AI Stole Our Books. Now We're the Suspects

AI companies are shredding rare books to train their models—and now authors are the ones being told to prove they didn't use AI to write their own. Beth and Lisa unpack the double standard rocking publishing right now.

From a debut novelist's multi million dollar book deal getting pulled over AI suspicion, to writers being told to reinsert typos and kill their em dashes just to "prove" they're human, the burden of proof has landed on exactly the wrong people. Beth and Lisa dig into who gets accused (and who conveniently doesn't), why the "nudge theory" behind blue recycling bins explains what's really happening here, and why voting with your dollars might be the only leverage writers have left. Plus: the AI-sounding conference invite that had Lisa convinced she was being scammed — until it wasn't.

Here is the content Lisa references: 

1) Any AI use can never be completely “safe” but using for research, brainstorming, etc. can be acceptable. Usage for critiquing, improving prose or pacing, generating drafts is NOT. AI generated text is NOT copyrightable.

2) When using AI, stick to paid plans or walled gardens. Read the terms of use carefully re: training, storage of your prompts, input text, etc.

3) Avoid inputting your manuscript. Use prompts instead.

4) Cross-check all output for accuracy (false answers, hallucinations, poor nuance).

5) Keep all evidence of your process whether original or AI-involved. 

 Okay.  Now hit play, then tell us: has AI made you paranoid about your own writing voice?

Transcript

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[00:00:00] 

Beth McMullen: Hi friends, I'm Beth McMullen

lisa: And I'm Lisa Schmid

Beth McMullen: And we're the co-hosts of Writers With Wrinkles. This is season five, episode 25. And today we are here to talk about AI because we're sure you guys haven't gotten enough of it

lisa: It's AI, I, I, I.

Beth McMullen: Aye yi. That's actually true. That's what we should call it from now on. That's so true. Oh my God, it's like instant headache. But honestly, we were just talking before we started recording about how we haven't done a Beth and Lisa episode in a long time, but it's mostly because we've had really good guests, and we've had a lot of really good guests.

lisa: Yeah。

Beth McMullen: We had to just put ourselves in the backseat for a while

lisa: We must have a really good booker.

Beth McMullen: We do. We have a really good Booker, and let me tell you guys, she's hot

lisa: I actually am hot right now. I just, right before we

Beth McMullen: I'm always

lisa: "I gotta

Beth McMullen: hot.

lisa: the air conditioning on." Ah.

Beth McMullen: I put the air conditioning on before we [00:01:00] started recording 'cause I'm literally just dripping sweat from my workout.

So I'm just having a moment. It's Sunday, though, so

lisa: Sunday

Beth McMullen: an unusual day for us to record. But we've been wanting to do this episode for a long time

lisa: I wish it wasn't a necessary episode. I wish we didn't even have to talk about it,

Beth McMullen: Oh, me too. I feel the same way. There's a couple of things. I think there's AI as an author, like a writer in that universe, and then there's what these AI companies are doing to books that I find so disturbing just on kind of a higher level. The fact that they're buying obscene amounts of books, and they like to get books that were written before 2022, before AI started to contaminate all the writing.

And they buy them from used booksellers around the world, and they ship them to secret [00:02:00] locations, and they tear the spines off. They feed the pages in. They consume them and destroy the book, and some of these books are rare books. They don't want anybody else to have them, so they destroy them. They...

It's literally like a monster eating books. And their goal, they're using ISBN lists, according to some of these investigative reports, to try to get all the books ever written.

lisa: I'm so depressed. It

Beth McMullen: It's obscene. It-

lisa: Yeah

Beth McMullen: an obscenity, and as somebody who's had all of my stuff consumed, it makes me furious

lisa: Yeah. It should. I don't... it just it, and for everyone out there, I just, I feel like we're getting just blindsided and punched in the gut every day with something new and gross that's happening in the world, and this is just another, blow. Just, just [00:03:00] something new and gross coming our way in this world that we live in right now, and it just, and art just is another casualty

