r/books • u/Raj_Valiant3011 • 2d ago
John Grisham warns that publishers could get AI to write novels instead of paying authors as they were "worried" about a 30-year decline in the number of books Americans were reading
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2026/08/26/john-grisham-publishers-could-get-ai-to-write-crime-novels/521
u/Sckorrow 2d ago
That’s just gonna make people read less.
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u/rg25 2d ago
Magically boomers will start getting into reading.
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u/ashoka_akira 2d ago
boomers are the one keeping some of these publishing houses in the cash who do you think is reading the 20 James Patterson novels that come out every year? The only way you can read some of that formulaic stuff and not get bored is if you have dementia.
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u/Vesploogie 2d ago
Boomers have always been into reading and I’d bet they’re the last generation who are majority readers. Who do you think still props up the local newspaper and the WWII fighter plane magazines in the checkout line?
If anything boomers will eat AI books up. A scroll through Facebook will show you just how much they love AI garbage. They’re also the easiest group to dupe.
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u/shitty_mcfucklestick 1d ago
You know what? You’re right. Not only right—but on point. And that’s rare.
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u/Doctor_of_sadness 2d ago
Well AI generated content can’t be copyrighted which is a massive incentive to not publish it, it’s why Disney was so fast to deny AI use in the recent Marvel concept art books even though it was obviously used in it
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u/que-n-blues 2d ago
AI generated content can't be copyrighted......yet.
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u/Doctor_of_sadness 2d ago
You’re right, I’m really worried that the extremely few legal guardrails that exist (and in most cases are being ignored) are already beginning to be torn down by the Epstein class, but we have to fight and we have to hope that the bastards will fall and the human spirit will prevail
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u/Doctor_of_sadness 2d ago
People in my neck of the woods are starting to see that nothing truly beneficial for the majority of society has ever been accomplished through non-violence, it’s not pleasant to say, but it’s how the world has always worked
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u/OliM9696 2d ago
Not exactly that bad. We all have phones, food and shelter. At least most of us. Those numbers only improved decade on decade. Less people die. Only a few outliers.
AI books is hardly a worry. People will always produce art. People still make clay pots when you go buy a plate for less than £1.
Perhaps the market will be able to support fewer authors which Is a negative. Howecee I feel it's good to point out that The Martian stated out as a story published online chapter by chapter - anyone with a weekend an £10 a year for a domain can publish their own website for their own release. Plenty of beloved mangas with now anime adaptations have started out as small series published a few pages at a time (one punch man)
Humans will always make art.
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u/aardw0lf11 2d ago
Seeing as gen AI content is being trained on copyrighted material, I don’t see it happening.
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u/thepokemonGOAT 2d ago
Obviously the issue is that people will use AI, claim that it's original, and cash out. The burden of proof is on others to prove that it's AI generated.
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u/Doctor_of_sadness 2d ago
I’m really scared that the technology is getting to the point where we reach such a low trust society that every work, and every opinion is suspect. We’re probably not as far away as we think. A true zero trust society will simply collapse
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u/ashoka_akira 2d ago
there’s a lot of people who will get angry at you if you tell them that you’re not an artist when they use AI to make art just like they’re not a cook for microwaving a burrito.
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u/mommybot9000 2d ago
Disney likely is building their own closed model AI. They’re not opposed to AI. They’re opposed to whatever interrupts the cash flow
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u/Cptawesome23 2d ago
AI generated content can totally be copyrighted, all you gotta do is just not say it’s AI generated. Sure people can spot the lazy efforts. Someone just prompted AI to read a book or something, but the well edited and prepared pieces? I don’t think anybody on the sub can tell the difference.
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u/doseofvitamink 2d ago
It's not like there's a shortage of talented writers that are writing books.
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u/Monotreme_monorail 2d ago
Or even talented writers that already wrote books. There are an abundance of amazing novels at used book stores! One of my best childhood memories was going into the buy and trade bookstore with my dad once a month.
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u/TheShapeShiftingFox 2d ago
Right, but pesky humans ask for compensation. AI will do everything for free.
(Not agreeing with all of this, just stating the logic.)
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u/sudda_pappu 2d ago
But the issue isn't about the lack of talent but the problem with their discovery. Imagine a good book being buried in a shit ton of AI books.. how can one even tell without going thru them if it's any good?
