440 - Authors Under Attack!

James and Cissy unpack two major controversies affecting authors this week: a traditionally published author dropped over AI writing accusations, and a literary agent’s viral TikTok telling writers to stay away from the London Book Fair. Together, these stories highlight growing tensions around AI, gatekeeping, and who the publishing industry is really for. Alongside the debate, the episode blends in personal reflections on writing routines, burnout, and the realities of balancing creativity with business, offering a grounded look at what it means to be an author in today’s rapidly shifting landscape.

Key Talking Points
- The fallout from a publisher cancelling an author over suspected AI use and what this means for trust in the industry.
- A literary agent’s controversial TikTok telling writers not to attend the London Book Fair and the wider issue of gatekeeping.
- Why authors are increasingly feeling “under attack” from multiple directions, including AI scrutiny and industry attitudes.
- The ongoing challenge of balancing writing time with business demands, stress, and productivity.
- Personal insights into author life, including burnout, routine disruption, and staying consistent in a demanding creative career.

Links & Resources Mentioned
ProWritingAid (Sponsor – code IWC15 for 15% off annual subscriptions): https://prowritingaid.com

From learnselfpublishing.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

The self-publishing show is sponsored by Pro WritingAid. Pro Writing Aid has been my go-to tool for revising and refining my writing since my first book. Built by writers for writers, it's more than just a grammar and spell checker. Pro WritingAid helps you enhance your story's pacing, plot, characters, settings and more. It can even provide on-demand developmental feedback on your entire manuscript with its new manuscript analysis and virtual beta reader tools. Get ahead of the competition by heading to ProWritingAid.com and sign up for free using the code IWC15 for a 15% discount off annual subscriptions.

SPEAKER_00 0:46

Publishing is changing. No more gatekeepers, no more barriers, no one standing between you and your readers. This is the Self-Publishing Show. There's never been a better time to be a writer.

SPEAKER_02 1:02

Hello, welcome. It's the Self-Publishing Show with James Flatch and Sissy Mecca. Who's just complaining about being sick? Well, I'll tell you you look amazing, Sissy. People watching on YouTube. You're glowing. You got a lovely jumper on. As we call the sweater. You got a sweater on.

SPEAKER_03 1:17

My sweater, my Italian sweater. I think it's the tan, James. I think the tan just makes it all better.

SPEAKER_02 1:24

We should tell people you picked up uh Keyes disease last week.

SPEAKER_03 1:28

Yes, I have a Keyes disease. I was diagnosed uh down in the Florida Keyes. I was saying it was my first time, but it really was my second. I did go for lunch one time. We did a Disney cruise and we popped off the boat, but it was like with little kids. I only saw it for about two hours, so I really feel like this was my first time. Went with two other couples this last weekend, had an absolutely incredible um experience there. I I'm in love. Everybody told me I was going to love it because I'm such a fan of New Orleans, and apparently, well, they said it it you know is similar. It absolutely is. I got New Orleans vibes the whole time, but yeah, we took a boat out one day. So one of my friends, they have a boat out on Long Island, so he kind of captained a boat. We took it out for the whole day and just bopped around the keys, and it was incredible. And I met, we met some people, made friends, and one of them, you know, I was saying how I didn't want to go home. And he said, Oh, you've contracted Keyes disease. It's like, oh, I think I have.

SPEAKER_02 2:24

It's it shocks me that you made friends down there and got on with someone and you want to live there now. I know. Because I've been to a lot of places around the world with you, and that is the normal, that's a standard procedure. SOP. Um, I Jill and I, my wife got we got Key's disease in 1998 because we honeymooned in the Keys and we absolutely love it. And uh we took the kids back there about four or five years ago, um, just after COVID, I think. And we our cute little story is that on our honeymoon, I had set up as a surprise for Jill swimming with dolphins, which by the way sounds a bit unethical, but there are one or two places you can do it ethically. So don't do it at big hotels that have dolphins and a swimming pool. Go to the dolphin research centre where we went to, where they're actually open to the ocean. So the dolphins are their bred, a lot of them have been bred there. But if they want to go out to the sea, they can. And some of them do apparently go off, have little adventures and come back, but they know where their bread is buttered because they get fed there. So that's an ethical way of doing it. But that aside, so that was a surprise for Jill. And we swam with dolphins. Um, we did the whole sort of sort of thing with them education stuff, and then in the water with them, which was amazing. And we swam with a mum called Marina and a baby calf called Pandora, who was pink underneath because the babies are pink, and she was really playful, and they do this thing, it's a bit alarming at first. They basically mouth you, which is what puppies do as well. They they put your hand in their mouth, which is what dolphins do as well, to sort of say there's a lot of that going on, which is a little bit alarming, but it was fine. And when we went back with the kids, we paid for them to do it, and they swam with grown-up Pandora, who we we'd swam with all the agreements, which is really lovely. But that whole it's the that's the sort of thing that happens in the Keys, it's a magical place, isn't it? And we stayed in Duck Key or Grassy Keel Campbell, one of the really tiny ones in the middle, where we had a a little place, little Airbnb, I guess you'd call it now, with a I don't know how we would have booked those in those days. It wouldn't have to make phone calls, wouldn't I? But anyway, a hammock on the tree and a tiny little private beach. But if you get up in the morning and and walk across the road, you're on the other side. So you kind of got I guess the Gulf Coast on one side and the Atlantic on the other side, but it's a stroll away and it's it's wonderful.

