— 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.
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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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Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, and in the eyes of the author. I post my paintings of Deviant art. There are a mix of young aspiring artist who proudly post their work, even if it’s not all that accomplished by “professional” standards – I may well be one of them, though not young – as well as some really-really accomplished artists. It works as a showcase for one’s work be what it may. In art, getting your work into a gallery is how pieces for sale get sorted out and sold. In publishing we have traditional publishers to do that for us, if that’s what we want. In any event, there is no reliable way to filter out AI writing, except by making it too expensive to publish bad AI. In the end, you’ll have to rely on writers who pledge that they’re not publishing a book written by AI, just like farmers who the pledge “No Artificial Growth Hormones” on our bottles of milk. If you can’t trust authors and farmers, who can you trust?
The fact is, in my opinion, indie publishing doesn’t need any sort of curation, for the simple fact that there are indie authors who are making millions, and thousands who are making six figures as indie authors, despite all the slop, AI or other wised. Clearly, it isn’t the over-saturated market that’s keeping any author’s sales down. It’s the fact that indie publishing has evolved into a real to goodness business. If an author is not writing commercial books designed to appeal to a known market, and then spending a lot of money and time promoting their books to that audience, well there’s no mystery why they’re not selling, is there?
But hey, I’m not writing books to a specific market and I’m not spending any time or money promoting my books, and still I sell, or at least give away, enough books to encourage me to write more. I just wrapped up my 11th year as a publisher, and it looks like I sold – or gave away -nearly 25,000 books this past year, my best year so far. That brings my 11 year total to around 130K along with a whopping $1,400 total gross revenue. I’m not bragging, I’m simply pointing out the fact, with numbers, that there is a market, because it is much smaller than the paid market, where it is much easier for readers to find, read, and enjoy your books. Isn’t that what you really want? Plus, there ain’t no AI slop in the free book market. It doesn’t pay well enough.
I’ve banged this drum before, though I have to say that a lot of my success is likely due to the fact that I’ve been giving away books for 11 years now. Certainly if I look at my sales on the platforms I started with in 2015, my sales would be down 93%, so even giving books away is a whole lot harder in 2026. (Though part of that decline is due to the fact that for many years I was able to sell all my books for free on Amazon, which is no longer the case.) In my case, adding Google in 2018 that has proven a gold mine for me, along with auto-narrated audiobooks in 2021. But still, as Bobby Dylan sings in Like a Rolling Stone, ‘When you ain’t got nothing, you’ve got nothing to lose.” What do indie authors focused on creating art rather than a commercial product have to lose by foregoing pocket change? You tell me, I’d like to know, because I can’t think of anything.
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I’m not sold on the idea of some kind of quality control by the platforms that make indie publishing possible. It would likely create many more problems than it would solve. I just find it ironic that they’re all going after “AI slop” while doing nothing about other types of slop they’re pushing out there into the world.
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$12 won’t stop any actual AI generators. D2D’s excuse is just that. Using AI I could pump a novel a day. I’ve prompted incredible cover art that no one would contest was slop. And the content, with today’s LLMs, surpasses my ability to write, at least.
Money from new authorship is at an end. Established authors might continue their success. But economic success through writing is a fools errand. Success measured by other means is still achievable, I would think.
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Yeah. I see a lot of people complaining about the $12 fee. If they’re not generating any revenue with their books, how could they possibly be expected to pay the fee!!! To which I say, if you can’t afford $12 a year to be able to publish your books, there are much larger problems going on.
I have viewed the $20 registration and $12 annual fee as a way for D2D to get more revenue out of lesser performing accounts. Every time I log in and see that I haven’t sold any books I wonder when D2D is going to kick me out. I’d rather pay $12 then get kicked out of the system.
You’re right … making any kind of money on this art is at an end.
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The end root of the problem is really money and greed. All of these companies have to generate revenue, and good storytelling does not generate enough to keep them viable. So comes the enshittification, which is apparently still not a word, somehow. Remove the money and the problem solves itself.
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