On the downside of real-time feedback (The Great Gatsby might never have been published)

๐Ÿ’Ž On the downside of real-time feedback (The Great Gatsby might never have been published)

Imagine the horrifying paralysis of trying to write a novel on a platform where the whole world has real-time access to each page. Critics brutalized the most famous novels of the twentieth century. The Great Gatsby came out to awful reviewsโ€” โ€œunimportant,โ€ โ€œpainfully forced,โ€ โ€œa dudโ€โ€”and weak sales. Virginia Woolf called James Joyceโ€™s Ulysses โ€œa memorable catastropheโ€” immense in daring, terrific in disaster.โ€ If novelists had perfect foresight of how the public would greet their work, they might never lift a quill or tap a keyboard.

Excerpt from: Hit Makers: The Science of Popularity in an Age of Distraction by Derek Thompson

HT: @rshotton

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