Publishers chase plot because plot is easier to describe. Algorithms chase engagement because algorithms are basically raccoons with spreadsheets. Meanwhile the slow burn reader is looking for something else: a book that trusts them to pay attention without being poked every twelve seconds.

That kind of quiet literary fiction asks something different from a reader. Not more, exactly. Just different. You have to be willing to notice the small turn in a sentence, the habit that explains a person better than a monologue, the way dread can sit in a room without anybody naming it.