It is often said that writing short stories is harder than writing novels. There is very little room to set up a plot and learning what must be left out is probably a greater challenge than figuring out what to put in.
William Sydney Porter, better known as O. Henry, wrote a remarkable number of short stories. Not only his stories were tightly plotted and managed to deliver a huge emotional punch, but his prose is amazing. It is so tight. Not a single word can be taken out. O Henry Prize, the oldest major prize for short fiction in US, is named after him.
What fewer people know is that before Mr. Porter became known as O. Henry, he embezzled money from the First National Bank in Austin where he worked, fled to Honduras, and only returned to US so he could take care of his dying wife. After she passed, he began serving his 5 year prison term and wrote 14 short stories in prison before being released for good behavior.
The new brand of literary scam artist, unfortunately, has a lot less talent. Today I bring you this article from Vox: Amazon is filled with garbage ebooks. Here’s how they get made. If you’ve never heard of Mikkelsen brothers, you are in for a treat.
When we were opening the merch store, I went to Youtube to learn some of the basics of drop shipping (print on demand product) model. It very quickly became apparent that the real way to make money from drop shipping is to sell a course explaining how to do it. Because the realities of drop shipping are not pretty. Right now I’m trying to figure out how to make at least a couple of bucks on a floor mat that prints for $22 and ships for $23. (It’s going to be an expensive door mat with free shipping. Oy.)
This is exactly what Mikkelsen brothers do. They sell an online course on how to publish ghost-written books. The primary purpose of the course isn’t to teach you how to produce garbage and put it on Amazon – you can do that yourself very easily – it is to sell you on the idea of a lifestyle and passive income and then wring every dollar out of you.
As Christian talks, he seems to cast a kind of hypnotic spell. You start to wonder: “Am I stupid for not having invested in ebook publishing before now?” You see five-figure check after five-figure check. A ticking clock turns on. Christian wants to give you a special rate for the course. The course is worth $15,500. The regular price is $6,000. But he’s willing to give it to you for just $1,995 as long as you’re one of the first people to sign up after the webinar ends!
Amazon is Filled With Garbage Books, Vox.
Let me save you $2K. They use a scraper to mine marketplace for hot keywords, feed it to an AI to produce an outline, then they point you to a ghost writer who will write a “book” based on that outline for peanut shells, and then, supposedly, they get you an audio narrator for $20. At this point the audio will probably be AI as well. They will charge you extra for paid reviewers and cover design, and all the while they will bombard you with sales pitches for a premium $7,800 course.
Okay, to put things in perspective: $9,800 covers our entire production budget for Sanctuary: the editing, the cover, the audio narrator, the whole thing. Hell, there would be money left over.
If you are considering this, please don’t set your money on fire. This “passive income” stream isn’t for you, it’s for them. It is designed to squeeze as much money out of you as possible because to them you are a sucker. Setting aside the nature of the “books” themselves, If you hold up this process against the industry norm, it becomes obvious how every step of the way screws someone over.
- Pro rate per word as defined by SFWA is 8 cents per word, not $0.016667 per word. Ghost writers deserve more than starvation wage. Paying them so little is predatory.
- A pro audio reader charges between $200-$500 an hour, not $20 per book.
- Nobody wants to read a “book” produced in this matter, so one has to hire paid reviewers to lie. This is a fraudulent, unethical practice that will get you and them banned.
- By dumping hot garbage onto retailers, you make it that much harder for people who actually wrote their books to be discovered.
This is a literary equivalent of a nature-polluting chemical plant that is spewing poison into a river.
The article makes a point about the larger grift happening. In a sense, every industry has their own model of a steak and a hamburger. You can charge $50 for a steak. You will make more money per steak, but you will sell a lot fewer of them. Or you can charge $5 for a hamburger and make your money on volume. It is true that modern publishing marketplace pushes you toward the hamburger model. Keep your costs low and sell wide.
When it comes to books, this is not necessarily a bad thing. The lower the financial threshold is, the more people have access to books, the more people read. Nations where population is literate do much better than nations where the majority of people do not read. Libraries exist for a reason.