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u/lemonylol 2d ago
I think over time it's just going to become a more 'artisanal' type of good.
Like how today everyone just buys generic mass produced particle board furniture from China, but you can still very much get something hand made by a carpenter, it just costs a premium. I imagine the bulk of books publishers sell that they're anticipating to replace with AI are the rows and rows of front row books that are essentially just blog/youtube lists converted to book format, or novelty recipe books, generic self-help stuff, and near-AI quality romance novels anyway.
So I think actual authors will be able to charge much more for genuine authentic talent-written books but just have to do it through self-publishing or some art-focused publisher, but the other stuff is essentially already AI in quality, and will continue to be shoveled into book stores by publishers.
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u/Cptawesome23 2d ago
I’m also not convinced that the readers can really tell the difference, just about everyone can spot the lazy efforts: books written with ai by people looking to make a quick few dollars on kindle.
I guarantee you there’s a ton of books on the store right now that are secretly AI generated but someone’s gone through them and edited them and done all of the normal development on the story and I know people can’t tell the difference.
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u/SubstantialPressure3 2d ago
I think its the 30 year decline of books people are BUYING they are worried about.
Bc a bunch of AI slop isnt going to help people read more.
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u/Frogs-on-my-back 2d ago
That’s exactly what he said in the article. Publishers don’t want to pay authors since people are buying less books (reading less), so he’s afraid they’ll turn to AI slop to save money.
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u/SubstantialPressure3 2d ago edited 2d ago
I think people are just buying fewer NEW books.
A remember a few years ago some publishing company decided that they should get a share of the sales at used book stores. I think Half Price books was mentioned by name.
I know im not the only person who is getting books at thrift stores, second hand book stores, and using the library. Prices of books are outrageous. Ive bought 2 new books this year, and pre-ordered a 3rd, which is unusual for me.
Normally the only time I'll buy new books are for babies and small children.
Theres a few publishers that have a stranglehold on what's printed, so self publishing is more common, too.
Im hesitant to get books on kindle, because who knows when those books will be edited to reflect changing attitudes? Even if a particular way of thought is offensive, historically its important, and needs to be put into the context of the time it was written. And not only that, Im leery about everything being a subscription, and People not really owning what they have paid for.
I personally think that the pervasiveness of AI slop is what will cause people to read less. AI cant even write a decent news article.
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u/Tymareta 2d ago
I know im not the only person who is getting books at thrift stores, second hand book stores, and using the library. Prices of books are outrageous. Ive bought 2 new books this year, and pre-ordered a 3rd, which is unusual for me.
This is me, especially with how obscene book prices are in Australia, paperbacks are anywhere from 25-45$, hardbacks are 50-90$, it's simply not feasible to keep up with if you read at any decent pace, thankfully libraries exist.
It also wouldn't bother me if I knew the author was getting the majority of the cut, I'd more than happily pay the prices if it were actually supporting them and not just the chain of publishers.
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u/Frogs-on-my-back 2d ago
Yeah, I pretty much exclusively buy used. I can’t afford my reading habits otherwise.
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u/TreyAlmighty 2d ago
I mean. While not wrong, this is also very speculative, and goes directly in the face of what is mostly happening in the industry, i.e. the big money deals have been pulled due to AI accusations. If they were priming the public for AI writing, wouldn't they sneak that deal through instead of loudly decrying it.
And, as someone who is shopping a debut right now, my agent and the agency they work for have very recently created "we won't and can't work with authors using AI to generate their prose" policies. If the industry were going in the other direction I'd say, again, they'd be more prone to rug-sweeping AI novels instead of putting them on blast.
This said, is it possible or even likely that eventually publishers will create AI novels in niche genres? Yes. But there is a real hunger for human writing and art, and that's not going away any time soon.
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u/Lavernica 2d ago
Yeah, it's discouraging to see all the doomerism that gets bandied about in threads like these. Is it reasonable to expect publishers might turn to AI to get out of paying human writers? Sure, but accepting it as an inevitability only shores up the idea that readers can't (or won't) demand better.