Beth McMullen: Yeah, it's just something they eat to feed their monster so the billionaires can get richer, and we can be told that we have to follow all these new rules, which is another thing that if you read my Substack, you'll know I'm very mad about. I have a lot of anger in this episode, so I will try to keep a lid on it to not make you all, 

lisa: do

not keep a 

Beth McMullen: I'm just, I'm so sick of it. I'm so sick of... anyway, we'll get to it

lisa: it's interesting because a few weeks ago, and my wonderful agent, I love her called a meeting with all her clients to discuss AI because it's one of those things that, as we're seeing, we can touch u- on about the scandal or the, what recently happened to the author who got his book deal pulled. But she had a meeting to say, "This is what's acceptable and this is what's not [00:04:00] acceptable where I- AI comes into play with writing." And it is very it is very strict, and we'll go ahead and put the guidelines that we've been given, or that that we've been g- I was given as far as ... And I think it's the general guidelines of what's okay and what's not okay in, in using AI with your writing. And it is very limited as it should be. But the whole time she was talking, all I could think of was let the witch hunts begin. This is what's gonna happen. People are gonna start coming after ... and it's gonna be people who are more, more vulnerable. They're ... people are gonna accuse people of using AI to write their books without any foundation or b- tr- any basis of truth, that they'll just they can just say it.

"Oh, they're wr- they're using AI," or whatever. And we're already seeing that happen. It's just like the witch hunts have started, and it just it makes me even more anxious about publishing. Everything about publishing is already filled with angst, and [00:05:00] this adds a new, a whole new layer

Beth McMullen: Yes, and it's ridiculous that the burden is on the writer.

lisa: Yeah

Beth McMullen: my feeling, and I feel very strongly about this, and, feel free to try to talk me out of it these companies are making, first of all, enormous amounts of money, making people very rich, destroying the environment, destroying books, destroying a lot of things in the process, changing culture without anybody's permission on the backs of us.

You got no books, you got no large language models, right?

lisa: Right

Beth McMullen: So the fact that I, and I use that generally, writer person, am being asked to prove that I'm not the robot that ate my material, okay? It [00:06:00] consumed my material, so it can very well sound like me if it wants to, right? It's got all my stuff. You're asking me to prove in a, a labor intensive way that I'm not the robot.

No, I'm just... I'm not doing it. I refuse to do it. The burden is in the wrong place. It should not be on us. And I tell you that it will be the market, because this is the United States and we live and die by our capitalism, no matter who we hurt. Look at AI if you want an example. If the market will bear books written by AI, and we know that it does and will, then everybody will fall into line, and this prove yourself not to be AI, run through all of these...

jump through all of these hoops to prove that you're not AI, it's all gonna go away. If the market rejects [00:07:00] AI books, doesn't like them, nobody's buying them, then it will become a non-issue. But I think it's... to tell me that I have to now write in a different way to prove to you, being this vague nebulous you, that I wrote it and AI didn't write it, no.

My answer is no. Don't publish me. I don't care anymore. I'm sorry I'm not jumping through these hoops, because the burden shouldn't be on me

lisa: And you brought up a good point in your Substack was that, okay, th- they've created this machine that makes us have to prove it. We have to, we're supposed to keep, all these notes and document that I... Document? Oh my God, I can barely string a sentence together, like worrying about what I'm gonna write next, and you want me to effing document it?

The thing that, that you had pointed out that's so ridiculous is that so they've created, this machine that has [00:08:00] stolen all our work, and is now people are using it or whatever, getting a- getting accused of using it. But then they've created this other machine that is accusing us of using AI that they're making money. And then so the burden of proof is on us instead of just saying, "You know what? Y- why did you create this machine to begin with?"

Beth McMullen: Exactly

lisa: it just... Oh my God.

Beth McMullen: Well, and you've got the machine on the one side that you're accusing me of using to write all my stuff. You've got the machine on the other side that's going to check my stuff and then tell me that the machine on the other side of me wrote it, and somehow I'm supposed to negotiate between these two.

It is wildly unfair, honestly, and I feel like... So the reason I got... I had been thinking about [00:09:00] AI. I definitely use it for stuff like pulling up different research, learning about time periods. It's great for helping to organize my calendar, logistical stuff. I'm a one-man shop, right?

We do all of our stuff, just the two of us, so it's not like we have 25 assistants who can do stuff. It's great for that. It helps streamline a lot of things But I started thinking about the burden that is being put on the author in terms of creative output. This is redundant if you read my stuff, but I heard this Freakonomics episode about the idea of nudge.

