Write Against the Machine
Lately I've been going for late night walks in the dimly lit garden after my gremlins have gone to sleep. I talk to friends and family on the other side of the world and listen to books or podcasts, one earbud hanging loose to stay alert to the wild animals lurking in the foliage nearby. Bats are often squeaking overhead, or sometimes, it's leaves rustling from a cat-mouse chase or the low, slow crunch-crush of a monitor lizard's tail. But most often I’m confronted by our resident canine who doesn't quite trust me. Sometimes he's quiet, and sometimes he's barking at me vehemently, as if I'm the animal to be wary of in the night. He's probably right.
Last night I was listening to a publishing podcast. As you know, I’m trench-deep in planning the second edition of my book The Ordinary Chaos of Being Human. A best-selling writer was reviewing her tips for a successful book launch when she took a break to read an advertisement for her favorite AI editing tool. I got goosebumps to think I was taking advice from a writer advocating for a robot to edit her work! As I listened to her voice's machine-like chirp at x2 speed (the irony there not lost on me), I realized that even though I embrace tech, I still haven't made up my mind about AI, especially in relation to print books.
I use, but still don't prefer, my e-reader. The belly butterflies are real when I hold a newly birthed print book by an author I know personally. I buy and shelve more books than I generally have time to read. And I have a hot reverence for librarians, because knowing ALL the books is the sexiest thing I can imagine. And while I'm eagerly testing the blossoming independent book publishing arena where digital is flourishing, I will still admit to romantic fantasies of dusty old publishing houses whose gate keepers live among paper manuscripts piled 100 hundred miles high like the columns of a Greek amphitheater. There's a lot of soul in this work for me. It's going to take time to process why we would even think to hand over this artful, human work to a heartless entity. These words, our language, our craft... I feel possessive, territorial even. Grrrrrrrrrr.
Rabid Dogs Vs. Heartless Robots Aside
The tech advancements of print-on-demand (POD) are thrilling. Writers can now get books to their readers at game-changing speed. Stock issues, warehouse and shipping costs be damned. I'm going to wipe out the challenges I had with Penguin distribution completely by letting readership control the stock.
As I learn about all of this, I am also seeing the dangers of this break-neck speed. The major POD players (read: Amazon) have built their systems to maximize profits based on this speed and efficiency. As a shrewd business should, agreed. But now that machines can write books, could moving too fast somehow break the time-honored relationship between people and books? With machines writing books, wouldn't we be losing the last cognizant, human aspect of book making? Smells like a recipe for a lot of bad books.
It gets worse. Author Jane Friedman recently discovered half a dozen brand new AI-written books were being sold on Amazon under her name. Holy trademark trouble, what a mess. Of course, the person who pressed the go-button on the AI copy generator faking Friedman's books has committed the real crime here. But what's fascinating to me is that Amazon had a machine, with no human gate keeper, moving so fast that it didn't recognize the robot on the other end. With these kinds of bungles surfacing, will the POD suppliers have something to learn from old school publishing houses about slowing down the process? Now there's a twist I'd like to see.