There is still room for steak. We have collector editions and expensive hardbacks. But again, most writers don’t get into this business to make money.
Writers write because they have something to say. They’re unable to shut up. They have a point of view. They put themselves through an emotional wringer to get it across, and sometimes lightning strikes and their work resonates with other people. That’s how writers make money. It’s not a field where you can get rich quick. If it was, Mikkelsens wouldn’t be peddling their courses.
If you want to write, write. There are a ton of free resources on the internet that will walk you through self-publishing step by step.
Mikkelsens are not O. Henry, but you could be.
Update: an excellent video linked in the comments. Thank you to Erickson Todd.
As always, I learned something new from this blog. Thank you!
Great post!! Thank you. I really liked your analogy of the polluted river.
I wish I could clap for this speech! as someone with some very niche genre interests, the amount of puddle I have to wade through to find genuine stories is sooooooo frustrating. I don’t even mind reading a good story with less than stellar writing by an emerging author when it is genuine or sometimes even the reverse, because stellar writing can sometimes overcome weaker plot elements. But you can absolutely feel when it falls into the mass cheaply produced pile of muck.
When I want to buy a book, I want to contribute to someones living wage, or hobby fund, not a machine.
lol I could rant for days in this topic.
basically, house Andrew gets my money because I love the quality of the writing and the care they have for their fans! look at them looking out for us 💜
Yes and it’s gotten to the point where I rely almost exclusively on my favorite authors’ recommendations for other series or authors because I don’t want to accidentally support scam writers.
agreed
I just have to convince myself to write! That mental wall is such a difficult thing, but I did watch one of their videos once and woah.
Here’s Folding Ideas / Dan Olsen’s excellent video on these folks:
https://youtu.be/biYciU1uiUw?si=QUMfEqNOrztu5qqz
Awesome! Thank you!
I was just thinking this video should be linked!
Great video, thank you for linking! Mr. Olsen had me at “dollar store Winklevii”
All I know is that you have to read a lot of frogs to find your prince these days. Luckily I quite like frogs, and those I don’t like I just throw back in the pond. (But it would be nice if there were more princes – I’m literary polyamorous 😉😉)
As someone with a KU subscription this makes sooooo much more sense. There are incredible indie authors on the platform but they are few and far between.
there is an author whose name, if I see it, is an instant no thank you even if the book idea is interesting. this author pairs up with other authors and turns short stories into novels. they repeat whole paragraphs about inane subjects. I imagine it is to get the Kindle price per page read quota, but I couldn’t read their work even if I found the ideas interesting. whole paragraphs rehashed copy-paste, word for word. they prolifically produce absolute garbage and after a bit I realized it wasn’t lack of polish but by design. yuck.
I also have a certain author I have to avoid for very similar reasons!
Me too. As soon as I see his name with someone else’s, it’s a hard pass for me.
We all know the name. And his “friends’ names too.
In a way, it makes it a bit easier to find the new AuthorGems since I know to ignore those other guys.
I’d love to know the authors people avoid.
Likewise, but I get why we shouldn’t do that here.
I also have an author I avoid* because she pads her books with multiple repeats of background info and interior monologue bits. It’s incredibly annoying! I first thought it was poor editing, but padding the word count is more plausible.
* I will occasionally borrow one on KU because I do enjoy her plots and characters, just not the repetition
Sometimes this happens because they are written as web serials, and then published without editing. He Who Fights With Monsters (a super popular series) is a great example. Why pay an editor when people are going to buy it (or read it on kindle unlimited) anyway?
“Why pay an editor when people are going to buy it (or read it on kindle unlimited) anyway?”
All of our serials are extensively edited and copyedited once completed. I’m not sure how to take this comment. Is this sarcasm or should I explain why fiction should be edited no matter when and how it is published?
I’d appreciate a post on the reasoning of editing to satisfy my curiosity about the work which goes into the process. As a reader, I have indeed picked up an ebook and wondered if it was edited and to what degree. The post on the types of editing was interesting.
