Cirsova Magazine has been raising the standard of short fiction in science fiction and fantasy for years in the genre, and their editor has taken to X to warn of a critical mass of content on the market, making the value of basic fiction diminish over time.
Not buying it. The trad publishers are losing market share, because no one wants to read their gatekeeping stories that are all DEI and left-wing scolds.
I'm not seeing a decrease in my sales or my market share. I'm seeing new authors showing up and doing quite well. I honestly believe MORE people are reading now than a decade ago and what I see around me only seems to confirm this.
Yes, the AI scammers are a pox upon the business, but if Amazon were to hire some trained and experience programmers and stop offshoring everything to incompetents, that could easily be filtered out - it's not hard, it just takes people who know WTF they're doing.
The first question is one of rates. You are correct that the number of readers is growing. Alex's contention is that the production of fiction is growing faster than that.
The second question is the detectability of AI produced content at scale. If this is indeed a simple problem, please build it. Build a working, long-term-viable, scalable detector for AI-generated media. You could sell it for lots of money, be set for life, and make the world a better place.
No one author can fulfill the needs of a single reader, much less the market. The more there is out there worth reading, the more people will read. Alex just doesn't understand the market. None of the trads do. That's why they're dying.
As for the AI stuff? Well it's not all that good. Even if they get it to where it's hard to tell, it's still going to suck, so it won't get the readership and will just fall away.
Because it's nothing more than a long series of 'if-then' statements. There is no intelligence behind it, and it very much mimics that which is used to teach it. So there's going to be a lot of plagiarism and lawsuits.
i'm guessing you're thinking we're tradpub because i had you blocked on twitter.
well, tbh, i can't remember why i blocked you, and scrolling your feed i see no reason to have you blocked, so i unblocked you.
anyway, we're not tradpub; the closest thing to "backing tradpub" we've done is support some Baen stuff, and that was mostly because we were friends with Sean K and HAJ.
Okay then, if you're such a backer of independent authors, why weren't you covering and writing about my lawsuit against ebook dot bike? The one that went to the 2nd US circuit court. The one that was a landmark win for IP rights for all writers? The one that the only coverage I got was hostile, because it was by an online magazine that backed and supported pirates & IP Theft?
I mean, even File 770 wrote about it once. Which was the only positive press I received. Everyone else, and I do mean EVERYONE ELSE in the 'business' ignored it.
Sad that a lefty site was the only one. The Right is notorious for not helping our own. I think we've gotten better, and now that the torrents of money from USAID are dribbling down, the Left will get worse.
You get a lot of alternate stories that would never have been told back in the day of Books A Million with its very limited selection of new novels to add to the chosen old standbys. This is, I think, the going back to the Pulp Age that everyone was talking about a few years back. This will yield a larger market.
Calvin Coolidge said that nine out ten things you worry about won't happen. Fear God and dreadnought. Today is a good day.
The tipping point passed a few years ago. I use eReaderIQ to watch books/series/authors for discounts and buy most of my Kindle books at the $1.99 or less price point, and almost never above the $3 price point. For instance when Justified and For Steam and Country went on sale, I was alerted and picked them up. I've bought literally hundreds of books at this price point in the past 12 months, with kindle points helping subsidize it. I have a backlog of books that could last me many years. Because of that, I have no interest in paying top dollar for eBooks.
I ignore Kindle Unlimited, price at $3-5, and have only a couple perma-freebies. I sell a lot of physical paperbacks and those are $14-18.
I know I miss a portion, but I don't see much benefit offering on KU. I accidentally clicked KU on my latest and panicked when I saw some page reads. I'm wide. CS responded and removed the book, but not before someone read it. I made 1/8th on the page reads what I do if I had sold the book.
I can not respond to, or like, any of the comments on the thread where I was told to 'fuck off' and was blocked. Even the ones I posted.
Because substack.
I also find it hilarious that the person who told me that I was now blocked again, is (according to the people who manage my X/Twitter feed - that's right, I pay someone else to manage it these days) is apparently attacking me there. I admit I laughed when I got that message.
So let me say this: You're a publisher? Then ACT like one. Every publisher out there knew about the lawsuit - though for reasons they didn't wish to get involved. As a magazine publisher you should have known about it, and as it was something important to your authors and fans, maybe you should have commented on it?
Oh, and grow a thicker skin. I get death threats and all the rest of that crap all of the time. I also get plagiarized, threatened with legal action, copyright and trademark suits, all that kinda junk. There are even paid shills who go after me now. But that's life in the big leagues these days. Getting all pissy because I said something you didn't like?
I was tooting this warning on Goodreads 10 years ago. The number of new authors was increasing by 5000 per month when Amazon had broader search analytics - and the rate was increasing as I tracked it.
Now, I can tell by the ranking system overall (zon having removed the deeper search function). If I get a top 100 in my niche and the overall ranking is 600,000 on zon overall, then I know the book market is exponentially impacted. I used to see my overall at 8,000 to be the top 100 in my niche.
Starting out? Good freaking luck... Just to stay afloat, most authors have to resort to giveaways, ARCs, and review circles to achieve a blip in the Zon algorithm.
Not buying it. The trad publishers are losing market share, because no one wants to read their gatekeeping stories that are all DEI and left-wing scolds.
