries happen is a powerful digital tool that evaluates writing styles and matches a work with books just like it.

Inkubate is a data analytics platform expressly designed for authors to reach audiences with pinpoint accurate marketing. Research has shown that readers respond more to writing style than either genre or subject matter. The digital service at Inkubate “reads” a manuscript to find writing characteristics it has in common with other works. On social media platforms, authors then match their books with readers already inclined to like them.

“We use very powerful algorithms to look for patterns within a manuscript,” explains Inkubate cofounder Jay Gale. “This allows us to hone on how an individual author uses the underpinnings of the construction of language. We then compare this to the pre-computed ‘fingerprints’ of thousands of manuscripts previously published in the marketplace, and we are able to measure the similarities to find the closest matches.”