This week! Books!
If you’ve spent any time on Amazon searching for books lately, you probably know that it’s become an absolute wasteland of junk–A.I. imitations of real authors, garbage A.I. “books,” shady third party sellers, and knockoffs galore. One author, David Goggins, a former Navy SEAL who once did 4,030 pull-ups in 17 hours, has sued Amazon over counterfeit copies of his self-published books being sold on Amazon.
As publisher Ken Whyte notes, what’s extraordinary about this is that Goggins exclusively sells on Amazon, who is essentially functioning as Goggins’ publisher and distributor. The fact that Goggins, who has sold millions of copies, has had to resort to legal action against his own publisher to deal with counterfeit copies shows the extent to which Amazon simply does not seem to care about reining in fraudulent third parties because they take a cut of the sale anyway.
And woe betide the smaller authors (both literally and metaphorically) without the platform and resources to deal with this problem. I worry this is the bleeding edge of an era where generative A.I. drowns us all in garbage, with the only “winners” being scammers and tech CEOs.
Publisher Lee & Low released its annual diversity survey of the publishing industry, showing that white employees represent 76% of the book business, down from 79% in 2015. The biggest increase in diversity came from multi-racial individuals. Cis women represent 71.3% of the business, Black employees were at 5%, while Latino employees went from 6% to 4.6%.
The Guardian in the UK is all over the “Gen Z loves books” beat and has published two articles about this encouraging phenomenon: ‘Reading is so sexy’: gen Z turns to physical books and libraries and UK in the midst of a boom in book clubs as gen Z’s hobbies change. Even Gen Z model Kaia Gerber–Cindy Crawford’s daughter/possible clone–is getting in on the action with a new book club called Library Science.
Clients of mine may note that I habitually request (and/or reformat) their work into industry standard, in part because over the past twenty years I’ve so thoroughly internalized the line by line pacing of the format itself. Editor David Moldawer has a post about how screenplay formatting can influence the writing process.
Congrats to the LA Times Book Prize nominees!
Lots of good writing and publishing advice in the past few weeks! Lincoln Michel has his first and best writing advice, agent Kate McKean has a post on the ins and outs of asking for/giving blurbs, Joel Pitney at Jane Friedman’s blog has advice on hybrid publishing red flags, and Sarah Kolb-Williams has a two part series on mistakes to avoid when self-publishing.
And Ibtisam Mahdi has a devastating look at the cultural obliteration currently happening in Gaza.
This week in bestsellers
Here are the top five NY Times bestsellers in a few key categories. (All links are affiliate links):
Adult print and e-book fiction:
- The Women by Kristin Hannah
- Fourth Wing by Rebecca Yarros
- Iron Flame by Rebecca Yarros
- The Teacher by Freida McFadden
- The Chaos Agent by Mark Greaney
Adult print and e-book nonfiction:
- Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
- The Wager by David Grann
- The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk
- Outlive by Peter Attia with Bill Gifford
- The Boys in the Boat by Daniel James Brown
Young adult hardcover:
- A Tempest of Tea by Hafsah Faizal
- Powerless by Lauren Roberts
- Divine Rivals by Rebecca Ross
- Ruthless Vows by Rebecca Ross
- Heartless Hunter by Kristen Ciccarelli
Middle grade hardcover:
- Heroes by Alan Gratz
- Refugee by Alan Gratz
- Wonka by Sibéal Pounder
- Wonder by R.J. Palacio
- The Sun and the Star by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
This week on the blog
In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:
Don’t forget that you can nominate your first page and query for a free critique on the blog:
And keep up with the discussion in all the places!
And finally, I’m not sure any music has been seared into my consciousness quite like the themes to Super Mario Bros. and Legend of Zelda. The composer, Koji Kondo, who has worked at Nintendo his entire adult life, was the subject of an awesome profile by Gene Park.
Have a great weekend!
Need help with your book? I’m available for manuscript edits, query critiques, and coaching!
For my best advice, check out my online classes, my guide to writing a novel and my guide to publishing a book.
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AI: A classic example of “Just because you can do it doesn’t mean you should.”
The idiots of this world are out to wreck everything. When I was a teen I worked on my bachelor uncle’s farm. He was a wise man, treated me like a son, and warned me about the sort of people I would encounter when I reached adulthood. He said to especially watch out for the destructive sorts, the ones who “break everything they touch and what they can’t break they shit on.”
Well said, Uncle Dale, well said.
The AI fiasco has got to be reined in. Shame on Amazon and cheers for Goggins. I hope he prevails. The only thing that will make Amazon shoot straight is money, a big loss in court.
More reason for us authors to support Bookshop and every universal digital bookshop out there other than Amazon.
Yikes! We had an author who tried to publish a second edition of her book, and she had to go through some truly ridiculous hoops to get past Amazon’s AI check. It seems like everything KDP has been doing to combat AI either punishes real, authentic authors or doesn’t work at all. This is an interesting case to watch—thanks for writing about it. (And thanks for the shout!)