Books, AI, and Scammers: A New Virus

 I used my premium Canva account that gives me access to images, not AI to create this. It may not be perfect, but it comes from me.

I love books. I love writing them and reading them. I love learning about culture and different lies while relishing the language and the word play created by human beings.

I also love supporting other creative acts. If you have written a book, or created theatrical art, or made a podcast, or written a song and I know you--or am interested--I do my best to promote you, without asking for anything back.

I believe in a creative economy, where what human individuals produce has more value than the imaginary reality of capitalism and money. (Yes, I meant imaginary reality because money isn't real, but it sure has power in this world).

The Virus

I recently posted a video rant about AI. This was a mild rant compared to what I'm feeling now. (And yes, the rant does comment on this platform, but this site is where I am speaking my truth).

AI is a Pain in the A$$

Today, when I was talking with my favorite book store owner, I learned that the "UK Society of Authors launches logo to identify books written by humans not AI"

The logo can be displayed on the back cover of books. Photograph: Society of Authors

That broke my heart a little bit. As a reader, I know that AI written books will never have the same impact and wonder as one written by a human creator. Technology does not have emotions, empathy, or humanity!

I understand that AI can be useful in many aspects of life. But I believe that using it to replace the human act of creating is disgusting, dangerous, and should be illegal.

Now, don't get me wrong. Writing a prompt to ask AI to create something, is a creative act, assuming that you don't use AI to write it's own prompts. (It can be done. (Before I became thoroughly disillusioned, I did some contract work on LLMS, it was fun to occasionally ask the AI to get meta in conversations.)

But I believe that AI should be used as a TOOL not an end product. I would rather celebrate mediocre art by a human being, then garbage art created by AI.

I became disillusioned when I realized that AI works by stealing the work of other artist's and reconfiguring it. I became even more disillusioned once I learned about the immense environmental impact the technology has.

Now, I'm beyond disillusioned and well into totally pissed off.

Viral Transition

Why? Because AI has enabled scammers and disenfranchises human creators.

In the past ten days, I have been hit with at least six book marketing scams. I almost fell for a few, and did fall for one. (I'm not naming names because I feel so stupid. I simply hope that karma bites this scammer in the A$$).

The thing is, I'm not stupid. I am:

• an independent author of a newly published book who wants to find readers;

• a person who spent more than nine months writing a book that she is proud of;

• a person who does not expect to get rich by writing, but believes that she had a worthwhile story to tell;

• a person who believes in supporting all acts of creativity, and does what she can to promote other people's creation;

• and a person who chooses to believe in the good in others.

The scammers used AI to scrape information about the book, and wrote convincing emails that of plans that could help me spread the word. That is, if they were honest and not greedy.

Here's a list of some of the scams:

• One wanted to charge me $4000. Maybe she wasn't a scam, but I don't have that kind of money to invest.

• One stole the identity of a legitimate book promotion account on Instagram. I reported this to the real person, whose account I love. I wish I could reach out to her for promotion, but now I feel like I would be taking advantage of a bad situation.

• One wanted to help me get reviews on Amazon but the PayPal email she gave me led to a cosmetic account. I was also supposed to tip the reviewers. It would be cheaper for me to send them free copies for an honest review. I suspect that I wouldn't have seen any reviews from that one.

• The one I fell for was supposed to be for an author talk for a book club. I was supposedly going to be joining them virtually. He asked for small donation for coffee. I messed up, because I love doing author talks and leading writing workshops. (Contact me if you want to discuss that for your group). I'm really crushed.

I'm sure some people still think I am just stupid. But AI is getting better, and people are getting crueler. I learn from my mistakes.

Global Infection

Rather than answer this question, I have a few questions for you to think about, followed by my own insights.

Did you know that the process of writing and publishing a book takes a lot of time?

The first version of P.O.W.ER took about nine months to write, and almost 2 years to publish. This revised version took about four months, because the book files were already made and my revisions didn't take too long.

Did you know that independent authors who take pride in their work often need to invest in editors, book designers, marketing, and so on?

Yes, I understand that it is our choice to spend that money. Only the authors lucky enough to get contracts. I say "lucky" because it often the difference between finding an agent/publisher comes down to timing and finding that one person who loves your work. There are plenty of books with traditional publishers that are mediocre. There are also many independent books that are spectacular. It all comes down to luck.

Did you know that independent authors only get a tiny percentage of the money from books sales?

There's a lot of variety here, depending on publisher and distributor. Amazon doesn't pay very much, and does not boost books unless the books get at least 50 (that's the rumor) reviews. If your book doesn't get boosted, you don't get sales, and you don't get reviews.

The Cure

Whether AI is creating art or enabling scammers it threatens all forms of creativity in this world. By making it easier for scammers to take advantage of creative workers, AI causes damage to the creators themselves, and the audiences of the work.

The cure is difficult. I, personally, would love a creative economy or a barter economy, where people that actually do the labor (creative or other) have more value than the owners and the billionaires.

But what do I know? I'm just a creative rebel.