This was the... This was, like, a behavioral economics theory from the '90s and the two- actually, the 2000s, not the '90s, the 2000s, because President Obama really liked it. He thought it was brilliant, and it seemed brilliant. It's to make making the right choice easier for the person who's making the choice.

For instance, instead of having you opt into a 401, [00:10:00] you are forced to opt out of it, so you're already in it. Most people are just gonna leave it, and that seemed really brilliant tweaking behavior. The thing that the thing that got me thinking about AI is that they used an example of recycling, and the idea was if you get people to throw their cans in the blue recycling bin, then we can make some positive change.

It's a small behavioral nudge towards something that's gonna have a systemic greater good. But the truth is that I, as a person, with my can, cannot solve the problem of plastic suddenly being ubiquitous, in our blood, in babies being born, in fish, in everything. Plastic is everywhere. My recycling my can or my bottle is not going to help.

The problem is with the companies producing the plastic, and they are never told to stop doing what they're doing. This is the same exact thing. We are the plastic. We are the [00:11:00] plastic bottles. We're being told to solve the problem that is created by these monster companies, and nobody is telling them to stop doing what they're doing.

And again, it is wildly unfair, and I'm just I turned off on Substack, I turned off my, the AI filter that I'm supposed to turn on. And if you'd like to unscr- unsubscribe from me because I turned it off, please do. But I'm not doing it. I refuse to play. I'm not playing this game. And I know it makes no difference.

I am a peon. I am a nobody. But I'm sorry, it's just too much. It's gone too far.

lisa: yeah. It just, yeah. And the thing y- I, is we've ... I think we touched on, I can't remember if we touched on is that as in everything in life, and especially I would say in this country, it- it's not ... It- it's people are gonna get disap- disproportionately blamed, where they, [00:12:00] it's like, this one writer over here, yeah, he's using AI, and everyone's like, "Oh, that's fine." "We're down with him using it." But oh my gosh, this person just got a $2 million deal, what, what happened? What's he doing? It just ... I'm, like, watching this all play out, and like some ... Why is this not an evil and even playing, an evil playing field?

Beth McMullen: It's an evil, it's definitely evil.

lisa: But it's just why isn't it

Why is one author, and I'm using air quotes, getting

And another author getting treated a different way? And it's ... 

Beth McMullen: well,

That situation with the $2 million advance, that book had gone to a bidding war with something like eight or 10 publishing houses vying to, to win it. And that means, supposedly eight to 10 editors read the book, 

lisa: I think that he, there was some use of AI

Beth McMullen: Yeah, there was enough [00:13:00] use that it passed some invisible line in their head that made them uncomfortable about it or whatever, however they describe it. But I don't know about you, but I can tell when I'm reading stuff if it's generated by AI because it's really... It ain't got no soul as, as they say.

It- it's just bland. I can tell, and I'm thinking if eight to 10 or however many a- acquiring editors read that book and said, "Wow, this is worth beaucoup dollars," then isn't the fault somewhere other than the guy who wrote it? I think if he had a book that was that good that all of these companies are trying to acquire it for big sums of money, it...

I don't understand what the problem was, right? Somebody thought it was good. All you guys thought it was good enough. Are they gonna come out and say, "Oh, yeah we never read it"? [00:14:00] Is that really why? Did they never read it? Is that what happened?

lisa: Ja

Beth McMullen: I don't know. It is so messy, and of course we'll never know exactly what happened, but again, it feels like if the market is willing to bear a book like that, and clearly it was 'cause they, they were all over it then w- why are we saying no to that one?

lisa: Yeah. I don't know. I just I think just everything is, it's just one more, one more layer to make things difficult you're writing, and it's... And I know that so many people have so much angst about it right now. And it was one of our in the waiting room over on Facebook Adam Rosenbaum's like, you guys are gonna solve this issue, aren't you?"

Beth McMullen: Totally. Watch us, like we solve all the other issues. I understand that people, that it's upsetting if you're an author and you have to compete with the slop, right? Because there is so much real garbage being generated and puked into marketplaces like Kindle and, the, the e-book stuff.

A little less so in print 'cause it's more [00:16:00] laborious, but the e-book market's being flooded with garbage, like real garbage. And like sometimes nefarious garbage where somebody will steal your book and change a few words and throw it up with a slightly different title and now they're making money off it.

