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Writers condemn startup's plans to publish 8k books next year using AI (theguardian.com)
4 points by bookofjoe 47 days ago | hide | past | favorite | 1 comment



Subhead is clearer:

Publisher Spines will charge authors between $1,200 and $5,000 to have their books proofread, designed and distributed with the help of artificial intelligence

So it's not a new kind of scam publishing crappy books written by AI (at best retreads of existing books). It's automating the old scam of vanity presses.

And if they're being honest-ish about it, I'm OK with that. Vanity presses don't have to be scams. Tell people that nobody is going to buy your book. You'll get your handsomely-bound copies of your text, lightly edited because you were just going to fight them on editorial decisions anyway.

I'd be skeptical of how much they can help in distribution. Brick-and-mortar bookstores don't want your book. Maybe you can convince your local shop to stick a few copies with a "Local Author!" sign, but AI isn't going to help with that.

It wouldn't surprise me if some robo-editors could genuinely improve the vanity press quality. That says more about the existing quality of the vanity press than about how much I trust robo-editors.




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