It wasn’t until I started knitting ages ago that I really started thinking about processes in general and how the sole word of knitting doesn’t produce a final product. Sometimes lazy finishing really results in a poorly fitting garment, too, or even worse an accidentally snipped thread which causes a piece to unravel. Seemed pretty obvious after the fact but a lot of people get attached to the notion of what they think is the job/craft when it’s not always the bulk of it.
https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/editing-of-online-serials-sweep-of-the-heart/
https://ilona-andrews.com/blog/edits-and-more-edits/
There is more if you search the blog for editing.
If you’ve already read the post on the types of editing, may I get a bit more insight into what you mean about the “reasoning of editing”, please 🙂 ? As in, why do (all the different) edits? What do they add, and how important they are?
Thanks for the links! I just re-read both posts and was wondering why certain kinds of edits are done to various works and when. Serials seem to get tweaked for improvement after all chapters are out but I also remember some blog posts about edits on other works (usually not the serials-in-progress) which scrapped a lot of words because it really wasn’t working.
Some commercially successful authors seem to invest more in certain types of editing than others. I imagine a well practiced best selling author would have more of their process and workflow down than a newbie and more accurately scope & plan their projects?
Do some authors consciously opt to do less copy edits, possibly to publish faster, or are good/effective editors harder to find these days? Are some prolific fast to market driven ebook authors not seeing much workflow improvement from AI/ML tools? Or do their sales numbers show that less editing is fine at a 10% discount? Would that 10% cover edits if XXX copies were purchased Y weeks later if they needed more time?
As a reader who dates from the trad pub era, I think most of what I read in my earlier years was “old school” and edited which set my expectations to that reference point. Publishers also screened a huge amount of submissions and contracted works before the chosen works would be considered ready for printing? I noticed I had to screen my reading choices more carefully as certain types of low priced self published works skewed the new release Amazon bestseller rankings and/or some trad pub bestseller authors negotiated less/no editing when certain books really could have used it. It felt like some publishing houses trusted established authors to produce solid work based on prior track record but also printed books without much content, copy, or beta editing or the author refused to incorporate the edits. Perhaps it was competition between the seemingly shorter cycle self pub books and trad pub trying to keep paper books sales numbers up as that was how their success metrics were defined at the time?
I feel like you did not read the posts I linked. I explained most of this in detail already.
A manuscript undergoes 3 edits after the writer finishes what they feel is the final draft: developmental edit, copyedit, and proofreading edits. They are listed in chronological order. There is a separate editor for each, and after each round, the author implements changes.
Developmental edit primarily affects the story: pace, flow, characterization, emotional impact, and so on.
Copyedit refines the narrative, cleans up inconsistencies, fact-checks, and points out unclear sentences and egregious grammatical mistakes.
Proofread is the final polish that corrects grammar and punctuation.
This is the process. There is no difference for a debut author, midlist author, or a bestseller. This is it. This is the traditional publishing sequence, and any traditional publishing house will do all three.
What you refer to as good editing is copyediting and proofreading, because that’s what you see as a reader, but it is the developmental edit that makes or breaks a book.
Would a new author know this? Yes, if they bother to do some cursory research.
“Do some authors consciously opt to do less copy edits, possibly to publish faster, or are good/effective editors harder to find these days? Are some prolific fast to market driven ebook authors not seeing much workflow improvement from AI/ML tools? Or do their sales numbers show that less editing is fine at a 10% discount? Would that 10% cover edits if XXX copies were purchased Y weeks later if they needed more time?”
First, how would I know that? I have never skipped any editorial steps. Do some selfpub authors skip editing because it’s too expensive? Probably. I don’t recommend it.
At this point AI is NOT an effective substitute for the human editor. Right now Word, which is now backed by an AI, wants me to correct this sentence “My sink didn’t have a faucet, but the widow thoughtfully left me a pitcher of water to wash my hands and even a sliver of soap” to read window instead of widow. Because that would make total sense.
“As a reader who dates from the trad pub era, I think most of what I read in my earlier years was “old school” and edited which set my expectations to that reference point. ”
Let me ruin that for you. All of Hidden Legacy and a good chunk of Kate was copyedited twice, first by Avon or Ace freelancer CE and then by the CE we independently hired, because the quality of CE publishers provided was not consistent. We are not the only authors who do this. Don’t get me started on the editor who waved one of my friends’ manuscripts through without a developmental edit because “it was good enough.”
