Why I’m not freaking out about AI

I apologise for the click-bait title and also for the fact that the first thing I’m going to say is: I AM freaking out about AI a little bit. I’ve also been trying recently to be more positive and upbeat about things in general, especially because it’s clear to me that I’ve had a lot of luck and advantages that many other writers don’t have.

But despite those two statements, the reason I’m not freaking out about AI all that much is: it’s not the biggest challenge facing fiction authors in this day and age. We are already squeezed on all sides, our livelihood threatened and chipped away at.

An undiscerning reader can already get my books for free on pirate sites, so any undiscerning reader will be able to read AI-generated books if they want to. Authors are already losing.

It’s so difficult to find books on Amazon anyway, even before a flood of AI-written titles. The algorithm has removed human choice from the reading market and reduced it to sets of eyes on an ad and the number of clicks, which are getting more expensive all the time. Book marketing is now about scamming the algorithm to get it to show your book to more eyes, not about the unique and very personal content of the book. Books tend to be invisible on Amazon until they are reduced to 99p, a price point at which no UK-based author can make an income unless their book is in the top 20 of the entire chart (I’ve been fortunate enough to have had a book in the top 100 for eight weeks, so I do know about this).

Each title is selling fewer and fewer copies because of the factors above, and price wars mean customers are willing to pay less and less, publishers aren’t able to pay authors the sums they used to, so real incomes are reducing. Consider this example: back when I first moved to the UK in 2007, the deal in the Works was three books for £5. Now, SEVENTEEN years later, it’s 3 for £6. If you think about the way prices have risen for every other product on the market, you’ll see how authors incomes have become squeezed – and that’s for the lucky ones who get a book distributed in the Works, who are accepting fewer and fewer titles from each publisher as the market diversifies.

All of this is already happening. The work of being an author has already been devalued many times over, before AI even joined the party.

So what’s the good news?

There is a core group of reader fans. Now I’ve been doing this a few years, there are people who read my books the very first day they’re available (for the crazy expensive price of £1.99 LOL) and pre-order the next one even before the cover has been revealed. There are people who have the paperbacks, even though they’re more eco-friendly print-on-demand copies that are harder to get. There are readers who leave reviews and recommend books to others and understand the value of the story they’re buying – that it’s art, meant to touch them and open their minds to a different way of thinking, or another way of life.

Those wonderful readers are keeping my career afloat and I am incredibly grateful for each one who’s found me, who supports me. I know these lovely people would never knowingly buy a book that had been written by AI. In fact readers are turning out to be our greatest defenders, when even publishers have experimented with using it to enhance their offerings. It’s my hope for the future to find more of my people and that’s my way forward!