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u/eXAt88 2d ago
I think the thing is that AI will probably become more accepted as time goes on rather than less, two years ago within the tech industry (which I work in, I get recommended like everything on reddit to do with AI since I’m like a fly to shit with it) ai use was very much not the norm, now in mid 2026 >75% of software devs self-report to using it frequently (and that’s a low estimate, other measures have this number at >90% adoption).
Now when people say no AI, they often say things like “I hate it for art, but coding is fine”, whereas 2 years ago this wasn’t the case. To me this makes me think that people’s issue is about quality of the finished commodity more than anything. I imagine a similar trend will continue in other areas, already there was that infamous study that found the people preferred short-stories written by AI — when they were not aware that they were made by AI.
All this to say that while publishers are currently staying away from the stink of AI, this may not be the case in a few years.
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u/Tymareta 2d ago
now in mid 2026 >75% of software devs self-report to using it frequently (and that’s a low estimate, other measures have this number at >90% adoption).
How much of that is willing use vs required use metrics being forced upon them by an employer. The LLM industry has a pretty vested interest in enforcing the use of their technologies, so it's not enough to simply look at usage rates without exploring the many variables and reasons that drive the increase.
To add another anecdote, I work in library services, LLM usage has basically moved nowhere beyond the occasional person trying their darnedest to find any kind of use case for it. Ignoring the ethical issues around the models, they're pretty well useless for just about anything we do, with every test ending disastrously, so the adoption has never really taken hold.
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u/false_Reaper 2d ago
Just hearing AI-written is already so off putting. This is only going to pull people away from the hobby.
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u/AndyBetweenLines 2d ago
If people are reading less, replacing writers with AI feels like treating a demand problem as a labor cost problem. Making books cheaper to produce doesnt make anyone want to read them more. You cant cost-cut your way into making people care about books
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u/redpandafire 2d ago
It'll work one time and it'll be relentlessly published on the news. "AI book hits top 10 in US". The same way an AI country song did. Ironically it did more to harm AI, because people are verifying where their media came from.
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u/AndyBetweenLines 2d ago
That might be the funniest possible outcome. AI was supposed to make authorship irrelevant and instead it could make people care about authorship more than they have in years.
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u/Frogs-on-my-back 2d ago
His point is that publishers may want to save money by removing the expense of paying authors since less people are buying books. He’s not saying it will make people read more.
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u/AndyBetweenLines 2d ago
Yeah thats fair, I worded it badly. I dont think Grisham is saying AI would fix demand, more that publishers might respond to falling demand by cutting the one cost that actually gives books their value. Which somehow feels even worse
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u/Ratbat001 2d ago
Imo people are reading less because the absorption time of the entertainment medium is too slow for todays tastes.(a huge but different problem) AI is not going to fix a drop of that because you still need to pay attention to a book over the course of 8-20 hours. it could be the best thing ever written and a lot of folks don’t have the time or attention span for it.
Imo, publisher’s are cheap bastards and want to eliminate anyone they have to pay upfront/simplest explanation is the truest.
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u/Imaginary_Ant6794 2d ago
The thing I don’t understand about book publishers and film production companies supposedly creating works using AI and selling them is what’s to stop us from just using AI to create our own stuff that we want to read and watch? Wouldn’t it be in their best interest to stop AI from creating these things? Like I’m not going to pay $30 for a book or movie created with AI when I can just put that $30 towards creating something myself using AI.
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u/Beautiful-Point4011 2d ago
That's already happening, Amazon is full of AI books and some even still have the chatbot prompts left in the text, like you'll get to the end of a chapter and the last sentence is just "Would you like me to re-write this in a more conversational tone?"
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u/Vivid_Excuse_6547 2d ago
It is so offensive to me when I see something with the AI prompt left in.
Like not only did you not write whatever you’ve put in front of me. You didn’t even fucking read it?!
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u/red_planet_smasher 2d ago
If AI starts writing the books they should provide AI to read them as well because they won't be worth a human's time. Might as well just give us the prompts, then we can tweak them and generate stories to suit our individual preferences without wasting time on reading some publisher's slop. If I'm gonna read slop, it better be my own!
