First, what is “someone like me”? Hyper educated, liberal, woman, minority, child of immigrants, worked in tech, held a management position.

Let’s break down the feedback I hear. First, it’s “accessibility” - people love smart women as long as they don’t sound smart. People love minorities in power as long as we don’t sound too authoritative.

I get feedback that introducing new concepts and using words like “sociotechnical” is not accessible if I’m not writing an academic book (I’m not) 2/

I make it clear in my proposal that the book I’ll spend my time on is more akin to the impact of Kahneman or Gladwell or Dawkins or Harari (even if I don’t nec like all of them as humans). This is where the “hyper educated” part becomes a liability. I don’t have it in me to write a cute pop tech book.

I guarantee you if people don’t understand a word in their proposals they assume the problem isn’t the author.
3/

Next is “not enough of me.” I understand that I am old and boring and don’t have a constant need to share my lived experience as evidence.

I also notice a trend of trauma voyeurism where women and POC are expected to lay their worst experiences bare for public consumption and evaluation. No fucking thank you.

Of course, where I worked and what I did is interesting as an anecdote or demonstration of first hand expertise. But that’s not what they want is it?
4/

@ruchowdh I’m going to disagree with the suggestions to self publish. Perhaps as a backup plan if you can’t sell the book but given what you describe and the reactions on this thread I would hope you can find the right agent/publisher.

4 agents/agencies you decided not to work with may seem like a lot of no’s but sounds like the decisions to not work with them was largely yours - which is, ironically perhaps, a really good sign for you - many writers I know struggle to even get an agent’s time