Why Now Is the Best Time to Be an Indie Fiction Writer

Jane Friedman, at her blog just a few days ago, wrote a post, “Like It or Not, Publishers Are Licensing Books for AI Training—And Using AI Themselves.”

The post is a refreshingly blunt take on how AI is settling into the publishing industry. I will leave it to Jane to explain how, even for indie authors, there is new money to made from the AI phenomenon, if you’re smart and wrangle your contracts.

Watch out for AI clauses in future contracts!

What prompted me to mention the post is the phrasing of the headline.

Like It or Not, Publishers Are Licensing Books for AI Training—And Using AI Themselves.

That phrasing is interesting.

My brain instantly extrapolated that: Okay, they’re getting rights from authors to use to train AI with books they will publish. If they’re using AI themselves, are they teaching it to write books just like the authors they’ve contracted with?

And if they’re doing that, how long before those pesky authors are no longer needed, because the AI is producing books just like they write?

But AI isn’t producing books at the level that good writers produce. What AI produces can be nothing else but highly generic and derivative, a pale copy of any human-written fiction.

Traditional publishing won’t care.

Oh, some editors will care. Very much so. But traditional publishers are in business to make money. If they can cut out the “cost” of paying authors millions in royalties, and just have an AI — even a very expensive AI — produce all those books for them, you bet they’re going to jump on it. Editors who scream in protest will be quietly eased out of the way with transfers, promotions to impotent departments, plus retirements and severance packages.

Literary agents will not be needed, either.

Do you see where this is going?

Right now, today, the scammers and get-rich-quick crowd are using AI to produce generic genre fiction and flooding the shelves.

Soon, if Traditional publishing gets its way, they will also be producing generic genre fiction and flooding the shelves.

That will leave indie authors as the only authors producing creative, original fiction; the stuff that breaks molds, creates new genres, and sells by word-of-mouth because it is so good.

That’s why now is a great time to be an indie fiction author.

Keep writing your very best stories, the ones that sing arias, that make readers weep, then sigh when they’re done.

Art is a container for emotions. So bring it on.

We may well end up being the only source of stories that are worth reading.

Tracy Cooper-Posey

SRP Author and owner of The Productive Indie Fiction Writer

Tracy is one of Stories Rule Press’ most prolific authors. She also hangs out at The Productive Indie Fiction Writer, where she writes about issues facing today’s indie author, and solutions that make the indie life a little easier.