Grab a coffee, folks. This is a long post.
This year, I stepped away from writing to handle some other stuff, and also to gain clarity on what it meant, or rather, means, to be an author in these crazy, AI days. So much has changed.
The publishing industry seldom supports full-time authorship. But that’s what I want. I’m also happy as an independent author, but that choice is bringing new challenges.
Amazon has changed book discoverability. AI-generated books are avalanching into the kindle store, and elsewhere. Even the digital library apps, like Libby and Hoopla, are struggling with the AI deluge.
How do I get my books, and especially my new books, noticed? Well, that’s a puzzle I’m still working on. What I can tell you, from my experience, is that old methods from the last decade are less and less effective. For instance, posting on Facebook has far less reach.
Moreover, Facebook, or its parent company Meta, is instituting new terms and conditions that not only strangle reach, but demand that Facebook page owners PAY if we wish to share more than two links a month. That sucks for sharing book reviews and recommendations.
Facebook is also making a grab not just for our content on Facebook itself, but for everything publish on our personal websites. Yes, this is mainly aimed at news organisations and other big media companies, but it catches little people like me as well. And yes, after enough people screamed about it, Facebook backed down, but the intent remains.
Add in that Facebook continually prompts me to use AI to write my posts and to have its AI reply to everyone and I’m outraged.
The result is that I won’t be resuming my weekly Facebook page posts. I will retain the page, so as to share the news when I have a new release, but that is all. I don’t like the feeling that we’re being exploited.
Sidenote: speaking of keeping up with my book releases…
If you follow this blog you’ll hear about them, but just to be sure, you can subscribe to my new releases only newsletter on my author website and/or follow me on Amazon by going to my Amazon author page and clicking follow.
I was listening to Adam Conover explain how YouTube encourages everyone to post content, but pays very few people the equivalent of a living wage. It makes me think that all of these social media companies profit by what I’m calling, at least to myself, the theft of thought. And what’s worse now is that their theft is feeding AI, which then produces slop that pushes out original thinking and content. It’s making full-time creatorship very hard.
I worry that for readers the avalanche of AI-generated books with their glossy marketability, but poor reading experience will disappoint so often that readers will choose other forms of entertainment. We cannot afford to lose readers.
Reading is a conversation between the author, with their experiences of life, and readers with their own unique experiences. The world opens up in new ways. However, that doesn’t happen until, as so many authors have said, the author first opens a vein and bleeds onto the page. Real emotion has to be the starting place. Because shared emotion, vulnerability, is the invitation to the reader to be vulnerable in turn.
Conversation, after all, is the communication of information coloured by emotion. A fact is a dry thing until someone tells the story of how it changes lives.
I don’t want to comment on the extent to which traditional publishers are using AI to initiate (identify market trends and craft book proposals to match), produce, and promote books. It does mean that, depending on the publisher, readers can’t rely on traditional publishing to have excluded the AI-generation of much of a book.
My recommendation, since we currently can’t be confident as to the extent to which a book is produced using AI, is that you trust your gut. If a book has multiple flaws (such as repetition, an incoherent or missing plot, cardboard characters that are inconsistent), or leaves you emotionally flat, then feel free not to finish it, but to try a different book, perhaps a different author, and never to give up the centuries-old pleasure of reading novels.
But back to the author side of this chaotic new world. Why continue to write fiction? Why give a year and more of my life to a book?
Because authors are revolutionaries.
Expectations and social norms have changed recently. The change started with social media and has accelerated as people employ AI agents.
Society now expects instant answers. Instant responses. An AI agent can provide these immediate replies, possibly inaccurately, but that’s a different issue.
Humans, especially a single human, like an independent author, can’t reply as swiftly. Thus, we fail to meet AI-enforced customer expectations.
But deeper and more troubling than the expectation of immediate gratification, of immediate attention, is the replacement of experience with performance, and in a broader sense, the replacement of encounter with sentimentality.
The first is simple to illustrate. An influencer, presented with a pretty cake, will carefully frame the situation for a photo opportunity; that is, rather than focus on consuming the cake, the influencer is focused on the performance of consuming the cake.
Performance contributes to status. Status isn’t a bad thing. It can be as simple as establishing that one belongs. Status: insider. Status: ambitious. Status: fake it till you make it!
But experience is how we grow, how we deepen our understanding of the world, and how way truly connect with others. Why trade that for empty performance? Answer: because we’re scared to be real.
The replacement of encountering others with merely sentimentalising them is an intensification of this performance replacing experience trend.
When you say “aww”, and don’t follow it up with an attempt at real connection, that “aww” is a sign of sentimentality; of refusing to encounter the other, and instead, framing them as an object rather than a person. This allows you to continue your life as planned, rather than embracing a detour that addresses the needs of the other.
Which is a long and complicated way of saying that much of human interaction is now superficial. That may always have been true, but now superficiality is valued over a true encounter. AI-measured and -enforced metrics ensure it. This is why people speak of gaming the system rather than of contributing to or challenging it, or of pursuing true value creation.
Writing a novel is one way of opposing this hollowing out of society. In a novel, the author can create and hold a safe space in which the reader can be real, and by real, I mean able to risk vulnerability. As readers, we allow ourselves to be open to the characters in the novel. We connect. Empathy is effortless.
A novel doesn’t have to be cozy to be a safe space. What it must do is respect the characters and world it offers, and respect the reader.
Even after so long thinking about these issues, talking about them still feels rough. These aren’t smooth ideas. We’re navigating a time of change and trying to build resilience (and a sustainable career) at the same time as others are trying to drain/exploit systems (like the publishing industry) for “profit”. (I say profit ironically since it feels more like theft).
To bring the discussion back to practicalities…
First, Ghosts Cry is delayed AGAIN. In explanation I’ll just say, this year has been a lot! Ghosts Cry will be out in 2027, but I’m not promising a firm release date yet. False Eve will be out in the second half of 2027. I am so sorry for the delay I could cry.
Second, my social media habits have changed. As I said earlier, I’m stepping away from Facebook. I am around on Bluesky, so I’m not completely inaccessible. More importantly, I’ll be resuming this blog on a monthly basis. I’ll post at the beginning of the month, probably on a Friday, leave comments open for 28 days, then close them just before the next post. Because of spam I have to manually review each comment. Unfortunately, that also slows discussion. But it’s worth it to create a safe space.
Third, I won’t be reviewing books any more. I will occasionally mention some I’m anticipating or enjoyed, but not as a regular commitment. I hate giving this up, but ::gestures at AI slop books, AI scam emails and comments, bots, AI scraping, rude people, and general life stuff:: I lack the time.
The monthly posts will start in January.
Re-reading this post, I’m rueful at how downbeat it sounds. I don’t feel that way! But being real is less sparkly than performative positivity for algorithmic optimisation.
Let’s end with something hopeful. What book (apart from poor, delayed Ghosts Cry) are you anticipating in 2027?
I have Storms of Fate by Anne Bishop on pre-order.
Jenny
PS You may (I’m a wicked tease) hear from me before January because I’m working on a novella which I hope to have out for Christmas. “Scrooge and the Gremlin (Not to Mention a Vampire Queen)”. Fingers crossed! The novella has a simple plot compared to Ghosts Cry, which has so many plot threads it requires intense focus.
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