My Amazon Author Career May Be Over...

Apologies for the delayed post this week, everyone. I meant to get this out on Wednesday, January 21. However, I was busy taking an accounting certification exam (Enrolled Agent, part 1) that day. I passed!

And yes, I should have scheduled this post in advance, but I was too busy studying. :) So, even though I don’t usually like to send emails on Fridays because they can get lost in the shuffle, here we are. I’m sort of glad I waited because I read some articles this morning that inspired this post. The essence of it is: I’m really sick of AI. Which, in a way, would be a good, informal tagline for my entire Substack…

I’ve written fiction for years. I didn’t start to take it really seriously until about 2018 or so, and then I was interrupted by an accounting degree. If you want to know more, check out my recap of last year’s writing.

Anyway, I was still learning the craft of writing when Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing was launched. KDP, as it’s called, allows indie authors to upload their books to Amazon. It’s basically what made the ebook revolution and indie author careers possible. It’s pretty amazing and is something I’ve looked forward to using.

At least until now.

In a move no one asked for, late last year Amazon rolled out a feature called Ask This Book. The timing is awfully suspicious, if you ask me: who pays attention to stuff like that around the holidays? If you want to introduce a potentially unpopular feature, it seems like announcing it around the holidays is a pretty good move.

Thankfully, authors’ groups everywhere have sounded the alarm. Writer Beware says it raises “rights concerns,” and the Authors Guild doesn’t like it, either. Kindlepreneur also did a nice deep dive into it, including actually testing it out, and have pointed out how terrible it is that authors can’t opt out of it.

Yes, that’s right: if you don’t like this thing, if you don’t want someone reading your book to be able to ask a mysterious generative AI model questions about said book, you can’t opt out. You’d have to remove all of your books from Amazon. And while it’s a smart decision to “publish wide” (i.e. publish your books to many platforms, not just Amazon), Amazon is an important revenue stream for many authors.

What’s the solution here?

I don’t know.

I don’t blame any author for keeping his or her books in Amazon, despite this change. I get it: we all have to make a buck, which is getting harder and harder as time goes on. (Have you seen the job market today? It’s a nightmare!)

Personally, I don’t know if I’d feel comfortable putting my books on Amazon for sale now. I’m going to have to think about it and research more. But at first glance, I don’t like what I’ve read.

Share Fluent Historian

It’s just frustrating: I never asked for this AI crap. Many of us didn’t.

I never used to think, geez, I wish I had a computer program to generate (poorly written) emails and blog posts for me, as well as (badly) summarize facts about questions I ask, some of which might be fake!

I never had that thought. I’m willing to bet most of us didn’t!

Yet, this AI nonsense has been thrust on us. People are losing jobs over it, despite AI doing a worse job at tasks than, you know, actual humans.

Data centers are depleting our clean drinking water. What will we do when this water is gone? No one seems to think about that, least of all the handful of tech bros getting rich off of AI while the rest of us suffer. (See the fantastic book The AI Con for more details.)

Worst of all, this is all so CEOs can save a few bucks on not hiring people to do entry level jobs, and college students can get away with not doing any work, but still get a degree.

My anger is part of the reason I started this Substack. I usually feel like I’m howling into the wind, that no one cares, but based on internet comments I’ve seen, there must be some other likeminded people out there. (Anyone? Anyone?)

Even if there aren’t, I’m not going to stop writing. We aren’t doomed to an AI future. You’d never know this from reading the pro-AI hype out there, but AI generates no money at this point. Those AI companies are bleeding cash like you wouldn’t believe. We’re in a bubble, and it’s unsustainable.

Thanks for reading! I wrote this rant in record time because I couldn’t stay silent. If you liked this post, please subscribe for more. Forthcoming posts I have planned include a discussion of the AI bubble and a possible book club, if there’s enough interest, to read The AI Con, which I mentioned above.

I’ll also continue with my posts about history, literature, and culture. A general knowledge of these topics is what makes us human and can keep us sane in this age of AI.