SPEAKER_03 4:42

It really was incredible. Like you know, one of my favorite places in the world is New Orleans, and um, especially just being in the French Quarter. I know it's kind of the m more touristy place, but I love there's something about the French Quarter that I absolutely love. And they were right, and it wasn't just you know Bourbon and Duval, there was a lot more. I took pictures, actually, I haven't sent them to Maria yet, but I took pictures of an area that reminded me of like Algiers with the colorful houses and um so much of it, like the concha. I I never looked it up, of course, you you know, what were the parallels, why were the parallels. Um, but one of the things, and I don't know if I shared this with you guys, but that I thought was really cool. We were walking through an area, Mallory Square, I think, and there were busts of uh bronze busts of kind of some of the founding families of the Keys, and there was a bust of Tennessee Williams. So I was reading, you know, the paragraph, and it talked about him writing um uh streetcar named Desire in the Keys, and I was like, wait, I'm so confused. I thought Tennessee Williams was my kind of New Orleans guy. I thought obviously streetcar named Desire is about a streetcar name Desire and New Orleans. I thought for sure he lived and wrote that in New Orleans. So I was a bit confused. So I looked it up, turned out that Tennessee Williams is born in Mississippi, but he loved New Orleans, especially the French Quarter. He lived and worked there and obviously was inspired there for his stories, but then he found the keys and actually bopped back and forth between New Orleans and Key West. And then I guess finished his life in Key West. He said the quote in the on the statue was I can write anywhere, but I write better here.

SPEAKER_02 6:21

And I thought he said about the keys.

SPEAKER_03 6:25

About the keys, but I feel like we're now I want to read like maybe your biography or something because I feel like we're soulmates now, I think. Because we love those two places. Maybe I'm not the only person who loves those two places, but I thought that was really cool. So I need to learn more about him. Obviously, I've read so I was an English major, so I kind of had to read Dennis Williams, but really didn't know a whole lot about him before now.

SPEAKER_02 6:49

Yeah. Well, I'm just looking at his Wikipedia entry. Yeah, it's quite a lot on Key West. That's obviously a big part of his life, and um Yeah. And you you said uh he finished his life in Key West. I think he literally did finish his life probably in Key West. It was some he did finish his life, unfortunately. Um I I think I struggled a little bit with Streetcar Named Desire because I've only ever seen the film version with Marlon Brando, and it's it's kind of scratchy and loud and and shouty and a bit dated. I would love to see a modern adaptation of it, um, a sort of stage play version of it, because I think at the time I just found it quite heavygoing and didn't really get it. Um but I'm sure it's an amazing kit what we call in the UK kitchen sink dramas. Do you get do you use that expression?

SPEAKER_03 7:31

No, never heard that.

SPEAKER_02 7:33

I had them in the 60s in particular, 60s and 70s on TV a lot, play for today here in the UK. And the kitchen sink drama is basically a working class uh domestic setting play about you know everyday life in in in the sort of poor quarters and uh yeah, fantastic plays and it's a great way of writing. Yeah, so I'm pleased about that. Listen, we are gonna talk about two things today in this podcast. We are gonna get on to um to discussion. We're gonna have because authors are under attack on a couple of fronts in the last week. Uh, one of them has been Hashette's cancellation of an author because of accusations of AI writing, and another one is uh a rather sneery agent, literary agent at London Book Fair posting on TikTok, telling writers not to go to LBF because it's not for them, and not to interrupt her when she's having important meetings. So listen, we're gonna talk about both of those and set the world to write on that front and make hopefully some important points about both of those episodes. Uh, but a quick catch-up. So you've been to the Keys, which is lovely, and I'm really jealous because uh, like you like I said, we absolutely love it there. Um, but I am going, uh William, and we've had the most miserable winter here in the UK. I mean, I was gonna say thank goodness for Savannah, but Savannah actually we had grey rain while we were there as well, which is a really disappointing for me because I was so looking forward to it brightening up. But uh William, my son, is the same as me, and we all feel it in a northern Europe this time of year, it's quite hard not to feel a little bit bluesy because of this continued bad weather. So we're taking ourselves off to the beautiful sun-drenched island of Ibitha on the first of April, which is five days, six days, something like that.

SPEAKER_00 9:11

Love you.

