AI Book Spam is Already Hitting Hard

I don't mean to rag on Draft2Digital; they're just the first entity to institute financial penalties for authors. But somebody's gotta go first, so I'm not blaming them; I'm just choosing them as an example.

Tonight I read an interview with Kris, the CEO of D2D. I have no idea why the writer chose to post the interview on Facebook. Maybe so Great Grandma could be confused.

Despite its limited reach, the interview provides more context to D2D's decision, and the facts are scary.  

"Kris told me that some months they decline as much as 70% of the titles uploaded to D2D..." 

I think we're all savvy enough to know where these books are originating---the same place all the spam emails we get every day originate. The same place all my LinkedIn invitations originate. In fact, the same places my website visitors come from. 

Yes, there's a thing called "book farms". They're centered in countries such as Indonesia, The Philippines, India, Vietnam, Pakistan, and Nigeria. China's gotta be in there somewhere; just sayin'. I get tons of website "visitors" from China. Of course, that's a separate issue from book farms.

Kris seems convinced that by charging $20.00 to set up a new account, this will deter the farmers. Apparently, to avoid detection a lot of farmers are setting up 50 separate accounts with one uploaded book each, rather than uploading fifty books under the same account. It's not a bad calculation on D2D's part. I have no idea how much revenue these slop books brings in, but I doubt it offsets the $1,000 it'll cost to set up 50 separate accounts. Damn, people aren't even buying real books; why in the world would they pay for fake ones?

Another interesting tidbit from the interview: "Kris mentioned that libraries have been pushing back hard against indie titles because of the raw quantity of spam content flooding the marketplace." 

No library system has purchased any of my three eligible books, but I'm not sure I can blame AI spam for that. Still, if even popular genres are no longer being purchased, that's a big red flag. 

Continuing: "Because Apple, Overdrive, B&N, and other D2D partners can't easily tell a indie author from a bookspammer, (sic) they have a tendency to tar and feather us all with the same brush."

D2D could have easily avoided all the bad publicity by clearly explaining all this in its announcement. Instead, they used terms like "security" and "IT". They made it sound as if we were being required to pay the IT staff's salaries. 

Another unintentional side effect of cracking down on AI book farms is that now a lot of KDP accounts are being shut down for the unspoken reason (KDP never provides a justification) that authors are suspected of being just another farmer. I've been lucky so far. I haven't gotten a notice like that from KDP, but I don't consider myself out of the woods. These closures are so arbitrary, they can happen to any of us.

What can be done, other than taking D2D's route? It appears, not much. Lawmakers are "looking into it". Ooh! Great! 

We're also told that AI-generated books can't be copyrighted. Define "can't". 

(Shhh, don't tell anyone, but I've only bothered copyrighting a few of my books. My philosophy was---shrug---nobody's gonna buy 'em. Why add on another expense? Yes, that's dumb; I know.)

I've said it before, and I stand by it: KDP will soon follow D2D's lead. For me, it doesn't matter, except on principle. I may or may not publish one more book before I'm done. And if push comes to shove, I'm not averse to removing most of my books from Amazon. 

I watched a podcast the other day from a commentator I normally respect. He talked about AI as good and necessary for the future. That we all need to "get over it". That we all use AI every day, so we should stop being hypocrites. 

There are, obviously, some benefits to AI. I called my auto dealership to set up an appointment for an oil change. I always dread calling them, because their phone rings and rings, then eventually cuts off, so I have to try again and again. This time, the AI assistant answered. I was able to make my appointment in a snap, and it was accurately scheduled. There wasn't some dope on the other end who recorded the wrong date.

And yes, when I need an answer from Google, I choose the AI option if it doesn't pop up on its own. I use Grok to tell me about an X account user or to explain a post to me. Do I like having all that at my fingertips? You bet. 

For efficiency, AI is pretty awesome. For creativity, well, creativity isn't AI's strong suit. The podcaster didn't mention that creative humans are being penalized by AI. Is that what we bargained for? Is that what we're supposed to "get over"? "Well, horse and buggy drivers had to learn how to drive cars." Yes, but books are books. What's the upgrade to a book? Maybe we authors could start doing campfire chats and charge people admission. Oral storytelling---that's the ticket!

It's not as if human authors are the only ones who'll suffer, Did anyone even consider the reader? Here's what'll eventually happen: a reader will be forced to choose between a bad AI book and a really bad AI book. Or go back and read the classics. Over and over.  

Maybe someone will invent a book replacement doo-dad. Put on your thinking caps, inventors! 

In the meantime, as I mentioned before, authors really need to get cracking. Write fast, publish fast. Before it's too late.