Writers condemn startup’s plans to publish 8,000 books next year using AI

[editor]

As AI continues to weasel its way into all aspects of our lives, I'm wondering if we're going to need a dedicated AI forum at some point.

This looks a great way for people with more money than sense to become vanity authors, with their sales no doubt boosted AI bots giving them rave reviews...

Writers and publishers are criticising a startup that plans to publish up to 8,000 books next year using AI.

The company, Spines, will charge authors between $1,200 and $5,000 to have their books edited, proofread, formatted, designed and distributed with the help of AI.


Independent publisher Canongate said “these dingbats … don’t care about writing or books”, in a Bluesky post. Spines is charging “hopeful would-be authors to automate the process of flinging their book out into the world, with the least possible attention, care or craft”.

“These aren’t people who care about books or reading or anything remotely related,” said author Suyi Davies Okungbowa, whose most recent book is Lost Ark Dreaming, in a post on Bluesky. “These are opportunists and extractive capitalists.”

Writers condemn startup’s plans to publish 8,000 books next year using AI

Publisher Spines will charge authors between $1,200 and $5,000 to have their books proofread, designed and distributed with the help of artificial intelligence

www.theguardian.com

 

[planetgeli]

The world is not going in a good direction.

Fuck them.

 

[skyscraper101]

If I understood it correctly. It's not publishing AI generated content, but using AI to help proofread, format, design and distribute. I agree it seems fairly soulless, but then it's also totally unsurprising these days.

 

[Saul Goodman]

If it's a cheaper way to get a book published, have at it.

 

[cupid_stunt]

If I understood it correctly. It's not publishing AI generated content, but using AI to help proofread, format, design and distribute. I agree it seems fairly soulless, but then it's also totally unsurprising these days.

Basically that, most of the big UK newspaper groups are now using AI in that way, with the final content being reviewed by a news editor before publication, but I suspect it's just at the start of a very slippery slope.

She adds that Newsquest’s tool does not generate content – a trained journalist puts information into the tool, which is then edited and tweaked if necessary by a news editor – and will, they hope, avoid ChatGPT’s reputation for being inaccurate.

In a recent interview with the Press Gazette, Newsquest’s CEO, Henry Faure Walker, said the introduction of an AI-assisted role had proved invaluable at the Hexham Courant in Northumberland in September, when the town was suddenly at the centre of a national news story when the Sycamore Gap tree on Hadrian’s Wall was felled by a vandal.

“The AI system reporter could pretty much hold the fort for the week, filling the paper, and it freed the other reporter to go out and do really good investigative stuff, videos, and get behind the story, which we wouldn’t be able to do. We are going to be rolling cautiously,” he said.

How one of the world’s oldest newspapers is using AI to reinvent journalism

Berrow’s Worcester Journal is one of several papers owned by the UK’s second biggest regional news publisher to hire ‘AI-assisted’ reporters

www.theguardian.com

 

[editor]

If I understood it correctly. It's not publishing AI generated content, but using AI to help proofread, format, design and distribute. I agree it seems fairly soulless, but then it's also totally unsurprising these days.

Yes, that's what I posted. It'll be a production line of vanity rubbish. The 'publishers' won't read any of the content, it'll just be lobbed into an AI machine.

 

[bluescreen]

And will the LLMs then use this deathless prose to teach themselves?

 

[editor]

Perhaps we can look forward to brand new urban75 books, like those masterpieces we used to see on Amazon?

 

[Poot]

I was hoping AI would clean my house while I wrote books. To save the time I spend mucking about on the Internet instead of researching.

The Brontes didn't know how easy they had it.

 

[Yossarian]

I wonder how many vanity submissions the AI will get through before it chooses to self-destruct

 

[Rob Ray]

Any aspiring author stupid enough to pay 1,200-5,000 quid for that deserves to be ripped off, very few would even get close to recouping it. The trick with publishing isn't production, it's marketing and sales.

Even if you got 50% of a £10 book afterwards you're needing 250+ sales to break even, self publishing rarely manages a fraction of that.