But again, that is not a problem that we can solve. That's like an Amazon problem. How do you figure out how to remove the slop so it's not competing with books that people actually wanna read? I don't know how you solve that. That's not something that I have the skill set to do.

If Amazon wanted to remove the slop, they could remove it, but like you said, they don't want to 'cause it makes them money

It, it's just, it's such a huge topic, and there are so many layers. There's the basic layer of writing with it. There's the basic layer of trying to sell things you wrote with it. There's the basic layer of how much sort of onerous work is being put on the authors to prove they didn't write with it.

There's just the [00:17:00] disgusting behavior of the AI companies. I don't know. It's just... And it seems like, I feel when you have somebody saying to you, "Here's five specific instructions that you should follow so that your work doesn't get, the red mark that you used AI," the scarlet letter, as you will.

But that's not gonna solve the problem. The problem's gonna be something different in a week, first of all. This stuff is moving so fast. And second of all it's like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic

lisa: Yeah. Things will just keep changing and evolving really quick. As far as, don't know. It just, it seems like there are, there's just different set of rules for different people right now, and it just is, everyone's just, it's... Yeah. I wish I had,

Beth McMullen: What's the part that,

lisa: answer

Beth McMullen: the part that makes you the most angry?

lisa: I, it makes me angry [00:18:00] that there are people that are getting accused of it by either, reviewers or just i- in general, people in the industry. And I feel like it's people who are the most vulnerable that are getting accused of it. And that's what makes me angry. That's where I'm really angry.

'Cause I just look at somebody where, like somebody else is getting ... he's using it, and openly using it, and it's that's okay over there. But this person has never said, "I'm using it," but then they're being accused of it and being told, "You have to prove that you didn't use AI." But then over here, they're like, "Yeah, we'll buy your book.

We're fine with it." But so that makes me really angry.

Beth McMullen: It's a double standard

lisa: It is a double standard, and it just I'm I just I Yeah, I just don't, I don't know what the answer is, because I just see it continuing down this path, because it's just the way of the world. [00:19:00] You know what I mean?

A certain type of person is gonna get a pass, where maybe another certain type of person or another individual is not gonna get that pass, and they're gonna get accused of something that they didn't do because there's some machine saying, "Yeah, this is AI." You know what I mean? And they,

it ... they're like, "Wait, what?

I spent 10 years writing this book." You know what I mean? It's not AI.

Beth McMullen: Yeah, and you're guilty. You're guilty until you're, until you prove yourself innocent

lisa: you, y- you ... Then the burden of proof is on you. And that's just like, how did we get here? Like, how is it that a writer who has just, put their their blood and sweat and tears into a book.

We all know how it is. You just sit at your computer, staring into the void of life to figure out how to write a book, and you're consumed by it, like in your thoughts when you're out walking, when you're taking a shower, trying to put pieces together. And then somebody comes at the end of it and says, "Yeah, this is We think this has the [00:20:00] markings of, the hallmarks of AI." That's just crap. And it

Beth McMullen: I read a,

lisa: me sad.

Beth McMullen: a really interesting Substack. It's this guy, and he's a, he's an engineer, and he writes about sort of technical subjects. And he said that he worked for 15 years to get his writing to be this very particular style that happens to be the same style that AI likes to mimic. And so he said that if he runs a piece of his writing through the AI detector, it always comes back saying, "Yeah, this was definitely 90% AI-generated."

And he was like, "I worked so hard to hone this skill, and now I'm, like, being told that because that's the way the bot wants to write, that I can't do it anymore, that I should put typos into my work, that I should [00:21:00] create a garbled sentence here and there." The idea that you feel like you have to dumb down your own work to avoid being accused of using a bot to write it makes my head explode

lisa: Yeah. I just recently had some stuff done that we did some copy editing on, and the copy editor was like I'm deleting all the em dashes because I don't, I don't want anyone to think that you, used AI." And I'm like, "I don't think so."

Beth McMullen: I loved em dashes, and 

lisa: You know what?

Beth McMullen: they've been ruined. They've been stolen.

lisa: I'm like, "Do not accept." No, it's not happening.

Beth McMullen: It's not fair. Again, it's like you want me to put in a typo or a misspelling on purpose after 20 years of teaching myself to not do that just to prove that it was written by a human being.

lisa: [00:22:00] Yeah.