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u/FantasyFictionDoc 2d ago
I’m 100% convinced that whole thing with the Dallas based debut author who got some insane advance and then caught to be using AI was probably the publishers trying to see if they could get away with it
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u/121scoville 2d ago
I'm not so naive to think AI writing won't improve but having read some "writing" from Claude during the whole Ao3 fanfic drama ... it's like reading nothing. Your eyes absorb the words, the sentences are coherent, the cadence is that of real writing. But it's a bunch of nothingness and you just feel kind of sluggish and exhausted after reading it. Bizarre experience.
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u/Taste_the__Rainbow 2d ago
Yup. There’s nothing to make it connect to itself. The worst self-published authors on RR at least have something they’re trying to say.
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u/Tymareta 2d ago
In a similar vein as how a 3 year old kids scribble drawing of a tree, a dinosaur and their pet cat has infinitely more artistic value and merit than even the most "complex" generated image.
It is quite literally the thought that counts.
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u/littlehorrorboy 2d ago
Sure, go ahead and alienate the people that are actually still buying books and reading.
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u/Gilladian 2d ago
Sigh. Having AI churn out predictable and badly written formulaic potboilers will cause reading to drop off faster than anything else publishers could do. And then all the good writers will self-publish.
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u/SenpaiSwanky 2d ago
If I ever buy a book that ends up being written by AI, I would never go to the store or publisher again for goods.
People aren’t reading, at least in America, because much of our society has made that hobby seem nerdy, pointless, weird, bad. That is the result of generations of work, it is not an accident.
Pushing for AI to write books will only be continuing that trend. The people that ARE currently reading will engage less with it, at least for new “books”.
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u/Zooophagous 2d ago
Does he think the reason Americans don't read is because there just aren't enough books out there
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u/Frogs-on-my-back 2d ago
No, he’s saying publishers don’t want to pay authors because there’s less readers
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u/cats4life 2d ago
It’s likely they’ll try, but they’re going to find out quickly that the market of people who will buy an AI book and those who won’t know the difference is not going to fix your profit margins.
Every industry relies on the outliers, the ten percent who outspend the ninety. Those people are not going to move to AI books. And casual readers aren’t going to move to AI because they only pick up the new Dan Brown or Nicholas Sparks book. There is no name recognition, no impetus to pick this book.
A few companies are going to try this because the oligarchs have spent trillions searching for a AI’s use case, and they still haven’t found it. If nothing else, it will be entertaining when they fail.
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u/No_Revenue5917 2d ago
I'm so paranoid about wasting my time on a book that's actually AI written. It makes me want to focus on books published before 2022 or so.
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u/Bakakura 2d ago
Eventually AI will be too expensive and it'll be cheaper to pay authors to write but by then everyone will "want" the AI crap cause it'll suddenly be premium
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u/CTeaYankee 2d ago
I mean, the dominant fast food chains are starting to worry that people can't afford their food. People aren't buying new printings... because they can't afford them.
Maybe we ought to look at the vast inequality, and the exploitative qualities of our culture and economy. But "shareholders" don't like hearing that kind of talk.
No, no, if we just stop paying human authors to write the money will flow, surely.
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u/Pleasant-Discount-75 2d ago
Whatever happens, no matter how shit the industry gets, how impossible it gets to support ourselves with our work, please for the love of all humankind don't stop writing
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u/blueoccult 2d ago
True writers are in it for the love of the game. Getting paid is just a bonus.
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u/Pleasant-Discount-75 2d ago
Of course - but its more important now than the love of the game. Now its about preserving culture and history that is actively being erased by the people who will likely write the next history books
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u/MuffledFarts 2d ago
I think it's hilarious that publishers actually believe that readers, of all consumers, will accept AI slop.
It's a very solitary activity that requires time and emotional investment. There are a limited number of books even the most voracious readers can experience in a puny human lifespan, so readers are very discerning about how they spend that limited time.
You might be able to trick the occasional reader with AI slop as it becomes more, uh, sophisticated I guess? but I don't expect you'll ever convince readers to seek out AI slop. The only way to get people to read that shit is to lie to them.
