AI And Book Publication

Hi Ink Drinkers,

I have been a novelist for over thirty years, and I do not use AI to write my books.  

However, I do get a lot of communications from book publicists, book club presidents, and sometimes online publishing companies who have composed their emails to me using AI, skipped proofreading them, and sent them to me anyway.  I find their errors very quickly.  They are not amusing.  I delete them.

Listen, I actually do not have a problem with people using AI to help them write a challenging email.  I took a whole course on business correspondence when I was in college.  Saying the right thing when you want to burn the place to matchsticks can feel like setting yourself on fire instead, and if an AI can give you a boost in composing the email when things are burning, then great.  However, I think it probably needs some finessing after you've gotten the bare bones of what you need to say.  Neglecting to proofread it blows the whole thing to smithereens.

No one likes that.

I do not have the same feelings when it comes to writing fiction.  The whole point of writing fiction is to express yourself.  It's to build something that only exists in your mind and transform it into a format that someone else can appreciate.  It's an intimate experience to give someone else a shadowy bit of your imagination.  Of course, using AI violated that intention.

AI slop authors are doing it with the hope of making money.  Sorry, kids.  It's also next to impossible to make money writing books.... Which our little AI buzzing friends are going to discover soon enough.  Well, at least it's stopping them from pirating my books for a change.

This has led me to take on a time-consuming task.  I am going through my book descriptions and specifying that they were not written with the assistance of AI.  

Some of my book covers were created using AI.  I specify that in the description now, too.  Personally, I like having the option to make book covers with AI.  Let me explain why.  I work with both artists and AI in creating covers.  If I get a person to make my cover and I hate it, I have to explain that to a real person (see above when I say that I approve of having AI help to tactfully deal with another human being).  My daughter makes a lot of my covers, and she is very understanding when I don't like something, but it doesn't exactly roll off her like water off a duck's back.  She also doesn't like it very much when I use AI, but I can't use her all the time.  It would put a terrible strain on our relationship.  But I can tell AI that I hate everything they've come up with and make them go again as many times as I need to, until I'm confident that I have an image that suits my fiction.

There are also auto-narration services, and I use those all the time to create audiobooks.  A good one is very good.  Personally, I liked working with one while I was learning how to produce audiobooks.  After I run out of minutes on my plan, I don't know if I'll get another one.  I have been learning how to narrate well enough that I can narrate my own.  Audible won't let you use an auto-narration service, so if you want to be on Audible, you'd better figure out how to make it real.  

But no matter what, I won't use AI to write my books.  I will stop writing books rather than have an AI do it for me.

Now, you can say that AI is stealing authors' and artists' jobs, but I say, "They weren't making any money anyway."

At least, that's always been true for me.