No every imprint is equal in the amount of attention they pay to their authors. Copyeditors and proofreaders are typically contractors and publishing houses pay them as little as they can to keep the costs down. Developmental editors are busy.
So your expectations in regard to quality are skewed. The question often isn’t “is the writer traditionally published?” The question is, do they have the budget to hire a good freelancer?
Thank you! I did read the posts but obviously had made some wrong assumptions and conclusions, especially about how integral developmental edits are and possibly more than one round by different CEs with varying skill levels.
It also offers me a slightly different perspective to consider as a reader – perhaps it wasn’t the author who opted not to incorporate edits but the editors offered (if offered) by their publisher weren’t up to par or they had budget constraints. (Sending up a mental apology to some other authors where I might have wondered about what happened. I get it now.)
I’ll try giving new-to-me “maybe not this series” authors different/later series a chance because it might have been budget limitations. I usually enjoy an author’s work across genres & publishers/imprints and hadn’t realized my expectations were skewed in part because of the work (and money) the author puts in to make it consistently excellent by their own high standards.
Again, thank you for correcting my assumptions and taking the time to explain. It helps me appreciate the work which goes into the finished product and also learn about the business of things. I think some people say they don’t like knowing/sharing how the sausage is made but sometimes I feel abstraction enables me to take things (people and their work, as well) for granted a bit too easily. Such info also helps me be an informed consumer and accountable for my choices, too (related to supporting writers, not the grifters or their “products”).
Reading yesterday the author used “shoot” instead of “chute.” It knocked me right out of the story!
I read a best selling author whose books require some real, intense editing, or at least more careful editing than they receive. I don’t believe it has anything to do with KU and she is not self-published; she is published by a major New York house. I think the publisher knows her books will become automatic best sellers and so why bother to spend money for anything other than proof reading?
As an editor, I find myself dying to take a red pen to her MSs and send them back to her. And really, it’s not her I’m angry at, but the publisher.
exactly. I didn’t name and shame intentionally. plus, as a speed reader and binge reader with a good memory for the feel of paragraphs (and a terrible memory for names) I am exactly the type of person to hate that writing.
but if you read a chapter a day and then more through 5 other series before coming back to the next book in a set and savor stories it probably won’t bother you.
and I’m sure there are things that drive others nuts that don’t bother me a bit (e.g. weird names or present tense narrative)
I’m old enough to remember when cut and paste became easy thanks to word processing. A very famous author became unreadable for a while, because whole descriptions would be copied over and over.
People have forgotten how important editors are to good writing.
I see tax clients all the time taking courses to make easy money. Real estate, flipping houses (for non construction type people), work from home things and other fads. The only ones making the profit are the ones sellling the courses. They think they are going to make money but have a big tax writeoff at the same time.
“They’re unable to shut up. They have a point of view. They put themselves through an emotional wringer to get it across…” The BDH is sooooooo lucky that we have HA.
Gave myself a re-read of Wilmington this weekend. Aaahhh it was so good. I would rather re-read good stuff than read bad st*ff (being good with my swearing today) for the first time ANYDAY!!
+1!
Thank you for the warning to prospective writers out there.
No matter which industry you’re in, scammers are going to scam. Doesn’t matter if its a robot or an actual person or people. 🤦♀️😬
+1 There are scam ads up on car sale sites, real estate sites, horse sale sites, puppy sale sites, probably any site that sells anything. Situational awareness, anytime you’re shopping for anything.
ugh, this is a horrible situation. both flooding the market with garbage and also encouraging others to do the same.
There’s also lots of other people selling courses online, not just in publishing but for everything, it seems.
I remember attending a free session that was basically meant to sell you a course, and thinking that the whole business model of these people is to sell you courses! it seems like a scam to me.
Also the Kindle best sellers free book list used to have some good stuff, nowadays it looks pretty much all garbage, and has ceased to be useful.
I am very picky about books and I’ve got a good system for quickly filtering out amateur or trash looking books online, but perhaps it will be harder in the future.