SPEAKER_02 9:12

And we're gonna have a couple of rounds of golf and just have dad and son time, which would be really nice. I'm looking forward to that. Um, and I will continue writing, continue doing my marathon training there as well.

SPEAKER_03 9:23

Um how is it going?

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Uh yes, on both fronts. So my writing I haven't done today. I did yesterday, I I had a few days off when stuff stuff does get in between in the way for me. And if I wake up with a a level, a huge to-do list and a level of anxiety, it's quite hard for me to sit and write, knowing all that's waiting to be done. And I don't I often don't get through my to-do list during the day. So it does it's not I I wrote every day for such a long period of time, and then it has dropped off a little bit the last couple of weeks. I think Ireland, building up to Ireland and coming away from Ireland, the publishing conference, is is getting a lot of stuff done before I go and then picking up all the stuff when I get back. I'll tell you what I'd like to do, I would love to have Claude do my emails for me because I spend quite a lot of time grouping up a load of automatic emails I get sent, like meta ads from Vinci and stuff and KDP notifications and deleting them or putting them into a folder. Um I'd love Claude to take control of my email inbox and you know, in those KDP email addresses over the last year, I have not seen any emails about my books from KDP saying you've been selected for a deal because I can't I can't see through the flag. So I'm missing those deals on my books because I get them all into the same inbox. But Claude won't connect to my emails, which are you know, Apple, I guess I don't know. I've got about six or seven email addresses. Google might be one or two of them, but look, it'll only connect to Gmail emails, which I was really disappointed about. And I don't know if anyone has a way around this. Maybe there's a service. I just want it to connect it to my inbox that I'm looking at on my computer with all the different email addresses coming in and and help me.

SPEAKER_03 11:08

I I think that there is a way, I'm not the techie girl here, but I think there is a way because I use Gmail, but I use it as kind of a clearinghouse for all of my other emails. So I only read my emails on Gmail, but some of them are non-Gmail emails that they're sending over here, forwarding, but I never look at the original ones. So they're definitely and I would just ask Claude itself how to do that. Have you done that and said how can we do this? Because I think you can use Gmail as a clearinghouse for your emails and then kind of bring it into that, just like I was I mentioned to you yesterday. Um, I've been really struggling with Claude in terms of you know, handover documents and how I have a fresh chat, but it remembers things, and yes, it has a memory. But um one of the things I wanted to do is to be my assistant, kind of like when I was using ChatGPT and say, okay, give me today's agenda, but it was dropping things off in terms of you know things I had to do, like calendar items. For instance, uh yesterday I said, Okay, give me my agenda, no mention of the newsletter every Tuesday's newsletter. So I chatted with it about a bit and I said, All right, help me figure out how to get around this. We can't just have one big long chat, it would remember everything in that chat, but then eventually it would have quote-unquote chat rod, and and you know, I do start a new fresh chat every day within my kind of command center project. And it's that the best way to do that for those timed things would be to connect to the calendar and I could check your calendar. But I don't use Google Calendar. Um, I use Fantastical, which kind of under the hood is the ICal. So all we did was connect, again, under the hood, Gmail to ICal, so that I didn't have to kind of start. I don't want to use a whole separate calendar system, and now I can kind of see it on my phone. I use the calendar the way I usually do, but there's one specific calendar that comes to my iCal that is hosted on Google called Sissy's Work Calendar or something like that, but now it connects to. So I migrated everything over, everything that was on my quote unquote work or book calendar, it now sees because it's on Gmail. And I tested it this morning. I said, give me my agenda, and it was like, Well, you have, you know, your next book guideline is blank, and you know, I'm starting a new book, and it knew all of that, and it just boom, seamless and worked. So I think there's probably a way to do the same thing with the Gmail kind of under the hood, so you don't have to actually use Gmail. I'm not actually using Google.

SPEAKER_02 13:34

If you've got Gmail set up over the top of your so all your other emails automatically forward into that Gmail, do they?

SPEAKER_03 13:41

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 13:42

And do they then sit there unread forever?

SPEAKER_03 13:46

No, I have um I forget, I never look at them, so it's been a long time. But I if I can remember when I was setting it up, I have it kind of once it's forwarded, it goes into um, I don't know, a folder or something like that. So if I went in there now, the only ones that would be unread would be the ones I physically haven't read. And I forget it. I set this up probably two, three years ago. So I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 14:10

If you reply to an email in your Gmail, does it always come from one Gmail address or can you have it come from different okay? So I could I have JNX.

SPEAKER_03 14:18

No, no, you could change it.

SPEAKER_02 14:19

Okay, okay you can have different.

SPEAKER_03 14:21

So I used to when I had different pen names, if someone messaged me as Sissy Mecha, I could have it automatically respond as Sissy Mecha, so Sissy Mecha at Gmail or whatever.

