I don’t think it would have been possible for publishers to deal with the absolutely massive amount of books they’d have to vet to do what you’re saying.
That works if the absolute number of books written is very small, so everyone interested in books pulls from that pool.
The publishers could try to find a bunch of good books and get absolutely nothing.
Curation is a multi-stage filtering pipeline. Such brands do not look at a firehose of content - they rely on existing networks and markers of quality before even considering content.
That works if the absolute number of books written is very small, so everyone interested in books pulls from that pool.
The publishers could try to find a bunch of good books and get absolutely nothing.