What the hell, Hachette?

We don't want publishers to publish AI slop. But this isn't good, either.

Let’s start with the disclaimer, because I feel I must—I don’t know this author, have never seen this book, have no idea if it was or was not generated by AI, and think using AI to write your novel for you would mean, among other things, that you have chosen the wrong profession. And then let me say, loudly for the people in back…. this is terrible for all of us, even if you’ve only ever used AI to see if the dry cleaner is open this morning.

Here’s what outraged me this morning (hat tip Sarina Bowen ): The NYT reports that:

Hachette Book Group, one of the largest publishers in the United States, pulled a forthcoming horror novel on Thursday in a decision that followed widespread allegations online that the author, Mia Ballard, relied heavily on artificial intelligence to write the book. (gift link)

They bought a previously indie published novel, published it in the UK in the fall and sold 1800 print copies*. And then… something happened. According to the article, that something was

• Readers liked the indie version of the book on Goodreads, but after Hachette published it in the UK, “began flagging what they surmised was A.I. slop, slamming the book for its generic and confusing metaphors and repetitive phrasing”.

• “‘Really bad,’ one reader wrote in a one star review. ‘Pretty sure this was A.I. generated.’”

• The NYT approached Hachette citing “evidence” that the novel appeared to be A.I.-generated (no description of the evidence)

• Hachette did “a thorough and lengthy review of the text”

And now they aren’t publishing the US version and they’re pulling the UK one.

Did they…

• not read it before they published it?

• Read it and hate it and figure, oh well, readers will probably buy it anyway?

• love it at the time and now they’re doing the walk of shame instead of shrugging and rocking last night’s mascara?

None of those things is good for writers. Not one. First of all, while it’s confusing that you would publish a book that you don’t think is in some way worthy of reading, please read our books before you publish them (I did not think I had to ask for this) and maybe… edit them?** ***

Second, listen, we’ve got to figure out the AI thing. This whole “attest that you didn’t use it” business is bullshit, because unless you turn it off on your search engine, and maybe even if you do, if you’re using the internet to research, say, “what would a New Hampshire Fish and Game warden wear in the woods in 1994”… there’s a far more than zero chance that AI was involved in the answer whether you typed it into an AI or not. ****

We shouldn’t direct our ire at this author. (Again, no opinion on the actual book.) The anger—and fear—should be directed at Hachette. They have one job: publish books you think readers will want to read.*******

Not throw spaghetti at the wall and hope it sticks.

Here, I think, is the only answer: if you, publisher, editor, sales team, marketing team, all the people who I sincerely believe actually do read a book before it hits bookstore shelves with your name on it, like a book and think it’s worth publishing …. then stand by it.*****

And if you don’t… don’t publish it.

How naïve is it that I thought that was already the way this worked?

If AI can write all or part of a book people love, then I’ve got competition. I don’t think it can, so bring it on. Meanwhile, this is a finger-pointing, ass-covering witch hunt, and I don’t like that one bit.

*all references to book sales numbers must always be taken with a grain of salt

** All of my books were very fully edited, to the point where part of me is like, how are people getting away with this shit, I had an editor point that I did not allow enough time for the tea to steep in one scene.

***See also yesterday’s post,

****Unless you’re writing nonfiction, what we need in response to that sort of query isn’t facts. It’s a workable, believable version of them. Is it gonna be a problem, in 20 years, that there are no actual facts, only vaguely believable versions of them? Yes, but we won’t solve that by going down a three day rabbit hole to come up with a brown pointy collar button down shirt with a logo of pine trees and a wolf. Which, by the way, I completely made up—another option when looking for “facts” of this nature for fiction. I always think of Ally Carter, author of the Blonde Identity, who told me “the more specific the fact sounds, the more likely it is that I made it up.

***** Unless it was plagiarized, or otherwise criminal. Don’t do that. ******

******Do we think asterisks work like Roman numerals and when you hit five you should use something else? Like… ^? This is 6. So would it be ^*?

*******my footnotes are out of order, I know, but one last one—I do distinguish between “books readers want to read” and “books readers will buy” and I think this is part of the problem, if not the main problem, and it goes back, again, to yesterday’s post and the footnote above which I won’t repeat.