— Mark Paxson
In my last post, I shared an email exchange I had and asked whether it was a scam. The verdict is in. It was a scam. Since then, I’ve received two more emails offering the same opportunity. One for the very same book — that wasn’t mine. The other that actually referenced one of my books. Each of them promised exposure via a radio station or other media source.
…
Meanwhile, Draft2Digital has announced that new accounts will be charged a $20 fee and existing accounts that don’t generate at least $100 in revenue a $12 annual fee. Their explanation for these changes apparently is that they want to battle “AI slop.” Which I find interesting since they don’t outright ban AI contributing to the works of the authors who publish there.
I switched from KDP to D2D back in 2021. I’m one of those authors who struggle to generate the target revenue. But I can afford $12 a year if I don’t hit that number. For me, though, it’s a matter of principle and I don’t know what I’m going to do.
I have no interest in going back to KDP. And this type of thing is happening everywhere now. Barnes & Noble has decreed that paperbacks on their website have to be listed for at least $14.99, for instance. It seems that publishing platforms and booksellers are in a race to monetize every more what it is that we do as indie writers.
And then there is the AI slop that is everywhere now. How are we supposed to generate $100 in annual revenue when our books are buried by thousands of AI-generated books? And it isn’t even the AI slop, it’s the sheer number of indie books that are flooding the market making it virtually impossible for individual writers to be noticed.
Personally, I think it may be time for these publishing platforms to actually do more about the quality of the books they allow via their platforms. Focusing only on “AI slop” is irrelevant if there is all sorts of other slop getting pushed out there, overwhelming the market for writers and stories that are of better quality.
Writers Supporting Writers 
It’s ironic that we’re thinking a certain amount of gatekeeping might be good. I think the root of the problem is people who think that cranking out a lot of books in a short time, however you do it, is a way to get rich. Another irony.
As for the monetization by publishing platforms, maybe they’ve think that since so many indie authors don’t depend on their book sales for income, we must have some spare cash they can ask us to part with. Other hobbyists have to pay to play, so why not writers?
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Do you agree that maybe there needs to be some gatekeeping regarding quality for indie writers? I may not depend on writing for income, that doesn’t change that I’d like to generate some income from the acts of writing and publishing.
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I’d like to agree with that. It would be great if poor quality writing, whether by humans or AI, could be removed or not allowed to be published. The problem is how that could be done without going back to traditional publishing and severely restricting self-publishing. Human editors? AI-based evaluation programs? No matter the mechanism or process, some writers will be excluded, and I’ll bet it won’t always be the worst ones.
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Agreed. But I feel like these publishing platforms, at some point, should take some responsibility for what they’re helping put out there.
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Maybe some sort of basic filter that would catch really crappy books like the AI texts I ended up buying. Sort of like Smashwords’ old “Meat Grinder,” but checking the writing as well as formatting. Might work, but there would likely be writers complaining that their experimental work was unfairly excluded.
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At this point, my response would be “oh well.”
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