Beth McMullen: It's bonkers

lisa: and you can totally tell when something's been written by AI. There's like a certain cadence to it, that it's just it's like this m- monotonous kind of monotone. There, there's no voice to it.

Beth McMullen: Угу

lisa: reading something, whether it's like a marketing piece or this or that, I'm like, "This has been AI generated."

I can tell. I do marketing for another, for our family business, and when I'm looking at my competition, I can tell. I'm like, "Oh, they're using..." I can tell they're using, 'cause they all sound alike. Do you know what I

Beth McMullen: Yes

lisa: so I it's something that's really obvious, but it's when I read somebody's work, I can, I feel their voice.

You can read, you can feel their voice. one of the things in there, I was hearing somebody who was like, "Oh, you have to keep copies of each draft that you do." Okay. I'm not somebody that does that. I don't have 10 drafts of a book. I just have one document that I'm continually, you know, continuously tweaking and writing and editing, and I've never done that.

When [00:23:00] people talk about having several drafts, like different copies, I'm like, "What?"

And that's, it's just, yeah, it's infuriating, and it just, it's one of those things that just it makes me sad. It's just ugh. And especially like the... the industry has changed so much just since I've been in it.

I've only been in it 10 years. And it- I- 10 years ago, that seems like 10 lifetimes ago. It has changed. Publishing has changed so much in 10 years. So much.

Beth McMullen: Ja

lisa: just look at it and like this is just another thing that's added onto it, making things so much harder for new writers to get in the door and find their way into an agent.

Somebody who's actually... yeah I bet there's a bunch of AI slop hitting agents' doors, and so they have to now weed through that crap, where the real writers are like, "Hey, I'm trying to wiggle in here, and look at me over here. I've actually spent 10 years writing a book.

Here it is." But they have to get wade through this minutiae to get to these people, the

Beth McMullen: Yeah

lisa: [00:24:00] And so this, it's just another layer of making things hard on writers, 

Beth McMullen: and we just we allow these things to come to market with no conversation about the consequences.

It's just the A- the American way, right? Just, "All right boy, that's a bummer. Oh let's keep doing it." It's when you learn that the children of these social media moguls who have made, again, billions of dollars on the, the backs of 12-year-olds they don't allow their kids to use the product

Right?

Like they unleashed something that is by and large bad for society. There's no consequences for them. They protect their own kids where, the regular old middle class kid is screwed because it's everywhere. It's in their face constantly. It's like an addiction.

lisa: You know what I feel like? And this is like something I was on a walk today and I just, like there's, like everything that... like in this country there's you know in movie sets, like in the old Western movie sets, they had [00:25:00] just the facade of the building and there's nothing behind it? I feel like that's what we've become.

Beth McMullen: Yes.

lisa: It's

like the facade is coming down, and it's like the depth of what's real and what isn't it's not there anymore. Do you know what I mean? And

Beth McMullen: The emperor has no clothes

lisa: And yeah, I just, I feel like that's where we are, and it just is it just

Beth McMullen: It's not a good feeling. It's not a good feeling. And I know that a lot of times new technologies, like I was in Silicon Valley in the early 2000s for the first, the internet's gonna solve all of our problems meltdown. These things run in a cycle, but I think every time we cycle through, we lose something important, and we are just told to accept it.

And I feel like that's with this, we're told yeah, the burden's on you, just accept it." And I don't want to. I have no interest in it[00:26:00] 

lisa: Yeah. I think wherever you're at right now out in the world in writing is, every time somebody's like I just don't know what to do," and I'm just like, "Find your joy." Wherever that joy is with writing just find it. A friend of mine is, was struggling, and she was not having success with traditional publishing, and I'm like, "Go self-publish.

Beth McMullen: Yeah

lisa: your joy." Writing should be about your joy, and when it gets to be tedious, it's like find workarounds the best you can. You know what I mean? We're working on a project right now, and it's, that's where my joy is right now. 