Fie on those who generate garbage books intentionally! A pox on your houses!
What’s your system??
I agree with you Elaine: we almost HAVE to use a system to find good books these days, don’t we? Personally, I do the following:
1)Most of the recommendations I pay attention to come from my favorite writers (the IA blog is a great source!)If I like the author, I find I usually like their taste in books.
2)I find many books that sound interesting on Good Reads popular books lists or on favorite book lists compiled by library staffs. I especially pay attention if it’s an author I never read before.
3) I borrow most of the books I read from the library (either physical books or e-books using the Libby app.) This way I usually don’t waste money on bad books.
If a book I found using above steps hasn’t been published yet I make note of it in a to-be-read list I keep, and if it has been published already I borrow it or put it on hold. Since I always have multiple books borrowed or on hold, I don’t mind waiting for the most popular books.
4) When I do find a new author and I enjoyed their book found via the prior steps, I read as many of their other books as I can get my grubby little hands on! 😉
5) I never ever ever use Kindle Unlimited (I refuse to pay for a wasteland of garbage…and more so now that I know so much of it is AI generated due to this blog!) I also almost never use Prime Reading for the same reason (even though it’s free with my Prime account, most of the time it’s a waste of my time.)
I do use the benefit Amazon gives you with a Prime account (First Reads I think it’s called?) It lets you choose one free ebook a month from a specific list of 5 or 6 books. I’ve gotten some good books and some bad this way, but since it doesn’t cost extra, who cares? If I find a good one, bonus!
It seems like a MLM. There seems to be this type of sell the idea practice across many industries. The fitness industry is another one.
I knew there was a lot scummy stuff about there and any get rich quick scheme is just that – a scheme. I didn’t know about O Henry’s background. I read his short stories as a kid and loved them. Might be time for a reread!
Love your ethics. Love them.
YES.
I was looking through my bookshelves for a good read a few days ago, and almost pulled out my complete O. Henry collection. I put it off in favor of the Witches of Discworld. O. Henry might be next though.
I’ve been seeing a lot of ads for these kinds of things lately. Especially on Instagram. It’s sad how many people get taken in.
If I haven’t read an author before I will wait until the 2nd book in a series to read, even through Kindle Unlimited. One of the things I look at is length of the books, and how long it is between each book. If they are 250 pages, and there is a month between books, then I look hard at the reviews. If there are a bunch of 5 star reviews with little text and the text that is there is all similar, then I won’t read it. Way back in the day, I’d go to the bookstore, and pick a new read by going to a genre, and looking at the artwork, how many books that author has on the shelf, read the back, etc.. and pull forward, 5 books on each shelf. Then of the one’s I’ve pulled forward, I’d take another look. Lol, that’s how I discovered Patricia Briggs, and certain author pair I’d never heard of before… Ilona Andrews. I found Kate’s first book by chance and I was hooked.
I have three methods for finding new authors.
One: I find a collection of short stories in one or another of the genres I enjoy (this is a bit harder since Mike Resnick died – he was a fine author in his own right, but in my opinion, he truly shone as an editor).
Two: I check out the things Amazon recommends for me (I have found two absolute delights that way, and another two that I enjoy the first time through, but that don’t stand up to re-reading.
Three: I check here every day, and when Ilona writes a book recommendation post, I try it. The Henri Davenforth series is ten books now and I own all of them.
Oh, there is a fourth method I use. I’m a regular on DailyKos, and several of the people there whose posts I routinely check out have published. I have bought the books of those who write in the genres I enjoy.
My contribution to their royalties may be miniscule, but it is also a painless way to help support my friends. And I have lost count of the number of people who have been shocked by my saying that’s why I buy my college friend’s books rather than hit him up for freebies (which I won’t do to any of my friends, even if I do need their services).
Wow, thanks for the eye-opening post. Terrible, just terrible.