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Um but I can't have my Vinci Books email address in there because that's uh That I don't know. Well I think Vinci, I think though that address is actually Google, so I might be able to move that in because it's Gmail is basically Google Mail. Okay, look, I'll uh I mean you are right. Asking asking Claude is the way to do this, and I'll sort of send out what I've got, but I really need some help on that front. I mean the thing is I suppose when I s open up email on my Apple Mac, it'll say somewhere at the top there'll be some some amount of AI available to me in that, which is Apple's one. I know what Microsoft is copilot, and I'm not sure what Apple's called, but but that sort of fragment, you know, I want to use Claude, that's the one I I kind of gravitate to, although I have been using Gemini quite a lot this week, which I've really enjoyed. And I think that's one thing I always remember someone saying there was a panel of brilliant people of about 20 years ago or something, after the big first tech revolution, digitization of everything in the 90s, and someone said what's surprised you most about what's happened over the last 10 years, and someone said the fragmentation nobody predicted. So when you look in the 1950s at a s a set in the future, you look at Star Trek, everybody has the same device. You know, if they're wearing a silver suit, they're all wearing the same silver suit, but everyone has the same like back to the future, the same when that's set in the future, the same way of communicating with each other. In reality, of course, there's competing businesses, all these different corporations. And so that's a kind of downside of this, is you've got Apple's intelligence thing, you've got uh Microsoft's intelligence, you've got your one you have choice, which might be Chat GPT or Gemini or or Claude. And um it's quite hard just to stick to one, but anyway.

SPEAKER_03 16:17

Um I I would I would use a little bit of both, sorry.

SPEAKER_02 16:23

Sorry interrupting you. I I say we will have another episode on perhaps the personal side of this of getting personal organization through AI. We'll get a guest on at some point and go into more detail about that. But as we navigate it ourselves, uh we can talk about that. Um I wanted to mention Project Hell Mary, because I went to see the film last night, and I absolutely loved this book. The book is sensational. I listened to it and read it at the same time. The audiobook is one of the best audiobooks you'll ever listen to. The guy's voice is genius. It's incredibly I mean, considering it's basically the relationship between a sing a solo astronaut and a robot alien, like a robot alien. It's a very emotion powerfully emotional book. Um went to see the film with William last night who hasn't read the book and so disappointed. And I don't I know it's usually the case, isn't it, when you're um when you've read a book, you know, you the film's never gonna live up to it. But I felt the book was it was a bit like an escape room, the book. You know, he wakes up with no memory, doesn't know where he is, he's in a white room and he actually works because he's a brilliant scientist, and he he knows he's a brilliant scientist because he suddenly does a calculation because he thinks gravity's a bit different than the room he's in, and then he's thinking, How do I know that? Who who am I? I'm okay, so so he starts making notes, uh, evidence he's got. I'm a I'm some sort of scientist, I know science, I know maths, and um and so on. So he gradually uncomes, and then he gets flashbacks, and all of this is explained later in the book as to why it's happened like that. He gets flashbacks of memories from Earth. And so it's an incredibly revealing, slowburn situation that you're living this situation in the book, and the film did most of that in the first ten minutes, and it made him infantile, it made this brilliant scientist clumsy and stupid and drunk and playing about and knocking things over, and just I just found it so irritating watching it compared to how the character was in the book. I'd be intrigued to hear what I mean, William enjoyed it, but I'll be intrigued to hear what people who haven't read the book think of the film and to whether they really enjoyed it, and what I'm missing here is what you need to do with an adaptation to make it work as a film, which is a very I I understand completely, is a very different thing from a novel, and you simply can't recreate some novels on film, but it turned it was almost like a Disney version of the story, um, as I say, a bit infantile, and I was I was sad.

SPEAKER_03 18:57

I'm sorry to hear that because I know how much you loved the book, and that's what I was wondering. If William liked it, maybe he hadn't read the book, and sometimes that's a bit of a different feeling.

SPEAKER_02 19:06

So I would say he was about 70% on it the way he talked about it afterwards. So he didn't love it, love it, but he liked it. And Ryan Gosling's great, but actually I do think Matt Damon would have been better. Matt Damon was brilliant in The Martian. I thought The Martian did capture the book much better, which was the same writer. By the way, of course, was started out as an indie, didn't he? Uh Andy Weir. His first book, The Martian Was an Indie book. I think Matt Damon was a much closer match to the scientist, Grace, in uh Project Hail Mary. But anyway, that's me um ranting about that. But film adaptations are always interesting ones. The next one, Matt Dinnerman I met, bumped into at the London Book Fair, tells me that um Dungeon Crawler Carl, another book I'm hugely loved recently, and also an awesome audiobook, has been picked up. They are talking about a live action TV series of it. And uh I really hope that retains the essence that Matt's put into the books, because that's not that's a wonderful book. Let's move on to our subjects. Authors have been in the firing line this week, Sissy Mecca.

