“The Influencer Industry is a must-read for any journalist or general reader who has found themselves confounded by the ever-shifting meaning of ‘authenticity’ on the internet. Hund provides the best explanation I’ve read of how we all became personal brands.”—Kaitlyn Tiffany, author of Everything I Need I Get from You: How Fangirls Created the Internet as We Know It“Authenticity might be the moral pose of our time and nobody flexes harder than social media influencers. Emily Hund masterfully chronicles their rise in this sophisticated, comprehensive book. By turns adeptly critical and empathetic, it will define our industrial understanding of this precarious media work.”—Michael Serazio, author of Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerrilla Marketing“Hund paints a compelling picture of the interventions and tensions surrounding monetization, technological innovation, and self-brand building within what she calls the ‘influencer industry.’ Her book offers a rich historical texture to this industry, with new insights into the rise of self-entrepreneurship within cultural economies. A must-read.”—Sarah Banet-Weiser, author of Empowered: Popular Feminism and Popular Misogyny“An illuminating look into the behind-the-scenes commercial dynamics that shape our social media feeds. In her fascinating study of the influencer industry, Hund shows how authenticity is turned into profit, metrics into assets, influence into propaganda, and what this means for the future of social media content.”—Angèle Christin, author of Metrics at Work: Journalism and the Contested Meaning of Algorithms