Secrets of the Tome
Today, I managed to crush all the TODO’s. Yeah, it’s a big deal. That means I can move on to the Read Out Loud part of this book. Don’t get too excited, because there is still the iffy part about possible changes. I expect changes. Just a gut feeling, but my gut is almost always right. So, the ROL (nice acronym you got there), takes about 3 days for a book that’s just over 100k in length and this book sits at 111k right now. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I can get this done, plus the editing, then get the book up on Amazon by Friday (7/7/2023). That would be sweet. It’s an admirable goal, but if there are some weak spots I need to rewrite, then I’ll take the time I need to get it done. Anyway, I kind of excited about this.
Why am I excited? Because I can get into the next book, which will be a completely different type of story. I have the basic bones of the next story in place and I hope to end it with the discovery of the temple of Advent. That will leave me with book 4, which is going to be the big battle over this temple (I have a vague idea of what this story will be about). Then after that, it turns into a list of stories that I have mapped out to get me from the temple of Advent to the final book (who knows how that will come together. Maybe I do, but I’m not going to spill the beans on that one). Anyway, books 1-4 are pretty much cast in stone as far as what they will cover and I have to write those just to make the entire story work. Books 5-x are unknown. I have some critical story points that I have to hit and you can see what those are if you scan through the Tome of Revelations and see what the Revelations section covers.
The state of AI
As you’ve probably discovered from reading the back cover of my books is that I’m a computer scientist, and I’ve been doin’ it since 1994 professionally, and since 1987 if you want to count the first time I was interested in computers and programming. Anyway, I keep up with the latest trends. It’s part of the job. I was reading an article about AI-generated books that someone in Vietnam (probably) has generated in bulk. You see, there’s this scam where someone can create a bogus book, put it on Amazon KU, then run bots that hit the book and flip to the last page (they must have a KU account), then the author of the book gets paid the full KU price for the book. So, there were KU books that made the top 100, and they were junk.
Here’s the article: Nonsensical AI-Generated Books Appear as Amazon Best Sellers
Anyway, what’s happening is that they are vacuuming up the KU money from the total pot. Basically, everyone that buys a subscription to read Kindle Unlimited books goes into a giant pot, then each month, Amazon computes how much per page an author can earn based on that money. If more authors draw off the pot, then the per-page amount will decrease.
So, there have been scams for some time and Amazon is slow to shut them down. Authors complain about this all the time. It’s the main reason I switched my books off KU and just went wide (I sell at more vendors than Amazon, like Smashwords! Don’t forget about the sale). Anyway, the scammers have upped the ante. In fact, it’s to a point where most of the books on the top list are AI-generated garbage. People who paid money for a subscription are going to stop. Then Amazon will have an incentive to do something (maybe, I hope). Otherwise, KU will be toast. Eventually, everyone will cancel their subscription and the real authors will leave KU because the per page will be in the thousands of a cent per page.
The next article I read was regarding content creators. I’ve seen these ads on Facebook where you can generate your blog posts using ChatGPT. Oh, goodie. Anyway, the article talks about these garbage sites that use automated Google ads on their websites to get clicks and make money off the ads, even though their content is garbage.
Here’s the article: Next-gen content farms are using AI-generated text to spin up junk websites
So, Google is going to have to get serious and crack down on these AI sites before their entire Ad revenue goes to some jerk that set up farms of fake sites. I know the big tech companies have a list of daily “issues” that they have to deal with, but it’s time for them to get serious about AI-generated fake stuff. I’m not saying I think they need to do that, because I really don’t care what they do. It’ll all sort itself out one way or the other. What am I talking about? Oh, let’s imagine Google ignores the issue. Their Ads will pay out to some person or group that is scooping money up and not selling products. Basically, the person with the website gets the click revenue but there are no sales. The companies that pay-per-click are going to see that and have to cut it off. No more Google ads, because who can pay for the clicks and get no sales? That can’t go on forever. They’ll go someplace else. Google’s revenue will drop like a rock.
Anyway, I’m just watching this circus as I write my books. I have a goal, and it doesn’t include AI doing my work for me. From what I’ve seen, AI isn’t there yet. Not even close.