 

[mojo pixy]

I've written books, all by myself. Spent years on them. Nobody wants to publish them, or read them. If an AI tool might help me get them published and marketed, I'd be tempted tbh.

 

[Boris Sprinkler]

Art - culture - dollars. Pop will eat itself.

 

[mojo pixy]

If someone had eg a novel they wrote in third person but later wished they'd done it in first person, or present tense instead of past (because that's the actual fashion) it might cost say £5000-10000 to have an editor rewrite it (or the author could take a couple of years and do it themself). Or they could spend a lot less on some software to do the rewrite, then proofread and touch up for a week or two and job done.

Software that could do that even half well would definitely float my boat, I have to admit.

 

[A380]

Perhaps we can look forward to brand new urban75 books, like those masterpieces we used to see on Amazon?

The collected threads of Yugoslav would fit the AI generated bill…

 

[Petcha]

My industry (graphic design) is currently being mauled by AI. And I'm too fucking old and lazy to really learn much about it. I guess those writers in Hollywood who were on strike last year could see the writing on the wall. The voiceover industry must already be redundant. Why pay for George Clooney when you can just copy and paste your script into a bot and you've got his silky tones advertising your product.

Even in business.... this is actually a real advert from apple. and ive seen people do this shit. it can read a word doc and create a nicely summaried powerpoint presentation.



I might join the army or something. my job is gone.

 

[VivaE]

I've written books, all by myself. Spent years on them. Nobody wants to publish them, or read them. If an AI tool might help me get them published and marketed, I'd be tempted tbh.

What are they about? No offence intended but if you've had no success in getting them published or read, why would you think AI could make a significant difference? It's not a magic wand.

 

[Kevbad the Bad]

All we need do is get AI machines to read their own books and perhaps they'll leave the rest of us alone.

 

[mojo pixy]

What are they about? No offence intended but if you've had no success in getting them published or read, why would you think AI could make a significant difference? It's not a magic wand.

It doesn't matter, and I don't want to talk about me. I'm just saying that if one day there were a piece of software which could take a book in any style and rewrite it in various ways, I'd understand the appeal to part-time, hobbyist or unknown random authors who can't afford an editor or even maybe a proofreader.

 

[VivaE]

It doesn't matter, and I don't want to talk about me. I'm just saying that if one day there were a piece of software which could take a book in any style and rewrite it in various ways, I'd understand the appeal to part-time, hobbyist or unknown random authors who can't afford an editor or even maybe a proofreader.

That's fine, but my question is more to do with what value your book would have to you if AI managed to turn it into something that someone was prepared to publish? Where it effectively turned what you'd written into something that was no longer yours?

 

[Shippou-Sensei]

Read the title as "writers condom"

 

[legz]

Would AI make a story more readable? I'm reading this and thinking "Stepford Books" ......

I've got an interest in this ..... I'm the description of Mojo Pixy's post above -- totally unknown writer, just finished my first YA/NA novel, doing the whole querying agents thing trying to find someone who's willing to even ask for a few extra chapters .... my editors and proofreaders are either myself, or some close mate who owes me a favour .....

I've spent more time editing than actually writing, which is probably normal -- using AI for the easy option would probably wreck what I've made, and I'm doubtful that there would be any extra appeal to a prospective reader.

Or maybe I'm just a bit salty from endless emails and so few replies!

 

[mojo pixy]

That's fine, but my question is more to do with what value your book would have to you if AI managed to turn it into something that someone was prepared to publish? Where it effectively turned what you'd written into something that was no longer yours?

The same could be said of having someone else edit the text, or even proofread-and-fix. Very few books are published straight out of the author's pen but they still get the big name on the cover.

 

[JimW]

The same could be said of having someone else edit the text, or even proofread-and-fix. Very few books are published straight out of the author's pen but they still get the big name on the cover.

I only translate rather than create but I've had some terrible editors down the years who don't like my style and i don't like theirs. Since I'm more doing a job of work, I mostly let it go, but with some literature they effectively ruin some quite hard work.

 

[burtabraham]

Not sure I have a problem with AI doing proofreading. Is it conceptually that different from spellchecking?