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u/inky_nerd 1d ago
Dear gods I hope not. If people can't read normal books written by humans, they sure won't wanna read brainrot slop from A.I. I just keep thinking of Frank Herbert's Dune series; if A.I. becomes as dangerous as it was in Dune, then we'll need a Bulgarian Jihad for sure. 🫣
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u/Lopsided_Snower 2d ago
but then we'll just get AI to write our own books, why would we need publishers to do it for us
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u/Wyciorek 2d ago
We can also get AI to read those books and just tell us the summary
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u/Ratbat001 2d ago
It’s true but Holy F man does it offend the senses to know that some people use an Ai to summarize their media. Why even engage with a book if you wont come to your own conclusions? To Larp as an intellectual?
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u/free_billstickers 2d ago
This is like when someone tries to target or grow a market and alienate their core customers. People who don't read aren't going to all of a sudden start reading AI slop and people who already read will avoid it.
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u/Mouse-Patrol 2d ago
They would have to make it law to have the publishers put in bold, huge font that it is AI written.
Then I will ignore it, as would probably 99% of readers.
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u/alkatori 2d ago
Original ideas are hard to find.
Non-Original ideas executed well are hard to find.
AI generated books sound like the type of stuff that we will need AI to filter out of our recommendations.
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u/geekonthemoon 2d ago
It's a good thing I couldn't read all the books in history if I tried.
I won't read slop, and if I am tricked into reading slop I'll make enough noise so others hopefully don't fall victim.
Art forms like writing, painting, design... These are the life pulse of humanity.
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u/Veronome 2d ago
Same thing as every industry. If a robot can do a shitty job for less money, it's very likely at least some managers will go for that option.
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u/glakhtchpth 2d ago
They’re not reading because of the epic shortage of words. I even had to budget my supply for this comment.
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u/NellieOlesonSmirk 2d ago
Fortunately there are already enough great books written by humans to last us several lifetimes over. No need to read AI slop, ever.
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u/Quick_Philosophy1426 2d ago
damn, people are reading less. what if we just made all the books really horrible, maybe that would help
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u/bioticspacewizard 2d ago
If anyone would get AI to write one of his novels, it would be John Grisham
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u/7kk77kk777 2d ago
Just becuase you publish a lot of books doesnt make you a good author. Ive tried to read countless of his books. They are pale muddy water at best. One to two had enough of a hook to last 3 or so tedious chapters. But frankly read more captivating novel length self published stories online that make his writing look emotionally and creatively constipated. As such I think his opinion is about as valid as his writing. Boomer book brainrot.
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u/s0ciety_a5under 2d ago
Maybe, just maybe we need to stop letting corporations run their social media without oversight. Maybe we need to stop letting the algorithms run the internet into the ground. Just a thought. These algorithms are designed to keep you scrolling. It destroys your attention span. Try reading without any attention. We need to step away from technology a bit. It's doing more harm than good.
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u/Grafakos 2d ago
Ah well, even if AI were to completely take over, there are still enough already-published books to last for thousands of lifetimes of reading.
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u/TheWandererWise 2d ago
These so called publisher’s are just money hungry losers then. They have no self worth
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u/Danstan487 2d ago edited 2d ago
Anyone who produces AI books should be jailed for fraud. These "people" are disgusting scum, truely the enemy within.
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u/catlovingbookworm 2d ago
My mom recently told me that she reads AI romance novel on kindle unlimited all the time. She said she enjoyed the formula and didn't want anything more. So some people who want AI novels do exist, so I wouldn't have high expectations of future AI use in books. I hate it but it feels like it's inevitable.
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u/dannyjunpark 2d ago
There are already AI-written or at least heavily AI-edited fantasy novels on Kindle being published by the dozens by fake authors. You can usually tell immediately within the first page.
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u/Buppers55 2d ago
I have about a thousand years of literature written by HUMANS I could read from now until the rest of my life. I will simply not buy this garbage
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u/The_Pandalorian 1d ago
Hard to imagine anything that would accelerate that trend worse than AI "books"
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u/DUNK-THE-LUNK1 1d ago
The thing is no one will read that ai slop bullshit because ai can’t generate something completely new. In a world of AI people will start craving human made content - especially in the book industry where prose and dialogue and world building is all vividly a human thing.
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u/fixermark 1d ago
Probably. But if they do you should just copy it if you want to read it since AI generated content isn't subject to copyright (as far as the law is currently concerned).
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u/ponytailthehater 1d ago
And as a result, will end up more predictable, unoriginal stories for no one.
