Some fear and loathing in Las Vegas — but not as much as you’d expect
One of the big takeaways from Author Nation — the world’s largest gathering of independent and hybrid authors — in Las Vegas last week was the ringing consensus that AI has encroached into nearly every facet of the book publishing ecosystem over the past year.
Remember, it’s been less than two years since ChatGPT blasted onto the scene – on Nov. 30, 2022, to be exact. And the publishing industry will never be the same.
That has implications – for authors, readers, and publishers.
The clearest indication of the AI wave washing over the indie author world came during the two presentations we gave on behalf of Authors A.I. (I’m the COO and co-founder.) Wednesday’s session was standing room only, with lots of interest, concern, and questions about how AI will be impacting authors’ careers.
We polled the attendees, and about three-quarters of them say they already use AI in some form in their book publishing process. A majority have used it for research or marketing (such as creating blurbs). About half have used it in some form during editorial/content creation — say, scene prompts.
And probably many are using it without even realizing it, since it’s already baked into the author toolkit, from Microsoft Word to Grammarly.
That said, it wasn’t all rainbows and rose petals. No doubt there were AI skeptics among the conference-goers who skipped our session. That’s no surprise, given how AI has rocked the foundations of the book publishing world in recent months. For example
- Last spring, the Romance Writers of America canceled a guest talk about the use of AI in fiction writing after pushback by its members.
- In September, Draft2Digital released the results of a survey showing that 45% of respondents said they would not be interested in evaluating AI rights licensing opportunities.
- Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing now asks if any part of your book is AI-generated.
The good news is, the fog is beginning to lift. At least a little.
Authors A.I. got a rousing reception at Author Nation, in part because we explained that we don’t do generative AI, and all of the books we use to train our model are rights-cleared. We created a homegrown analytical algorithm (not one that licensed from an LLM) that gives authors feedback about their work. But our AI, Marlowe, won’t write parts of your book for you.
Joanna Penn of the Creative Penn podcast, one of the top movers and shakers in the space, issued a rousing appeal for authors to do what they do best — tap into their creativity and ingenuity. If it comes down to a numbers game, the AI agents will win, because they can toss off a mediocre book in mere seconds.
Author Nation inherited many of the themes and traditions of the defunct 20books to 50k conference, and Joanna noted, “This used to be the 20books to 50k conference. Now, it’s one book to 50k. A complete flip.” Because quantity is no longer enough. “You can do one book incredibly well” — and it will rise above the imitators.
So we’re slowly seeing authors lining up to use AI to increase their productivity, sharpen their stories, and enhance their marketing.
It’s a new world. And time to leave the fear and loathing behind.
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