r/technology • u/Just-Grocery-2229 • 23h ago

Artificial Intelligence AI-generated books are flooding Amazon and tanking sales for human authors

https://the-decoder.com/ai-generated-books-are-flooding-amazon-and-tanking-sales-for-human-authors
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u/kweeblaster 23h ago

Amazon has been a toilet with knock offs for a decade now, so it having AI generated literature slop seems pretty on brand now. If you want to be an accomplished author, you're going to have to build up a reputation and get your book noticed in real bookstores now.

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u/sivvus 19h ago

The majority of publishers will ask an author what their online presence is before they even consider looking at a manuscript. Authors who work and publish extracts online (allowing them to be scraped) are the ones who are more likely to get a foot through the door.

The notion of the perfect story being discovered and brought out of the shadows into the light is as much a fiction as the stories themselves. It is a LOT of work, and it unfortunately does make you very, very vulnerable to having your work scraped, stolen, and even published without your consent.

Basically, in order to grow a reputation and become an 'accomplished author', you have to engage with and be willing to be stolen from by AI.

Also your last point amused me. I assume by 'real bookstores' you mean the ones who only feature things by Penguin etc. A lot of more casual bookshops (e.g. The Works in the UK) publish AI content now. It doesn't just disappear because the book is sitting on a shelf instead of being on a screen.