SPEAKER_03 20:06

Yeah, I know. Where are we going first? It's it's been a little crazy. Well, you were the one with the London Book Fair, I wasn't there, so you told me about that. I hadn't seen that kind of um controversy. How did you first hear about it? Was there a buzz at the London Book Fair or no?

SPEAKER_02 20:22

I heard nothing at the London Book Fair. I just heard I just saw it all on TikTok afterwards. So what happened is there's an a literary agent on TikTok who's Alice SH. And she posted uh she posted quite a lot. She knows she goes in this day one at London Book Fair, that's what I'm doing. And she's reasonably opinionated. But she posted on TikTok and she said that she uh was uh rudely interrupted by two wannabe authors, her words, uh who wanted to talk to her as an agent, and uh she was busy with a business conversation and she'd paid to be there. You pay like a thousand pounds or four thousand, I think she said somewhere about that in total for the seat. And it was rude. And she went on to say that London Book Fair is not for writers, it is a business conference for business people who are doing publishing business. Now, the pro one of the problems with this is that her particular manner, it's not her fault, is quite sneery. I mean, she I will play the clip so people can hear it.

SPEAKER_01 21:27

Hi, I'm Alice, I'm a literary agent. I have just been to London Book Fair, and I had my meetings interrupted twice by wannabe authors. And to be very clear, I'm using wannabe authors because I will give you the same amount of respect as you give me. And by interrupting my meetings that I have paid£4,000 to be at.

SPEAKER_02 21:49

Okay, so that's the beginning of that post. It comes across quite kind of posh and sneary and really representative of how traditional publishing is operated for a hundred. Years which has been turned upside down by the indie revolution and rendered completely irrelevant. I mean, I think traditional publishing is completely irrelevant. If you want to be published, you go to Vinci Books or Booker Church or someone, one of these digital agencies. I know Booker Church is owned by Hashette, which is our next subject, but or Jockey Books, you go to one of these indie focused publishing companies that's going to do a 50-50 split with you, and that's the way to be published and get into bookshops and stuff. Don't go to Penguin Hashett. What is the point of that? I mean, the vast majority of those authors get a dismal service from it. Their books disappear after a couple of years, and then one in 50 of them rise to the top and become JK Rowan or whatever, but you know, that's like winning the lottery. And this whole and to get to that point of getting the Hashet contract, you've got to beg an agent with a you've got to send out querying letters to a hundred agents and get 99 rejections before one of them deigns to take you on. And then all that happens is that process starts again when the agent begs the publishing companies to take your book. And this begging system is designed to make the author accept a bloody awful contract. In the end, they'll get this terrible contract thrust up, but they will feel at this stage that they've won the lottery because they've been through all those. It's a brilliant system devised by some evil geniuses a hundred years ago in publishing. But it's irrelevant now. You don't need to do it, you don't need to speak to a literary agent. You need to write your books, you need to find your audience, you need to publish yourself. And when you've done that and you've honed your talent and you've found an audience and you've you proved that you can do it, then you can say to a publishing company, and yeah, maybe it will be hash out or something at that point, look, these this is my proof, this is what I can do as an author. That's what you should be doing. And by the way, I think they have very belatedly, like in the last two years, worked out that's a better way of recruiting an author than some random you know, tossing a coin saying, Is this going to work with this person? And we think they can write. So they now do look at indie authors who have m been successful and approach them for contracts. So she came across face snobbish, and the main t main thing I would say, so there's partly I have some sympathy with her partly. If you're having a meeting with somebody and somebody walks up and sort of gets in your eyeline and interrupts you, that's not alright. That's not okay. I think if you wait politely and the meeting's finished and you say, Oh, can I have a quick chat with you? That's different. And if she's complaining about being approached by writers at the London Book Fair, I have no sympathy for her because I think it's a book fair. Secondly, she says the book fair's not for writers. I'm sorry, it absolutely is. They have a huge part of it called Author Central with Amazon KDP and all the service providers that we know and love all around there. And you know, this year 11 Labs had quite a big store there, as well as ACX and um the Alliance of Independent Authors. They have panels directly aimed at authors, they are trying to build the author side of it. And I think it's Reed who run the conference. The last thing they want to hear is anyone going around saying this is not for authors. They want authors there, they want to turn it into a more author-focused because that's the way the industry is going. The power's going to authors now, away from those um the Titanic, uh, the old publishing companies. So in the end, I'm afraid Alice to me felt like somebody rearranging the deck chairs on the deck of the Titanic as it was sinking, but being very officious about it, saying, please don't get in the way of my deck chairs, because they need to be in the right order as the ship is sinking. That was my I mean that's how I feel.

