Scout It Out Dept.

By Serdar Yegulalp on 2014-10-19 10:00:00-04:00 No comments

The more I read about Amazon's Kindle Scout program, the less I like it.

There's a lot about it not to like, but in the end, it all comes down to the same problem: the "wisdom of crowds" is not wisdom. It's dullard-dom.

If you ask a thousand people what seems like a good idea for a book, the vast majority of them are likely to come up with either an exact copy of what's already out there or some mild variant on it. The one who does come up with something truly original and interesting gets drowned out.

To that end, Kindle Scout sounds like a great way to do nothing more than automate creative conformity. But then again, isn't that what most companies that traffic in "creative" work these days want to do? Sounds like a great idea, until you start wondering why everyone around you is dropping dead of boredom.