Huh, this explains a certain author/book series I got recommended aggressively by Kobo Plus a while ago. I sort of skim read the first one, then realised this “author” produced something like 125 books in 3 years, and now that I see how paid reviewers are a thing, that penny dropped too… 😅
In my kitchen is hanging a saying, roughly translated: With the passing of time it is time that is getting more important. I find this to be true. I had over 500 books at home (got rid of 2/3 because I wanted a big room for my kids instead of a big my library for me). I still have my “keepers” and of course my Hardcover / Specials. I have over 1.000 books on my kindle. I used to be much more tolerant towards not so greatly written books. Now in my forties with twins I find that my tolerance for badly written books (plot and/or writing) is going towards zero. My life time is just to precious to waste one trash books – no matter if it is was written by a human or AI. I tend to stick to recommendation from here in addition to my all time favorites. I rather re-read a known commodity. Audio Books and especially Graphic Audio was a game changer for me – I can enjoy my all time favorites three times now 🙂
Getting rid of my book translates to I donated them…I never could bring myself to throw books into the trash – even though that is getting more and more common.
Thank you so much for this! I love learning about the industry and am grateful for your insight and POV.
Yeah, I have seen these ads. It is just so unethical and is violates the meaning of art.
Thanks for the interesting post- it makes sense, now. Explains all the digging you have to do nowadays to find good new authors. It’s a shame. Imagine how great the world would be if all the scammers used their powers for good!
I’ve also noticed a correlation between excessive bad grammar, repetition, and homophone usage and whether or not a published book is going to be a good read (we’re all human and perfectly imperfect, so a teeny bit is normal- I mean lots of it, go get the shovel to clean it up). To me it shows how much an author cares about their work. Edits only make stories tighter/stronger, and the lack of any kind of editing, even peer, hurts books (hey, books are people, too- just think- they have a life of their own, and the good ones live forever;). If you read the book blurb and it has those three things front and center, runaway!
Heh 🙂 As a reader, I’ve got to say, I will not read bad stuff, even if it is for free. I have looked at the AI material, both as fiction and as (supposedly) non-fiction articles. It is all IMHO, hot garbage. It simply is not worth my precious time. On the other hand, readable articles and fiction are things for which I will actually pay: Your work, as an example. I buy (and read) anything you produce: novels, short stories, snippets, the phone book…I have a list of writers, including Ilona Andrews, that I read, and re-read, for both entertainment and comfort. This process literally feeds my soul. AI and badly written things? I literally could not care less. Thank you Thank you and thank you again! For being on my list of favorite writers. 😉
Sadly scams like that are all over, and yes they are to benefit the person selling them. You watch CNBC and you have all these people hawking books on trading, that they know “the method” to get rich. Some of them are written by people who did well investing, others are by people who claim to be gurus who I guarantee you didn’t. Ask yourself the question, if they made a ton of money on wall street, why would they be hawking their video course for 500 bucks or their book “you can make money overnight trading options”? If they really made the kind of money that top people do make there, they wouldn’t be hawking this crap. For the record, having worked on Wall street for a lot of years, you can do better reading books written that teach the idea behind investing you can get from a library, that explain how it works….then take 20% of your investment money, play around with that, and put the other 80% into index funds or mutual funds, you will do better in the long run.
Being unemployed for a while, I can tell you with that there are scams galore, the same thing, the course that guarantees you will get that dream job if you do xxxx, it is all the same thing. I took one that actually did help me figure out how the current job market works (it is rough, to say the least), and it was worth the cost to have me realize why I was failing…but there are no golden unicorns out there.
Not surprised with the writing scams, this is going to be made even worse with AI out there. Sorry, I can tell if AI has written something, there is a tone to it that is dead, I don’t care how many writers they train it on. Funny part is AI might end up costing them more than human authors, like streaming and new things the real cost of AI isn’t being passed on. AI uses tremendous resources where the power demand might fry power grids (I am not kidding about that), they use the GPU chips gamers have in their pc’s, they use an array of them, and they draw a ton of power and generate heat (ie need for massive cooling). I don’t mind AI generated stories on free fiction sites, but if real publishers think I will pay for AI generated stuff, forget it…lawmakers haven’t done it, but they should require that anything that is AI be identified as such, with stiff penalties for violating it.