SPEAKER_03 25:25

How do you feel about publishing? Tell me. No, I I think the the phrase wanna be authors is what put me off the most when you had sent that, because I mean, aren't we all don't we all want to be authors before we become authors? And isn't that quite literally the point? But I do understand that I can remember being at the RWA, the Romance Writers of America, and I'm sure it's even more intimidating at something like the London Book Fair, but you know, big huge conference, and I'm there. I do I did have a meeting with an agent, and it the whole thing was just so intimidating. The beginning of my career, I have a finished manuscript, but very little knowledge about how hard this was going to be. And I mean, I learned very quickly, but it's just all so so intimidating. And then finding indie publishing is the exact opposite. So I went from completely powerless to you know feeling in control and feeling powerful that I can I am in control of my own destiny here. And I mean, it really is two opposite ends of the spectrum. Indie publishing changed my life, self-publishing changed my life. But yeah, I I I think it was really unfortunate the way that she kind of portrayed because you know I have an agent, I love my agent. Agents are amazing and they they can be also empowering if if it's the right one. Um, I don't know, that was really disappointing. But the idea that authors don't belong at a book fair, I mean that that's that is a little bit absurd.

SPEAKER_02 27:01

Yeah, she was obviously upset about it, and she she used this the phrase wannabe authors deliberately to disparage them because she was she was upset about them in particular. But you know, when when are you an author? When you're a writer, you're a writer when you start writing. That's that you're a writer. You don't have to wait for validation from anybody for that. And um, yeah, so she did get roundly criticized. I think she's deleted the original tweet uh on that front, but she's probably picked up a lot of followers as well. And uh Alice, if you're listening, come on to the show and defend traditional publishing.

SPEAKER_03 27:33

I do like how sorry, I do like how you're on the um the indie publishing or not sorry, I'm sorry, the uh the drama side of TikTok that you find these things that they are happening. I love it.

SPEAKER_02 27:46

I'm sure there's a lot more drawing on TikTok I don't see, but um I do see the the publishing stuff. I can I can do that T as they say. Yeah Look, the next one is more serious, much more serious. This is the story of Hashette very quickly responding to accusations that AI was used to write a book and cancelling its publication in the US and halting its publication, I think, in the UK at the time. And this is a this is an this is an unpalatable story. Um I think Hashette are gonna come out of this incredibly badly and and with a a decision that'll be increasingly hard to defend in the future. So that the long and short of it, as far as we can tell, so this young author writes horror, which is quite a hard genre to write, and has written a couple of uh great books that have done well, and she's published by Hashette and the second book. So the author is called I'm gonna have it here, it's Maya uh Mia Ballard. She published Shy Girl, and a gentleman picked up the book, and for whatever reason, he decided he thought it was written by AI. So let's just pause at this point and say I'll tell you a little story. So I've put my books through through the AI checker. My first book, The Final Flight, came out as 100% human, which you don't see very often because often there's some percentage it thinks is AI. These are the AI checkers. My second book had a slightly more, I can't remember exactly the figures, it was something like a 30% chance that it was AI. And my third book came out with something, not 50% but 40 something percent AI. And my current book is 60% AI. Now, none of them have AI in it, and the first three books were written and published before generative AI was a thing, so they couldn't possibly be AI. You have to take my word for it that I'm not my current work in progress, I'm not using AI to write it. I think what happened there is I wrote my first book a little bit blind. What I thought writing was, but it just sort of like lots of people's first book, kind of spilt out of me. The story spilt out to me. It's probably my best book, you know, it's a story from the heart, and I wrote it, it's quite original. By book two, I had read into my genre and I'd been reading all the new Tom Clancy's written by Mark Cameron. Um I'd read, you know, anything that's sort of Cold War-ish but being published modern style. And so my second book, my writing was adapted to market more. I was more aware of the style and choice that's been even if it wasn't a conscious effort, it seeps in when you read enough of these books. And that trend continues to my third book, where I'm thinking a lot more in tune with the way writers are writing for readers who want to read, which is what we do when we're commercially writing. But of course, AI has been trained on those books. And what what AI thinks an AI book is, is a book that's closer to the median, the average book in that genre, what it sounds like. So at the beginning I didn't read very much of those books, and my book is probably doesn't quite hit the tropes and the trends and the language, and so that's why I thought it was human. And then as I started to be more in tune with how commercial fiction works, it starts to say, oh, I recognise this, this is how we write, because this is an AI checking an AI, right? This is how we write. So my feeling is the more commercial you are, the better you are adapted to your market, the higher the instance of AI thinking your book is written by AI. That's my theory on this. So that's first of all, say it's nonsense to run a book through an AI checker and come away with any kind of evidence that the book has been written by AI. But this bloke did that. He came out with it, it came out with, I don't know, 71% chance written by AI. He told Hashette, and Hashette immediately publicly cancelled her, which is shocking.