Beth McMullen: So fun. That is gonna be, that is gonna be the opposite end of the continuum of this episode. This is the sad, life is crazy episode. That's gonna be the oh my God, life is so fun episode. It's coming soon. It will be here soon. We've been working on this for a year

lisa: and that's like the, that's the thing. It's when we- when we're able to share what we're doing you'll be able to understand Beth [00:27:00] and I have been having, a crisis of faith through the

Beth McMullen: seriously

lisa: And so we just found a way that, we found our joy again through a project. And, whatever that project looks like or whatever you can do to find something that you're like, "This is how I'm gonna, make my way and find my joy with writing again," it. And be creative. Be different. You don't have to do anything traditionally. You can take different, avenues of, I know people who, that are doing the that are self-publishing and traditionally publishing and, or just going the indie route, or just, just have decided not to do it completely, and then they're just writing for themselves, and

Just find it.

Find it again. Find that joy. 'Cause it, it,

does get stripped down.

Beth McMullen: I think that is super important because if you get totally consumed in all of this stuff, these conversations about what you can do, what you can't do, how you prove [00:28:00] you've done this, how you prove you didn't do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, at a certain point it paralyzes you.

lisa: Yeah.

Beth McMullen: do anything because you're afraid, and you can't write creatively or really do anything productive from a place of fear.

And i- if you're sitting there terrified that you're going to get called out publicly and loudly for something you didn't do, but it's impossible for you to prove you didn't do it,

lisa: Right

Beth McMullen: impossible to prove you didn't do it to the extent that the, the people with the pitchforks want then you're not gonna be able to produce anything.

You're just gonna be sitting there like a deer in the headlights staring at the blank page being like I can't write that. I can't use that punctuation. Okay, that sounds too clean and smooth. I better mess it up." All of these... Listen, writers are neurotic, and we have so many self-doubts anyway.

To just pile on with all of this, it's not gonna work

lisa: Yeah. [00:29:00] Yeah.

Beth McMullen: Like, I just want to not be burdened, 'cause the burden it makes it not fun

lisa: Yeah. And you're right. You know what? I love your whole attitude. It's like about you don't wanna buy my book because you're gonna accuse me of it being AI, like it's just

Beth McMullen: Vote, vote with your dollars.

lisa: And I think if you are doing the, the self-publishing, the indie publishing know, do ... Really spend some time investigating how Amazon works and how the different platforms work if if you wanna get your book seen. And it's just I know it's just, it ... Everyone wants to just put it together and put it up there and "Oh, then I'll go out and promote it." There are definitely tips and tricks you need to know about with Amazon and these platforms to make sure that you're putting in the right, metadata and tags and da, and just go ... Do e- do your homework before y- before you publish 

Beth McMullen: yeah. Again, it's another burden that's [00:30:00] being put on you by the, the AI slop that's out there. Discovery is a big issue. They're really muddying the waters in terms of being able to discover new books. It's just all this garbage. I find it really interesting that these AI companies are really trying to get their hands on books written pre-2022 because the robot that they created writes like shit, right?

That's acknowledged. It produces... They call it slop

I don't really know what the point is behind that, but wouldn't that give you pause? You're creating a product that you know is garbage, and yet you continue to force it out there, to make it available in the same way so that people are continuing to create this garbage.

lisa: Yeah

Beth McMullen: just gives you a little insight into the character of the, the folks who are running these companies.

They could not [00:31:00] care less. They don't care

lisa: we don't. That's a whole nother topic. 

Beth McMullen: I know. That's the thing. Like, when we were starting to talk about this, I was like, "Okay, which part are we talking about?" Because there's 1,000 episodes that could be... And I'm sure we'll come back to it, but this was like the brain dump

lisa: It just, it's, this is a weird analogy, but with all these these food recalls, it's y- I feel like I'm out foraging for food right now.

Beth McMullen: You are.

lisa: to, I go to the farmer's market every Saturday, and I buy my produce for the week. And like I know all the, the farmers and all the people now, I'm like, "See you next week."

I forage for... I don't even step foot in the produce section of my grocery store anymore. And now there's this whole meat thing, and it's so I went to my, I shop at my local butcher's now. And I, and so I went in today, and we were talking about it, and I'm like, "How are we gonna know, like, where things are sourced?"

Da, da. So I had I'm out foraging for food. And if I see something, I'm like, "Has [00:32:00] this been recalled? Is this, is this on some list now?" Literally, that's where we're at right now. And that, it's the same i- thing with AI. It's like you have to forage for books and make sure that you are not getting something that should've been recalled or that is trash for your

Beth McMullen: Yeah

lisa: And so it's, but that's where we are right now.