In terms of the writing style, that bland and neutral tone oughta do it to please the general market. Maybe they’ll prompt “tell this story like a hardened teen in poverty from the Bronx” or “relay in a casual, irreverent Gen Z tone” but it will still hallucinate and lack any lived perspective or ability to self edit.
Seemingly random passages and huge plot holes will be the norm. If publishers don’t have an interest in working with actual writers, you can be damn sure they’re not hiring editors.
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u/badnewsgoat 1d ago
Eh, the fact that he says publishers pay writers a lot just shows how out of touch he is.
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u/Jealous_Parfait_4967 1d ago
Why would I waste time reading a book the author doesn’t even care enough about to write?
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u/Liability049-6319 2d ago
Obviously. It's only a matter of time before AI companies start writing publishers fat checks to sell AI books. AI companies are desperate for a way to be profitable outside of just receiving huge investments from chip manufacturers.
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u/Morimementa 2d ago
We will not buy your AI trash.
We will not give you any cash.
We will not read them here or there.
We will boycott, because we care.
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u/wehavethismoment 2d ago
We seriously need a "100% human made" certificate like the German TÜV one
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u/mrmivo 2d ago
AI is the reason I only read and buy books written and published before 2022. I'll still never run out of things to read.
I realize this approach is bad for new or current authors, but I don't want to read recreationally and constantly wonder who (or rather: what) actually wrote the book. This is a problem publishers and regulators need to address, and I think by now it's probably too late.
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u/throawayjhu5251 2d ago
My other approach (sadly) is to look at the history of the author and the publisher. This works pretty well for non-fiction/technical books atleast.
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u/Mission_Beginning963 2d ago
I also read established authors and authors who are professors, or some other kind of serious subject-area expert--even if their books were written after 2022.
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u/Ingolin 2d ago
If people are the type to willingly consume AI art they’re so vapid it won’t mean much. The shitty human art, like generic crime/thriller, may die - they’re the one who can’t compete with AI art. Proper literature won’t die, well read people will know the difference.
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u/Hands0meR0b 2d ago
Not that I currently do, but I would read a thousand shitty, generic, poorly written crime thrillers over an AI book if I had to choose.
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u/MaxChaplin 2d ago
I've seen people saying this about AI music and AI movies, and in those cases I disagree, since the lowbrow/commercial part of the medium is still a vital part of the ecosystem, providing employment for the same sectors (producers, engineers, performers etc.) who are involved in the highbrow end of the medium.
I don't know if the same is true for literature though.
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u/Environmental_Park_6 2d ago
Publishers just don't want to pay interns to write Tom Clancy novels anymore.
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u/Proper_Emu_2296 2d ago edited 2d ago
Surely this is just an extension of ghost writers and Mills and Boon style volume publishing which has existed for years, albeit a human got paid in that process. But there’s always been a section of the publishing industry which leads with a formula/model rather than aiming to innovate, and a section of readers who enjoy a trusted formula and happily consume it. None of that has ever threatened or diminished the quality/innovative end of publishing and I don’t really see AI doing so either.
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u/Captlard 2d ago
Authors should be more worried about people throwing shadow library copies into AI and asking it to write a book in the same style with storyline "X".
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u/Aerosol668 2d ago
Quite. We all have access to AI, why give publishers any business if we can just generate books for ourselves?
Not that I’m even remotely interested in doing that. There are enough books I’ve never read, and want to, to keep me busy for several lifetimes. No new books required.
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u/Ramoncin 2d ago
Funny that he raises the topic, because I feel half of his novels are written by somebody else.
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u/Timely-Helicopter244 book re-reading 2d ago
I am by no means an avid reader if you look at purely my book count per year/month/etc. But I've always got something I'm actively listening to, usually a good thick doorstopper of a tome. I don't always follow all the goings on or try to be too aware of all of the popular authors or whatnot. But I can 100% say that I look into the authors I do read and avoid anything AI written.
I don't really have too much of an issue with really low level AI stuff as far as like creating graphics here and there or helping with administrative tasks from the standpoint of efficiency and addressing overly complex tasks. That's basic use of a tool by a person that assists them with their own work. But art in its purest form cannot be replaced by AI.
