Here’s the story of how an AI DJ taught me why I shouldn’t give up on my publishing dreams:

Like many people, I listen to music on my morning walks. I subscribe to Spotify, a music streaming service, for this purpose. Although I enjoy the convenience of pulling up any song that crosses my mind, I miss the old days of scrolling through the FM dial on my yellow Sony Walkman, hoping to find that perfect jam, something new or an oldie but a goodie. That’s why I was thrilled when, in February 2023, Spotify released a new feature called DJ X. DJ X uses artificial intelligence (AI) to analyze a user’s listening habits and plays songs accordingly.

Spotify claims: “The DJ knows you and your music taste so well that it will scan the latest releases we know you’ll like or take you back to that nostalgic playlist you had on repeat last year.”

This sounded perfect. I put on my headphones, turned on DJ X, and headed out the door for my morning walk.

And DJ X does precisely what Spotify promised it would. It plays current songs I love and mixes them with classics and new songs it thinks I’ll like as well. But here’s the thing: I find myself constantly hitting skip. One morning, DJ X served up “Stick Season” by Noah Kahan, a folk-rock ballad perfect for contemplative autumn days, but I was craving the raw energy of the Beastie Boys’ “No Sleep Till Brooklyn” to get my blood pumping. Another day, it played Tyler Childers’s country twang when my soul needed the smooth, uplifting reggae rhythms of Bob Marley.

This wasn’t about being fickle—it was about having a rich, varied appreciation for different genres that serve different moments in my life. My musical preferences aren’t random; they’re tied to my mood, the weather, what’s happening in my world that day. And even the most sophisticated AI, drawing on years of my listening data, can’t predict those human elements.

How does this relate to publishing? Stay with me.

For the past four years, I’ve poured my time and attention into pulling together two full-length memoirs, one on my recovery from alcoholism and one on my journey through grief after losing my siblings tragically and too young. And just as I’m ready to query agents to pitch these memoirs, the publishing industry has declared the memoir genre unmarketable.

Here is one response I received from an agent I queried:

“Elizabeth, thank you so much for reaching out. It seems like a compelling project but I’m afraid I’ve been finding memoirs increasingly difficult to place and I’m afraid I just don’t have a clear idea on how to see it successfully to market. I’m so sorry I would not be the best advocate! Thank you so much for reaching out and best of luck.”

According to “The Hard Sell: Why Memoirs Get Fewer Book Deals,” by Allison K. Williams & Jane Friedman, memoirs are harder to sell to publishers than fiction because they lack established genre-based readership, typically involve a single story rather than multiple practice manuscripts, and require either celebrity status or an exceptionally unique angle to attract mainstream interest, as evidenced by declining deal numbers in Publishers Marketplace.

Great … Memoir is what I’ve poured all my writing time and effort into for my entire writing career. And now that I’m ready to sell my story to the world, the market says it doesn’t want it?

But wait, does the publishing world really know that memoir is unmarketable? They’re basing this assumption on past sales data, just as DJ X bases its predictions on my past listening habits. Yet readers, like music lovers, are wonderfully complex in their tastes and timing.

Consider Wild by Cheryl Strayed, published in 2012. At a time when the memoir market was supposedly saturated, this deeply personal story of grief and self-discovery resonated with millions. Or Educated by Tara Westover, which defied the “memoir fatigue” of 2018 to become a global phenomenon. These books found their audience not because market data predicted their success but because they spoke to something universal and timeless in the human experience.

So I’m not giving up on publishing my stories. Sometimes, the most powerful books are the ones that no one could have predicted—the ones that found their readers because they spoke to a truth that transcends market trends. Just as the perfect song can unexpectedly match a moment in our lives, the right memoir can speak to readers in ways that no algorithm could forecast. And that’s exactly why I believe my stories deserve their chance to find their readers, regardless of what the current market data might suggest.