Beth McMullen: Totally

lisa: we have to go i- in this country forage for things and make sure is this good, is this bad, is this... And it's all because people up here making a

Beth McMullen: care.

lisa: and they don't care.

Beth McMullen: Oh yeah you're just, you're stealing the money, right? You're ripping off the country. And there's this idea that if we fire everybody at the FDA, it's not gonna make any difference. Holy cow, look at that. It does. Products, the amount of contaminated products that we've seen just this summer is insane compared to prev- previous summers because nobody's watching

lisa: Well, and the thing, it's like I'm the person in [00:33:00] my friend group, people are texting me going, "Is there something I should look for today?" And I'm like, "Alfalfa, alfalfa sprouts,

Beth McMullen: Alfalfa

lisa: And

Beth McMullen: always one that's cont- 

lisa: know. And 

Beth McMullen: eat it. Don't eat it.

lisa: I'm like, "Oh, and there's eye drops." And she's "Oh my God." And she's I'm talking to her and she's running to her cabinet.

Like, every day there's something,

we are forced to be on high alert constantly,

and it's just wearing on us. Just sitting here today like, oh my God.

Beth McMullen: it's so true. And there's this idea that just because you say it's not gonna make a difference if we fire everybody from the FDA, that doesn't make it true. The consequences still occur. So you can tell big lies, but what happens behind them is still gonna happen.

The truth is what it is, and if you pretend it's not there, it's still gonna be there.

So anyway, we've [00:34:00] strayed a little bit from AI, but it's all part and parcel. It's all part of that sense of wow, this is going wildly off the rails.

lisa: Okay, so speaking of AI, I actually have a fun story to tell, and you and I were

Beth McMullen: All right,

lisa: about it

before, and I'm like, 

Beth McMullen: let's end on a fun note

lisa: "Did I talk about this? I know I shared it in the waiting room." As authors, we get AI-generated emails all day long. We're staying in the AI theme here. Of, you're invited to a book club or a conference or an editor at Simon & Schuster wants to buy your book.

I re- and the we get every day. I get probably at least two. It- it's just constant. And so we had gotten one a while back for an invite to a conference, and I checked it out, and it was legit, and so I responded, and we never got anything back, and I'm like, "Oh, it must've been..." I'm like, "I don't know what the point is that, they sent us that invitation."

I got one to, It's in central California. It's it's several counties [00:35:00] of librarians, of school librarians coming together for a day. It's a day-long camp conference thing, and I was invited to sit on the panel, on a middle-grade panel, and then do a signing and do, spend the day with, like, all these librarians.

And I'm like, "Oh, okay." 

Beth McMullen: Sure, buddy.

lisa: Yeah,

Beth McMullen: try to sell me a bridge next?

lisa: And so I'm like, "Whatever." But I'm like, just in case, 'cause I looked it up and I'm like, "Okay, it looks legit, but I doubt it." So I just was like, "Yeah, I'd love to do it, give me the details," whatever. I wasn't even like...

I didn't even send back a glowing email. I was just like, "Blah, blah, blah," 

Beth McMullen: whatever, buddy

lisa: yeah, this is just a lie. And then months go by and I didn't hear anything, and I forgot all about it, and all of a sudden I got an email saying, "Okay, we're so excited. The conference is just a couple months away, and here's the schedule."

And I'm like, "Huh." Now I'm like, "Okay, now they're really getting elaborate,"

Beth McMullen: Yeah

lisa: no way this is happening. And [00:36:00] so I was like, "You know what? There's a phone number. I'm gonna pick up and call the guy." So he picks up, and I'm like, "Hey this is Lisa Schmid," da-da. And he's like, "Hey, how's it going?"

I'm like, "Yeah, I got your email and I'm just

Beth McMullen: Prove you're real.

lisa: I'm like, "Is this a scam?" And he's like, "What?" I'm just like, "I get these emails all day long,

Beth McMullen: Yeah

lisa: I'm gonna kinda need a proof of life kinda thing." It's so

Beth McMullen: It's true though, because nine times out of 10 they're garbage

lisa: not real. And so we had a good laugh, and he was telling me that he had sent out this an email to all the librarians saying there's some grant money or something, and he's "None of them responded 'cause they all thought it was a scam."

Beth McMullen: Yeah.

lisa: that's what I mean. That's how

Beth McMullen: Yeah

lisa: Just it's worked its way into everything. Do you know what I mean?

