::waves:: LibGen Meta, the company behind Facebook, Instagram, etc., has developed its own AI, Llama 3. For this AI to be competitive with Chat GPT, they needed a massive amount of fiction. They could’ve licensed it – they have the money. Instead they chose to pirate it. They scraped a massive database of pirated books.
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Kindle USB, The Price of Books, and Other Things
It is freezing here in Texas. We had a 40 degree temperature drop, and now we are sitting at 24 degrees. You know my prayer. Hold, grid, hold. The Price of Printed Books Is it true that the price of printed books will rise? Yes. Most of the books are printed in China or on
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Many Thousands of Words
It is 85 degrees Fahrenheit in Texas this morning. Y’all, it’s chilly. Hehe. Why are your books around the 300-400 page range when they are so good and literally could be double the size and still be awesome and other books from other authors are 400-700 pages. You mention a word count limit. Why is
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ARCs, AI, Agents, and Author Courses
Normally I stay out of the author and industry discussions. I’m too busy writing. But as I’m writing this on Saturday, Gordon slept in, and I can’t work on the explosion scene until he wakes up, so you get the tea. Here are some answers to assorted questions that floated into my inbox over the
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RWA Filed for Bankruptcy
Romance Writers of America filed for bankruptcy. For some reason, I’ve received a number of emails about it. Not sure why since we are not members, although we did give a talk one time to the local Austin chapter of RWA. If you google this topic, you will come across an article from Bloomberg, which
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Ghost in the Machine: Sadly Not O. Henry
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
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Irish Flirting and Convention Fails
First, obligatory health update: my recovery surgical appointment is in one week. My hope is to be cleared for some mild workouts. I would love to be back to normal or at least try to get there. As I get better, we are going to try to resume Fiction Fridays at some point soon, although
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On Serials, Covers, and Other Publishing Questions
Happy Monday! We’ve gone the whole weekend without a scorpion sighting, so I have high hopes. Mod R has been collecting your questions, so today we will tackle the first batch. Are you still thinking about releasing part of Maggie as a blog serial? Will you be able to traditionally publish if you do that?
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Impostor Syndrome
On Saturday, Gordon, Kid 2, and I snuck into the Armadillocon as regular attendees to see Jessie Mihalik, who was one of the panelists on Impostor Syndrome Panel. Jessie wrote an interesting article about it. She’s right that imposter syndrome doesn’t go away with success. I’ve talked before about the golden carrot. A rider sits
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Overdrive and Libraries: Everything You Wanted To Know
Today we have the honor of hosting Gingko-girl, who is a member of the BDH and a librarian. She is here to talk about Overdrive and libraries. An Overdrive Primer for the Curious and the Frustrated Hello (waves shyly). My name is Gingko-girl and I am a member of the Book Devouring Horde. I am
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Publishing: Expectations vs Reality
This topic is probably better suited to a professional conference, but it made it on the blog question list, so here we go. A recent article in Bookseller found that “debut authors struggle with the lack of support” and the process of publishing a book “negatively affected” their mental health. Also water is wet, snow
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Self-Publishing: Yet More Questions
If you are wondering why we are revisiting this: some questions were raised in the chat during our last zoom when we discussed the publishing plans for our next project If you self-published a book, is there any case where the publisher will pay for a self-published book and promote it more? There are several
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