Here come the A.I. slop novels (This week in books)

This week! Books!

Quick programming note that this will be the last post in February as I’m taking a quick break. See you in March!

The New Fabio Is Claude – Alexandra Alter, New York Times – In an article that seemingly doubled as Grade-A rage bait for wide swathes of the publishing-adjacent social media world, Alexandra Alter profiled an author who used A.I. to write 200 books last year that supposedly collectively netted six figures in income. Like Lincoln Michel, I’m a bit skeptical of some of the sales figures, but nonetheless this does feel like a harbinger of our A.I. sloppy future.

I hope to return to this topic more in depth at some point, but I’m less concerned than some about a deluge of A.I. slop books drowning out the good books. There are already way too many books on sale than anyone can ever read and yet we find a way to sort through the mess, and a tiny handful of books rise through the noise and catch fire. Adding another 0 to the number of books theoretically available doesn’t make much of a functional difference for the vast majority of people’s book buying experience. While some readers with extremely poor taste may actually like their books written by author Sloppy McSlopface, well, whatever floats your boat weirdos.

HOWEVER. I am extremely concerned that as gatekeepers get deluged by A.I. slop (agents, editors, journals, the last handful of book reviewers who must be protected at all costs) and close themselves off to all but human referrals, the industry is going to regress even further to the tightly networked walled garden it was in the 20th century, which is only going to favor the already well-connected and well-funded at the expense of marginalized writers. This is your regular reminder to support We Need Diverse Books, whose work is as important as ever.

Walter Dean Myers Awards – We Need Diverse Books – Speaking of which! Congrats to the winners of the Walter Dean Myers Awards, which celebrates diverse creators.

So Long to Cheap Books You Could Fit in Your Pocket – Elizabeth A. Harris, New York Times – The humble mass market paperback–rightly cited in this elegy as one of the most brilliant technologies in the history of the world–played an enormously democratizing role in making books widely available at a low price. And, like so many forms of democracy these days, mass markets are going bye bye.

The Death of Book World – Becca Rothfeld, The New Yorker – Becca Rothfeld, newly staffed at The New Yorker after getting laid off at the Washington Post, writes about what the end of the Post’s book coverage means for the broader world. (And don’t forget to subscribe to Ron Charles’s newsletter!).

Jeffrey Epstein’s Intellectual Enabler – Evgeny Morozov, The New Republic – Many of Jeffrey Epstein’s connections to the science world have a common connection: they were represented by literary agent John Brockman. This 2019 article is once again making the rounds.

Fiona Davis to Pen First-Ever American Girl Novel for Adults – Carly Tagen-Dye, People – That sound you hear is a bunch of Millennials screaming in nostalgia. Yes, American Girl novels for adults are coming.

2025 Children’s Bestsellers: Buzzy Series Additions, Graphic Novel Retellings, and Beloved Picture Books – Cady Zeng, Publishers Weekly – An interesting round up of the bestselling books in 2025, which includes front list and back list books. Unless you’re in the business, front list bestselling books probably don’t sell as many copies as you think they do, and the back list likely sells way more than you think it does.

Haruki Murakami Isn’t Afraid of the Dark – Alexandra Alter, New York Times – A profile of Japanese author Haruki Murakami, still going strong at 77.

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:

1. Stolen in Death by J.D. Robb
2. Theo of Golden by Allen Levi
3. Dear Debbie by Freida McFadden
4. The Correspondent by Virginia Evans
5. Heated Rivalry by Rachel Reid

Adult print and e-book nonfiction:

1. The Invisible Coup by Peter Schweizer
2. Nobody’s Girl by Virginia Roberts Giuffre
3. Rage and the Republic by Jonathan Turley
4. Strangers by Belle Burden
5. How to Test Negative for Stupid by John Kennedy

Young adult hardcover:

1. A Stage Set for Villains by Shannon J. Spann
2. Stolen Midnights by Katherine Quinn
3. Fake Skating by Lynn Painter
4. Queen of Faces by Petra Lord
5. If Only I Had Told Her by Laura Nowlin

Middle grade hardcover:

1. Unsettling Salad! by Aaron Reynolds
2. Wonder by R.J. Palacio
3. The Complete Cookbook for Young Chefs by America’s Test Kitchen Kids
4. The Court of the Dead by Rick Riordan and Mark Oshiro
5. The Lions’ Run by Sara Pennypacker

This week on the blog

In case you missed them, here are this week’s posts:

• N/A

And keep up with the discussion in all the places!

• Follow me on Bluesky
• Check out the Bransforums

And finally:

The Art of Haunting – Colin Dickey, VQR – From a misguided reader’s prompting, ChatGPT conjured a fake Tedx talk that writer Colin Dickey did not deliver, moving him well past Uncanny Valley onto “the flat plane of the doppelgänger,” and dwelling on what A.I. can and can’t know.

Have a great weekend!

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