Since our episode on what makes a book a bestseller, Julie and Eve have been eager to determine: Can artificial intelligence help authors get to the top of the New York Times bestseller list? Marc Acito--novelist, cultural critic, playwright, Broadway librettist, film/stage director, and Eve’s high school best friend--runs his novel How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater through Authors A.I.’s Marlowe (aka the Bestseller-ometer) in the name of literary science.

How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater
”A seriously adult teen novel...Wildly camp and achingly funny.”
—BBC

Go Deeper
Book Dreams: Episode 20: “What Makes a Book a Bestseller?”
The Bestseller Code: Anatomy of the Blockbuster Novel, by Matthew Jockers and Jodie Archer
How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship, and Musical Theater, by Marc Acito
Attack of the Theater People, by Marc Acito
Allegiance (Broadway musical), book by Marc Acito
A Room with a View (musical), book by Marc Acito
Bastard Jones (musical), book by Marc Acito
Birds of a Feather, by Marc Acito
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown