Western Civilization Deserves A.I. Or, Sellout While You Still Can, Part 2 (Tactical Luddite #13)

Storming past the final gatekeeper

In Part 1 of this note, I gave some background as to why the improvement in A.I. matters, or seems to matter, to writers so much. We also touched on the concern that creative writers, specifically, have with A.I. powered bots - that they will put them out of business. To this concern we return today to spend some time considering how we’ve come to this point in history in any case.

It is pure conjecture on my part, but I suspect that if you had taken a scientific poll thirty to fifty years ago asking, “Would you regularly pay money to read books written by Artificial Intelligence?” the vast majority would have said “no.” Though I’m unaware of any polls currently asking this question, I suspect that perhaps the majority of people would pay for such content today. I would speculate that even if people said “no,” they are, in truth, much readier for human writers to be replaced by A.I. generated content than they’re willing to admit; perhaps because they suspect the potential impact on human authors. My thesis is that we’re in this situation (authors potentially out of work) for a curious and ironic reason: we’re here because of the behavior of human authors themselves.

Publishing In The Past

Before self publishing, say ten years ago, or at least before the advent of Kindle Direct Publishing and the first Kindle in 2007, publishing a book was a very difficult process.

(Two quick asides: 1) the same is true of the music industry as well as video creation and distribution - while I will primarily be talking about book publishing, the same ideas pertain to music production and distribution as well as video production and distribution, 2) I am not criticizing independent publishers - I myself am one, and I still hope to enjoy monetary success in the marketplace. However, I do believe that certain practices implemented by independent publishers have brought us to our current “crisis.”)

Before the 2000's, let’s say, it was hard to get published. In order to have a book published, you had to pass by some combination of three gatekeepers:

• A literary agent

• An established editor, or

• A publishing house

For all intents and purposes, you needed an agent, especially in the decade just before independent publishing really started to get off the ground floor. If you didn’t have an agent, you had just about a 0% change of having your book published.

The problem was, agents were saturated with manuscripts. They were saturated because their job was (and still is) to sell manuscripts to publishers, and publishers didn’t publish very many books in the grand scheme of things. In 2005, more or less just before the true beginnings of self publishing, traditional publishers published a tad under 300,000 books. A traditional rule of thumb is that only 1% of manuscripts submitted to publishers ever get published, so you can guestimate that about 30 million books were submitted for publication consideration. Certainly many more were written but not submitted for fear of rejection.

So few books were published because in reality there are only ten significant publishers in existence, and only five large houses. And, these publishers made their money by selling these books through physical bookstores. We don’t need to beat a dead horse here: bookstores have also seen loads of consolidation and bankruptcy. The result being there were comparatively few physical bookstores available through which publishers could sell a high volume of books.

A restricted supply and high prices were the result of these circumstances.

Publishing Today

A major disrupter of the status quo was Amazon.

Bizarrely, Amazon initially leveled the playing field for non-published authors and also helped readers in two ways: making books cost less, thought lower profit margins (in essence undoing some of the price increases that arose from dwindling competition caused by publisher consolidation), and by allowing for a much larger supply of books, thanks to the mainstreaming of self publishing. Remember how only 300,000 books were published in 2005? The number has swollen to three million or more.

The author who previously had no shot to get their books published soon faced the prospect of successfully publishing a book, but having almost no shot to make money from it - because readers would never find it in the ocean of self published and traditionally published books. And, here’s where the drift to A.I. content acceptability really gained steam.

Previous to self publishing, the agents, editors, publishers, and even bookstores, functioned as gatekeepers. Whether rightly or wrongly, only a tiny fraction of the volume of written words was deemed worthy of publication. While much of this was simple quality control, these gatekeepers also made decisions based on economics and ethos. Publishers want to make money, but these businesses are also full of creative type people. They have a certain institutional ethos that books either had to accommodate during creation, or through editing and revision, in order be fit for publication.

Certainly many worthwhile books were rejected and never published. Other acclaimed novels suffered dozens of rejections before finding the right fit. Whether the motives were of an economic, artistic, or perhaps a philosophical or political bent, is irrelevant: the gatekeepers restricted the output of books. Quality was more or less assured, except for the occasional obviously experimental art piece that was published to soothe the conscience of the pure artists in the industry, but this over restriction surely prevented numerous worthy books from seeing the light of day.

On the demand side of the equation, readers had to read what was published and available for sale at their preferred bookstores. They had no other choice. Certainly the library or used book stores offered access to older books, many of them classics, but if they wanted to read new material, they had to read what the publishers gave them. I remember being in this position as a teenaged reader in the 90s, before Amazon had really taken off as a retailer. I would go to Barnes & Noble or Borders (how I miss Borders!) and look for new books to read. (I generally loathe the library). If they didn’t have something I wanted, I bought nothing; the supply was quite fixed.

Amazon, with is heirerachy of categories, subcategories, and searchable keywords allowed perceptive entrepreneurial authors a unique ability unavailable before the advent of self publishing - the ability to write a book for a specific sliver of the overall market, and also market directly to this audience.

And this, really, was the beginning of the end.

With self publishing, readers no longer had to wade through a lake of books to find one compelling title. Now, in an ocean of books, they could search for the exact type of thing they wanted to read, and find it. And, to boot, the price was cheap - historically only $0.99, now creeping up to the $3.99 to $4.99 range. Much less than the cost of a paperback at the physical bookstore (or even purchased from Amazon). The reader didn’t have to even consider any irrelevant books. And, God forbid, they never had to read anything that wasn’t exactly what they wanted. Readers were catered to on an unprecedented level.

To take advantage of this business opportunity, it was required to write and edit books in such a way as to give the reader exactly what he or she expected.

Today, if you have a mind to make money writing and self publishing books, one incessant command is beaten into you with every blog post you read, podcast you listen to, or video you watch: write to market.

The second tenet of earning money from self publishing: ensure your cover conveys exactly what your book is about with zero ambiguity.

When it comes to writing style, do not allow the reader, for one second, to have any doubt about what is happening. The reader must not have to work, think, or consider what is unfolding. The book shall make this crystal clear at all points.

Now, in all fairness, this has been going on for a long time. Books like The Hero’s Journey tell us that the basic structure and elements of story have been the same for millennia. A major event has usually occurred at the ten minute mark of movies since at least the sound era; almost all movies feature a major plot point at the half-way point. Covers for science fiction books have been visually different from literary fiction for a long time. Songs have featured verses with repeating choruses and a unique bridge after the second chorus for decades. Independent publishing did not create or start any of these practices.

It did, however, institutionalize them. It assembly line-ized these guidelines into strict requirements in consumer tastes. Before, these tenets or guidelines were somewhat unspoken; they were understood to be necessary, but weren’t diagrammed down to the minutest detail. Novels weren’t all created with slavish devotion to the formula from conception to distribution. Instead, they were molded, shaped, corralled, herded into conformity to what was generally known to sell. According to Peter Ackroyd’s Alfred Hitchcock: A Brief Life, the director passionately wanted to create art, but he was more than willing to cater to what audiences desired. He was evidently concerned only that he was able to translate a few of his most cherished visual scenarios onto the big screen - and whether the film succeeded financially. So, art has always existed within the realities of commerce.

However, the ability of readers (or listeners, or viewers) to directly access the precise content they want, without delay is what’s brought us to where we are. Worldwide marketplaces, and digital delivery, have catered to consumers to such an extent that consumer laziness has resulted. More than laziness; it’s a lethargy signaling impending death.

It’s not just “writing to market,” incorporating the same tropes at all the expected plot points, and a likewise formulaic cover that describes to a “T” what your book is about. It’s also about eliminating any perceived annoyance of, well, reading itself.

Reading can be such a difficult commitment, so audio books have proliferated. But, attention spans have waned, so what do we do? We give people shorter audio stories. These aren’t just narrated versions of written books, they’re “originals” designed to be listened to and not read. (Yes, I’m aware of radio theater). Some people with short attention spans still prefer actual reading, so there’s been an explosion of self-published “short” fiction, including stores helpfully segregated by reading times of 15 minute increments (beginning with 15 minute stories).

To be fair, our romance pen name is publishing 90 minute and two hour short reads, and yes, we are writing to market and incorporating all of the significant tropes. I may sound elitist, but my argument is one of explanation (or more humbly, potential explanation) rather than condemnation.

My point is simply this: huge swathes of the reading market are conditioned/have been conditioned to reading lazily. Only items that exactly match the length, style, tropes, and format that they demand are consumed. Anything else misses “reader expectations” and they are shielded from such works by the enabling power of choice offered by online marketplaces.

In other words, they are ready and primed to consume A.I. generated books. Majorities of today’s readers are not concerned with whether a work was “artfully” created, whether is “has something to say” or represents the sharing of part of the author’s soul, so long as it checks all the boxes of reader expectations. If they can obtain content faster, in greater quantity, and cheaper from an Artificial author, I suggest they will.

The final gatekeeper, it turns out, is the individual human creative mind. And it’s about to be stormed passed.

Readers, in being spoon-fed exactly what they wanted, ushered in a boom in self publishing. They will likely be the death of it, too, or at least the death of human authors earning a living from it.

As I mentioned yesterday, A.I. powered chat bots use advanced computing technology and language modeling to output what they believe humans want to read/see/hear. Surely such programs, which don’t require sleep, never suffer writer’s block or repetitive motion injuries, and can craft stories in seconds, will far outperform human authors in this task. Plus, human authors expect to get paid. The likes of Amazon can potentially publish A.I. written books of every conceivable length and format. In this case, they don’t have to pay a royalty to the human author. They can probably drop the price back towards the “free” and $0.99 price point that ushered in the self publishing craze - and still make more profit.

Therefore, if you have a hankering to write, and you want to “cash-in” on it, now is the time. If you want to write what people demand, without consideration for artistry, you absolutely ought to do it now, before any vestigial discomfort with robot-generated fiction wears off, and while consumers still feel sympathy for the plight of authors. (Again, no insult intended - I’m participating in this very thing). Cash in while you can.

Now, it would be selfish, wrong, bad, immoral, and fattening of me to suggest for one second that “something ought to be done” about this through some kind of legislation or regulation. Readers and self published authors co-created this drama, and both groups deserve the future AI. will give them.

So, that’s my theory of how this has come about. What do you think? Agree, disagree? Leave a comment or send me an email to let me know your thoughts!