SPEAKER_03 31:36

It's I mean, as soon as I saw this, I know it's been all over, as soon as I saw this, I was appalled. Um, this AI witch hunt has just gotten out of control um in so many ways. But I I and I do have a particular bone to pick with these AI detectors because as someone who you know knows a little bit about linguistics and and um I'm gonna just really rant here for a second if if you if I may. So I I brought a I brought a book of mine because I know that um I remembered this was in the blurb and it illustrated the rule of three. So you know the rule of three. So um, okay. Which comes, by the way, from Aristotle's Republic.

SPEAKER_02 32:21

This is not new, this is a very, very explain the rule of three.

SPEAKER_03 32:25

Yeah, so the rule of three is that it comes from the idea of a tricolon, which is that the human brain remembers uh three more easily than any other number, and so it's been a literary device for many, many years. And before it was a literary device, it was an oral speaking device. And you know, this has been around a lot longer than AI. Um, I should have thought of examples Vene Vivici, or you know, what I was about to read.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

Um I see no evil, I hear no evil, I speak no evil.

SPEAKER_03 33:00

Italy was supposed to be an uncomplicated trip with the girls. Now, this was written three years ago. This is about a two and a half year, three or three-year-old book. But that was before a rainstorm, a washed out road, and a forced overnight stay at a Sicilian vineyard. Now that would give me pause. If I wrote that now, not it wouldn't give me pause because I'll use this uh rule of three until the cows come home, but it would give me pause in that I know the rule of three is one of those things like the M-dash or repetitive phrases or some certain things that AI detectors pick up. And that was specifically flagged in the New York Times article. And as soon as I saw that, I mean, my everything made my heart, you know, kind of race. But that specifically, it's a device that I I really enjoy using. It's a device I know is grounded in linguistic research and in in how our brain works. And I'm like, oh, they came for the M-dash, now they're coming for the rule of three. And it really, really bothers me because it's a di I'm I'm starting a new series. I'm having three pirates for a reason. I mean, three witches, three brothers, three everything. It's there's a reason we use it. There's a reason why, as you said, it's it's getting picked up because it's used, because it's an effective literary device. And, you know, like I said, this witch hunt, I think like I think Cotton Mathers would be very proud of what's happening now. You know, I I mean I think about I and I when I say witch hunt, I really do believe it's it's you know, we're convicting this poor author. I say poor author, I don't know what the truth is. And I really that that that, you know, for our discussion isn't the point. It the fact that we're attacking the author, that we're convicting someone's an entire career based on probability, not proof. I mean, that's what these AI detectors are. You can't prove they're all based on probability. Five percent, ninety percent, fifty percent, I don't care what it is, there is no AI detector in the world that can give you definitive proof of machine writing. It just isn't possible. And I know I've been out of the kind of game of education for a few years, but I'm still friends with a lot of teachers. I still follow kind of a lot of what's going on of things I used to teach. And yes, of course, English teachers, English professors are having a really difficult time. They want their students to learn to write, to think critically, and not use AI for the purposes of learning how to construct words but and sentences, but you know, they're up against you're not gonna be able to prove whether something is written AI or not because it's trained on human writing. And then there are some things like purple pros and such that AI will detect that might be the sign of a novice writer, you know. So there are some devices like repetitive phrases or you know, purple pros that a more seasoned author writer wouldn't necessarily use, and that's picked up as AI, but maybe they're just beginning their writing journey. And then there's other things that are well established as as literary devices, like the rule of three, that that gets picked up because, like you said, with your book, you learn to become a writer of commercial fiction. So it just doesn't work. I mean, run through as many as you want, you cannot do what they did, in my opinion, to this woman based on probability. There's there's just like the Salem Witch trials, right? You can't you can't cross-examine a spirit. Their whole whole, what was that, what's the word? I forget. Um there's a whole kind of word for that. You're you can't cross-examine a spirit, you can't prove that somebody isn't writing their book, and it's just really dangerous. And it's getting worse.