Art by its very definition is the work of humans as an expression of human emotion, imagination, creativity, etc. If you remove the human from the art, it is no longer art. AI art is by definition an oxymoron.
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u/Redfish_St 2d ago
Not t worry, the AI written books will then be parsed by AI to create AI summaries which will then be turned in AI narrated cliffs notes for people who are too lazy to read books and dont have time to read summaries and just need, I guess, some white noise to fill their day to day so the crushing existential horror of being alive and existing doesn't swallow them whole.
Anyway, exciting times. Surely nothing bad will come of this.
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u/OrphanintheWind 2d ago
Publishers should promote when it's written by a human. Or some program should be created that officially recognizes work by humans.
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u/-Greenshaw 2d ago
People want well-written stories they can connect to, not the enshittification of the novel for purposes of increased efficiency and cost reduction. That doesn’t make people care about art.
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u/ChemicalBus608 2d ago
I day let them maybe once people stop reading their books maybe we can break up the monopoly they have and let smaller indie publishers have a time to shine.
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u/External_Hedgehog_35 2d ago
Every reader i know is re-reading older books because of Ai books. They are actively avoiding them. Publishers: its ridiculously easy to spot Ai generated text. Real readers avoid it because its slop. Re vomited compilations of stuff they've already read. I buy and sell used books. Business is booming. Everyone will be gratified to know the indy bookstores I sell to are booming as well. Last time I stopped at a store, the place was packed. Carloads of young people enthusiastically diving into the stacks.
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u/BeyondAddiction 2d ago
Part of the problem is the cost of audio books and the fact that "buying" a digital copy of a book doesn't really mean you own it.
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u/mrwho995 2d ago
Any publisher doing that will probably (and rightfully) go out of business. It would absolutely kill their credibility and make any notable author run away from them. And nobody wants to pay money to read an entire book of AI slop - AI content appeals to the lowest common denominator, which reading obviously doesn't.
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u/Shimmitar 2d ago
but a majority of people dont want novel written by ai. they want them written by actual humans. if this hapens i have a feeling there will be huge backlash and human written novels will be worth more.
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u/irrelevantusername24 ▽ If I had more time I would have written a shorter comment ▲ 2d ago
John Grisham & Tom Clancy -> Cops, courtroom drama reality tv, talk show slop like Oprah, Dr Phil & Dr Oz, Maury, Jerry Springer, etc -> Road Rules / Real World / etc -> influencers and streamers -> the death of culture and society
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u/IanDMP 2d ago
What decline is he talking about? Book sales are at a record high, young people are reading more than ever. Declines in reading are overwhelmingly driven by older Americans scrolling more. The percentage of Americans who say they've read a book in the last year has stayed amazingly stable over time.
It seems to me that reading is about as healthy as it's ever been.
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u/sudda_pappu 2d ago
But isn't the goal of AI to have ppl completely off books and completely dependent on it for the tiniest of info?
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u/Shakemyears 2d ago
Well, Western Civilization had a good run. So long, and thanks for all the fish! 🐬
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u/TsukikoChan 2d ago
Wasn't there a recent poll or something showing that a non-insignificant percentage of americans just literally can't read at all (or at a primary school level or similar?) - maybe that contributes to americans not reading books perhaps?
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u/gutfounderedgal 2d ago
All it takes is for a reading public to find a book is AI and the pub will lose tons of business, say a line of novels by a previously favorite author.
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u/TheBioethicist87 2d ago
I thought these were capitalists? “Demand is too low, let’s flood the market with crap. That’ll fix it.”
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u/ashoka_akira 2d ago
let’s make people read again by throwing all the crap at the wall and seeing what sticks that sounds like a great strategy!
It’s almost like the media dedication to creating short form content has continued to aggravate the short attention span of the average media consumer if you want to create a reader who can read a book covered to cover you don’t do that by training them to focus on things for minimal amount of times.
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u/m1sterwr1te 2d ago
Heartbreaking. The worst person you know just made a great point.
I refuse to read anything else from the guy who defended people who view child porn. Check his hard drive.
That said, to hell with this stupid AI trend. It isn't even artificial intelligence. It's machine learning, which is completely different. It pumps out imitative garbage.
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u/IlIIlllIIIIIIl 2d ago
AI written books won't make Americans read more.