I'm not seeing a decrease in my sales or my market share. I'm seeing new authors showing up and doing quite well. I honestly believe MORE people are reading now than a decade ago and what I see around me only seems to confirm this.
Yes, the AI scammers are a pox upon the business, but if Amazon were to hire some trained and experience programmers and stop offshoring everything to incompetents, that could easily be filtered out - it's not hard, it just takes people who know WTF they're doing.
The first question is one of rates. You are correct that the number of readers is growing. Alex's contention is that the production of fiction is growing faster than that.
The second question is the detectability of AI produced content at scale. If this is indeed a simple problem, please build it. Build a working, long-term-viable, scalable detector for AI-generated media. You could sell it for lots of money, be set for life, and make the world a better place.
No one author can fulfill the needs of a single reader, much less the market. The more there is out there worth reading, the more people will read. Alex just doesn't understand the market. None of the trads do. That's why they're dying.
As for the AI stuff? Well it's not all that good. Even if they get it to where it's hard to tell, it's still going to suck, so it won't get the readership and will just fall away.
Because it's nothing more than a long series of 'if-then' statements. There is no intelligence behind it, and it very much mimics that which is used to teach it. So there's going to be a lot of plagiarism and lawsuits.
Wait, you think Cirsova is trad pub?
That's always been the market they backed.
That has, in fact, not been the market they've backed.
i'm guessing you're thinking we're tradpub because i had you blocked on twitter.
well, tbh, i can't remember why i blocked you, and scrolling your feed i see no reason to have you blocked, so i unblocked you.
anyway, we're not tradpub; the closest thing to "backing tradpub" we've done is support some Baen stuff, and that was mostly because we were friends with Sean K and HAJ.
Okay then, if you're such a backer of independent authors, why weren't you covering and writing about my lawsuit against ebook dot bike? The one that went to the 2nd US circuit court. The one that was a landmark win for IP rights for all writers? The one that the only coverage I got was hostile, because it was by an online magazine that backed and supported pirates & IP Theft?
I mean, even File 770 wrote about it once. Which was the only positive press I received. Everyone else, and I do mean EVERYONE ELSE in the 'business' ignored it.
Okay, I take it back, fuck you, you are a retard, and I'm reblocking you.
He's not a news site.
Then what exactly is it?
Sad that a lefty site was the only one. The Right is notorious for not helping our own. I think we've gotten better, and now that the torrents of money from USAID are dribbling down, the Left will get worse.
You get a lot of alternate stories that would never have been told back in the day of Books A Million with its very limited selection of new novels to add to the chosen old standbys. This is, I think, the going back to the Pulp Age that everyone was talking about a few years back. This will yield a larger market.
Calvin Coolidge said that nine out ten things you worry about won't happen. Fear God and dreadnought. Today is a good day.
The tipping point passed a few years ago. I use eReaderIQ to watch books/series/authors for discounts and buy most of my Kindle books at the $1.99 or less price point, and almost never above the $3 price point. For instance when Justified and For Steam and Country went on sale, I was alerted and picked them up. I've bought literally hundreds of books at this price point in the past 12 months, with kindle points helping subsidize it. I have a backlog of books that could last me many years. Because of that, I have no interest in paying top dollar for eBooks.
Interesting buyer viewpoint. Smart, too.
I ignore Kindle Unlimited, price at $3-5, and have only a couple perma-freebies. I sell a lot of physical paperbacks and those are $14-18.
I know I miss a portion, but I don't see much benefit offering on KU. I accidentally clicked KU on my latest and panicked when I saw some page reads. I'm wide. CS responded and removed the book, but not before someone read it. I made 1/8th on the page reads what I do if I had sold the book.
Two things:
I can not respond to, or like, any of the comments on the thread where I was told to 'fuck off' and was blocked. Even the ones I posted.
Because substack.
I also find it hilarious that the person who told me that I was now blocked again, is (according to the people who manage my X/Twitter feed - that's right, I pay someone else to manage it these days) is apparently attacking me there. I admit I laughed when I got that message.
So let me say this: You're a publisher? Then ACT like one. Every publisher out there knew about the lawsuit - though for reasons they didn't wish to get involved. As a magazine publisher you should have known about it, and as it was something important to your authors and fans, maybe you should have commented on it?
Oh, and grow a thicker skin. I get death threats and all the rest of that crap all of the time. I also get plagiarized, threatened with legal action, copyright and trademark suits, all that kinda junk. There are even paid shills who go after me now. But that's life in the big leagues these days. Getting all pissy because I said something you didn't like?
Not a good look.
Bye!
Uh-huh… and…
Food for thought as the world changes so very quickly
I was tooting this warning on Goodreads 10 years ago. The number of new authors was increasing by 5000 per month when Amazon had broader search analytics - and the rate was increasing as I tracked it.
Now, I can tell by the ranking system overall (zon having removed the deeper search function). If I get a top 100 in my niche and the overall ranking is 600,000 on zon overall, then I know the book market is exponentially impacted. I used to see my overall at 8,000 to be the top 100 in my niche.
Starting out? Good freaking luck... Just to stay afloat, most authors have to resort to giveaways, ARCs, and review circles to achieve a blip in the Zon algorithm.