O. Henry was great, and yes, his prose was tight as a drum (Hemingway credited him with helping him develop his own style). That twist at the end was always the fun part, but the thing about his stories many of them have heart. His story “The rubberneckers” is a hoot, and his story about the out of towner who moves to NYC, and becomes a “new Yawker”, are great. In another generation Damon Runyon (whose stories I highly recommend; if you ever saw Guys and Dolls, you are looking at something based on some of his stories) did much the same thing, with the twist, with its own unique language and humor.
Oh thank you for mentioning Damon Runyon! I have found some radio plays through RadioClassics on SirusXM that are just delightful!
This such an educational read. I have wondered how long it would take before the scam started. I love reading and really hate getting partway into a book only to discover it is drivel. I have my favourites of course and do so appreciate it when they recommend who they read.
All I can say is wow, the levels of greed and callousness in some people continues to amaze me!
I did not know any of this…thank you for sharing! I am not thinking about publishing a book myself (I write poetry and stories, but only for myself, to ‘scratch an itch’ as it were.) However, I’ve shared this with my daughter as her BF probably will write books sooner or later. Hopefully this will save them some grief.
thank you for sharing. passed along to my writer friends
This was fascinating! All of it.
Sorry for an off-topic reply, but my Arcane box shipped yesterday (or at least created a tracking number)! I’m so excited! I didn’t get one of the Subterranean Press versions of Innkeeper (and they tell me they aren’t re-printing 🥺), so this is my first nice edition of IA and I can’t wait for it to come! 🥳💃🥳
I read a book once that was like 5th book in a mixed author series. I got to the 3rd or 4th chapter, and suddenly it was dense text that appears to be copied and pasted from reference material that was only tangential to the plot. The next chapter was two or three paragraphs then next was same. Seemed like an outline got uploaded instead of the real file. Emailed the author, and they insisted the wrong file was uploaded and it was being fixed. I then got the updated file, and it was sort of better, but the data dump was still in there and a tons of errors and misspellings. After that I reviewed, and suddenly the author sent me email saying the file was wrong again. I didn’t respond. I have avoided that person since as well as the other authors in the series with the exception of the one that I’d read before and liked which before I read it.
The post on Vox about using AI to write books on fungi identification is the stuff of nightmares.
AI will kill people and not even in the fun terminator way.
I just read that article a few days ago…I’ve been inundated with offers from people “write your book with AI” “Become an instant expert with AI” – the culture’s fascination with “instant” and “fame” is truly a sickness of the mind and heart!
Oh, and I forgot to mention: NOW the public is getting a clue as to why the publishing industry has gatekeepers and a slush pile, and why bypassing them wasn’t such a great idea in the main. Yes, a few great books were rejected at first (I’ll mention Madeline L’Engle as one who languished for a long time before a friend of a friend got her in front of Farrar, Straus and Giroux), there are thousands not worth the bits they take up on a hard drive.
Wow, I did not know that about O Henry. Interesting!
The video was so interesting. Thanks for posting it! Had never heard of the Mikkelsons. Amazon’s best kept secret…..Audible. Roflmao. I always wonder if people like them wind up being basically parasites their whole lives. Sad, if so
AI is going to kill any creative field that it is let loose on. Just my humble opinion, but I’m sticking to it. Leave it to the industrial fields where it can be of some use and can it anywhere else! All this money that they are investing into it could be much more useful applied in actual education in the fine arts, or higher education.
Fooling people into thinking they are reading actual literature or looking at art created by a real person should be deemed a crime!
I’m going to start marketing my books as artisanal, hand-crafted fiction… (Ha! Spellcheck just tried to change artisanal to “artisan AI”—yikes! It has become sentient!)
Pyramid selling. Time share. Sadly, this is not new.
Hi Horde,
I was just on Audible, I have so many of their books… I never read, just listen, reading doesn’t go too well with me. Anyway… On Audible, for the first time, I noticed that there are a ton of books narrated by virtual voice. Aargh!!!
I went on their chat and asked them to give us the option of filtering out virtual voices. If any of you agree that virtual voices should not be encouraged, I would ask that you join my voice and ask Audible to give us that filter. The power of the Horde can do wonders. I think that we should encourage live people not computers…