Reminder that this isn't "disrupting" the romance industry; it's' a spammer's grift targeting Amazon's payment plan for Kindle Unlimited loans, which pays per page read.
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@cstross How do you see it play for writers? Finding something worth reading was already difficult (unless you go with classics) but now how do one gets enough following for people to actually find their work?
@mms AI is not a threat to real writers. The same problems apply as always, with the same solution: get an agent, get a trad publishing deal, get marketed. Only instead of starting out via short fiction in the pulps/monthly magazines, there are other on-ramps; web serials, patreons, self-pub with web serials/patreons to generate paying customers, then self-pub sales to get big agent/publisher attention (if you want them).
It's a business, same as it's always been. And this is just another scam.
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RE: https://mstdn.social/@Mediagazer/116039970902809253
Reminder that this isn't "disrupting" the romance industry; it's' a spammer's grift targeting Amazon's payment plan for Kindle Unlimited loans, which pays per page read. The perp's ebooks actually average less than 250 loans/sales per book, 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than a real human-written book. (It would probably also be possible to use a bot to generate accounts on amazon to defraud KU this way, like click-fraud in google/FB ads a decade ago.)
@cstross Do you mean that these mostly get people to loan/buy/read them by flooding the selection potential readers are presented with? -
RE: https://mstdn.social/@Mediagazer/116039970902809253
Reminder that this isn't "disrupting" the romance industry; it's' a spammer's grift targeting Amazon's payment plan for Kindle Unlimited loans, which pays per page read. The perp's ebooks actually average less than 250 loans/sales per book, 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than a real human-written book. (It would probably also be possible to use a bot to generate accounts on amazon to defraud KU this way, like click-fraud in google/FB ads a decade ago.)
@cstross also it was already a known attack through bad "anthologies" iirc?
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@cstross Do you mean that these mostly get people to loan/buy/read them by flooding the selection potential readers are presented with?
@robryk Yes. But also: KU gives you up to 20 loans simultaneously, no minimum/maximum duration, for a flat $10 a month. So readers who don't want slop and accidentally get slop may idly flip pages before they hit the "return to KU" button and try a different book. Which is the grifter's pay-off. Publishing lots of titles under many names simply games the rec algorithm (which includes some random new titles along with some from popular authors).
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RE: https://mstdn.social/@Mediagazer/116039970902809253
Reminder that this isn't "disrupting" the romance industry; it's' a spammer's grift targeting Amazon's payment plan for Kindle Unlimited loans, which pays per page read. The perp's ebooks actually average less than 250 loans/sales per book, 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than a real human-written book. (It would probably also be possible to use a bot to generate accounts on amazon to defraud KU this way, like click-fraud in google/FB ads a decade ago.)
@cstross "failing to disclose" sounds like there is no intent behind it.
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@robryk Yes. But also: KU gives you up to 20 loans simultaneously, no minimum/maximum duration, for a flat $10 a month. So readers who don't want slop and accidentally get slop may idly flip pages before they hit the "return to KU" button and try a different book. Which is the grifter's pay-off. Publishing lots of titles under many names simply games the rec algorithm (which includes some random new titles along with some from popular authors).
@cstross @robryk That explains why, over the past few months, Amazon's "New For You" list has been increasingly flooded with Mills and Boon-style romantic crap, whether or not you actually read it. I reckon I can see some of the other pseudonyms of this "Coral Hart;" books which are obviously self-published.
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@mms AI is not a threat to real writers. The same problems apply as always, with the same solution: get an agent, get a trad publishing deal, get marketed. Only instead of starting out via short fiction in the pulps/monthly magazines, there are other on-ramps; web serials, patreons, self-pub with web serials/patreons to generate paying customers, then self-pub sales to get big agent/publisher attention (if you want them).
It's a business, same as it's always been. And this is just another scam.
@cstross Thanks! That brings hope
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RE: https://mstdn.social/@Mediagazer/116039970902809253
Reminder that this isn't "disrupting" the romance industry; it's' a spammer's grift targeting Amazon's payment plan for Kindle Unlimited loans, which pays per page read. The perp's ebooks actually average less than 250 loans/sales per book, 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than a real human-written book. (It would probably also be possible to use a bot to generate accounts on amazon to defraud KU this way, like click-fraud in google/FB ads a decade ago.)
Safari Books Online has a pretty opaque model. They tried the 'pay per page read' thing for a while, but it was hard to make work without DRM that was so invasive everyone opted out. Now they pay a flat monthly rate where the rate is set by whichever popularity bucket you're in (it was where a lot of the money I got from my books came from, because I got 50% of the Safari income, much less for the print editions).
I can kind-of see the benefit of per-page or per-chapter things for textbooks because I often want to dip into a textbook to answer a specific question. And it's nice if I can have access to a library of thousands of books, but still reward the author of the one I read two pages from to answer my question.
But for fiction, it makes no sense. A 300-page book of prose where 300 people read one page and give up is clearly less valuable than one where one person reads the whole book. I'd want a logarithmic scale for fiction.
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RE: https://mstdn.social/@Mediagazer/116039970902809253
Reminder that this isn't "disrupting" the romance industry; it's' a spammer's grift targeting Amazon's payment plan for Kindle Unlimited loans, which pays per page read. The perp's ebooks actually average less than 250 loans/sales per book, 1-2 orders of magnitude lower than a real human-written book. (It would probably also be possible to use a bot to generate accounts on amazon to defraud KU this way, like click-fraud in google/FB ads a decade ago.)
1984 keeps recurring. I seem to remember that the Party churns out automatically-produced romance and porn novels for the proles.
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1984 keeps recurring. I seem to remember that the Party churns out automatically-produced romance and porn novels for the proles.
@riggbeck Yes, but also triangulate for Eric Blair's thinly-disguised disdain (bordering on contempt) for said "proles".
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