Beth McMullen: Yeah. No, and it makes you doubt. I got, I get those editor ones like 

lisa: Oh my God 

Beth McMullen: from Penguin Random House. I, it seems to always be Penguin Random House. [00:37:00] And I got one, and I deleted it, 'cause it's ridiculous. But then they sent me a follow-up. I was like, "They're taking it up another level." 'Cause usually when I delete the, the original one, maybe I mark it as spam and it doesn't come again.

But I was like, "Wow, they must really think I'm a sucker." Me and everybody else. But it i- but it's true. You're put in a position now where you have to really... I think proof of life is a good way to think about it. "Hey, can you prove to me that you're real?" Because

lisa: Yes

Beth McMullen: in a lot of situations, it's just not the case.

lisa: Okay, and this is how paranoid I was. I was just like, "You know what?" And I'm looking at the other authors who are in the email, and I'm like, I'm just gonna message them, 'cause I know a couple of them, and be like, "Hey, yeah, am I... I'm gonna see you at the conference, right?" And they're like, "Yeah!" Da-da.

I'm like, "Okay, I think it's real then." But I guess, okay, the point of my story is like when you're getting these emails, make sure it's like there is like maybe

Beth McMullen: Confirm.

lisa: that could

Beth McMullen: [00:38:00] Yeah.

lisa: and it was one in 100 that was real. And now I'm like so excited 'cause I'm going and I get to spend a day with 200 librarians, and I'll be, geeking out for a whole

Beth McMullen: No, it'll be good. And they're like, "It's real people." I think it's much harder for people to do that now though, right? It's harder for them to organize these things because

lisa: Yeah

Beth McMullen: people are just automatically deleting the stuff as spam. So yeah, oh, it's hard. That makes it hard

lisa: I saw somebody on, in the waiting room had remarked that she had done a conference for SCBWI and people weren't responding, and it's because,

They are... people just think it's a scam. And so that's just another

way AI is ruining our life with their, with this, with this crap

Beth McMullen: Yeah, and when you get them literally every day, like I get them every day, you don't even look at them anymore. It's almost like, it's almost like it's better if somebody [00:39:00] reaches out to you a different way, like some other means. Because your email, you're just like, you don't even see it. You're like delete, garbage, spam, blah, blah, blah, trash.

Yeah, it's definitely harder. Okay, what... One more thing.

lisa: more thing,

Beth McMullen: One more thing

lisa: And I know this is it's just a little side note. If you do get invited to something like this, like a book fest or whatever, do not be afraid to reach out to your publisher and ask for stuff. I think a lot of people are always leery.

All they can do is say no. Both of them have said no to my options, so I'm like what else can they say no to?" So I reached out. I'm like, "You've already no to the biggest thing, I'm just gonna ask for this." And so

Beth McMullen: give me some stuff

lisa: I'm like, I emailed both of them and I was like, "Hey, can I... I'm doing this thing.

Can I get some kind of handouts or whatever?" And both of them said yes. Both of them s- have sent me bookmarks, and they're g- providing door prizes. They're doing all this stuff. So it's, if you're thinking, "Oh, I have to [00:40:00] produce my own materials," before you do that reach out to your publisher, 'cause all they can do

Beth McMullen: Yeah. Yes, exactly. And then you're exactly where you were, so you might as well just take the risk. Don't be afraid of them. They want you to succeed. They only succeed if you succeed, anyway, Lisa's giving me a face. That too is another conversation. Thanks for coming to our TED Talk.

lisa: Oh my God. I'm sorry, you guys. This was such a, like a

Beth McMullen: This was like, this had to happen. There's just so much. So let us know what you think. We'd love to hear your opinions about AI. Is it making you angry? Do you feel resigned? Are you, like, changing your behavior? Are you refusing to change your behavior? What are you doing in response to all of this chaos?

We have ... Who do we have on deck? We have Susan Marston coming up next. She is an editorial director of Albatros Books, which is a very large European [00:41:00] publisher that's expanding into the US. So we are looking forward to talking to her about what they are up to. I think that will be very interesting, a peek behind the curtain sort of conversation.

So make sure you join us for that. And until next time, happy reading, writing, and listening. Bye, Lisa.

lisa: Bye, Beth. Bye, guys