SPEAKER_02 36:36

It's uh the trouble with Hashette doing it is this is not you and me posting on Facebook, oh, I think this person's written AI. This is a major corporation, one of the big planks or the pillars of traditional publishing, saying that if you run a book through an AI checker and it comes out at 71%, you're done. And there, but for the grace of God, go all of us. And I you and I have a friend on a WhatsApp call, and we were talking about this a few months ago. I don't know if you remember this, a romance author, and she got worried about this, as all romance authors in particular are, that she was going to be accused, so stopped bringing her books through, and they came out pretty low, but not zero, even though they weren't written with AI. But she then went back to the 1990s and pulled something out that she wrote at college, and it got a really high scoring for AI. I mean, 30 years before generative AI was even a thing, so it is ridiculous. And the woman, you know, I spoke to a senior Amazonian at London Book Fair, and she basically said to me they have no inclination at all to go down the route of trying to detect AI because that's a a loop, you know, they knew much more than Hashette straight away that that is a fruitless game. And it's so serious for Mia Ballard now. I mean, I really feel for her. Um, there is, we should also say there was um a racial dimension to this, which I hadn't really picked up till our friend Kevin McLaughlin pointed out that Mia Ballard is a young black woman, and the man who picked this up and basically got her cancelled is an older white man, which you know, make of that what you will, but it's another dimension to this, and I think Mia's probably feeling rightly bullied by this. Um, although Kevin, who is very cerebral on these matters, says she's has a you know he thinks she's got a very strong legal case against Hashette. But her life is in ruins, her publishing career is in ruins. And if you're gonna do that to someone, I know I can't say this strongly, you better be damn bloody sure that she wrote the book using AI, and that evidence has been presented to us is not it. Um, and that's just gonna be so easy to get somebody cancelled who you don't like. Uh, it's it's ridiculous. And um, I think she did when she was pressed, she said the editor ran it through AI, which you know, frank, I do that. I'm running my books through AI, I'm running my books through pro writing aid and giving it to Claude and saying, Can you see anything in our you know, even our translations which are done by AI, uh, would that count? I don't know, it's not generated, the story's already been written in English. It's it's a complicated area. And frankly, I'm relaxed about whether Mia or someone else use some generative AI in creating the story, but it's still her story, but they know that's perhaps not everybody's view. I really realize that. But this is this is a dark and worrying moment for us uh in this industry.

SPEAKER_03 39:23

Yeah, and and what's worrisome too is that don't you feel like this will hit hardest debut authors, uh, newer authors or authors that don't have you know PR machines behind them? I mean, there are some that might be more insulated, but you know, you're a newer or debut author, and like you said, I I feel for her as well, and because she has said, I don't I didn't use AI, and that I guess doesn't seem to mean much, but it really should.

SPEAKER_02 39:53

Well, I think it's gonna hit India Indie authors.

SPEAKER_03 39:56

Well, I'm sorry?

SPEAKER_02 39:57

I think it's gonna hit indie authors. I think they're the ones who you know, and all the threads I've seen say, Well, what do you expect from indie self-published authors? Of course they're using AI.

SPEAKER_03 40:05

That's wonderful.

SPEAKER_02 40:06

So yeah, so I don't know whether Hashett is gonna do an about face on this. I mean, or maybe they know something they haven't told us, I don't know, but um it is ridiculous and uh it is a worry. It's gone around the world, the BBC's covered this story, uh you know, all the major newspapers in the UK, and her her name is splashed all over it. So heart goes out to Mia. Um, you have our support, Mia, and you were self-published before, you should self-publish again, and uh we'll all buy your book.

SPEAKER_03 40:37

There you go. I love it. Supporting indie authors. She was indie first, right? And then they purchased her book and listening.

SPEAKER_02 40:45

Which goes back to what I said earlier by the uh traditional model being broken, they're looking at successful indies and picking up their books. So that's what you if you're listening to this podcast, um, you don't even have to you don't have to risk incurring the wrath of Alice at uh London Book Fair, just self-publish, cut your teeth, find your audience, hone your writing, and then you're in a position to negotiate with traditional publishing from a position of strength at some point in the future. But yeah.

SPEAKER_03 41:14

And I haven't, luckily, but um face the potential of incurring the wrath of readers because the more authors are educated. I see a post almost every day where there's an author, and maybe this is just in the romance community, I'm not sure. An author is quote unquote educating readers about AI, how to detect AI, how to spot AI. I mean, this isn't going away, it's only getting worse, and so we do have the readers to answer to as well. Readers make my career, make our careers. Um, and the more educated they are, the more something like, you know, one vineyard, one rainstorm, one night that changes everything. That is literally what I use on my Facebook ad for that book. Now it's flagged as AI because it's, you know, using a rhetorical device going back to Aristotle. I don't know. It it's really mind-muggling.

SPEAKER_02 42:04

Well, that sort of underlines my what I felt having put my books through my progression of books becoming more progressively like AI is because I learned that stuff. Because you learn the rule of three and you learn some of the devices that work well with the human brain, and that's now apparently what AI thinks is AI. So I I think we need to accept that um the AI devices, the AI detection does not work, we should not trust it. So there needs to be a higher level of evidence. That's the basic, uh, the basic outcome from this. So we should also acknowledge that some people use AI to write books and some readers like them as well. You know, we can't get away from that. And we're just being naive. If you're really upset about that because you think it's unethical, shouting from the sidelines makes no difference. You need to accept and understand that and understand that the industry is changing the way that generates content for readers. And if readers enjoy the books, that's why the industry's here. It's not here to make a living for any anyone in particular, it's not here to sustain any one particular way of doing things, it's here to entertain readers. Um, so yeah, we have to acknowledge that as well. And it's it's a bit naive, I think, just to say, well, I don't want it to happen. Well, you know, the weavers didn't want the spinning jenny to come in, but it did.

SPEAKER_03 43:23

And circling back to what we talked about, you know, with the at the London Book Fair, part of the empowerment of indie publishing is that the readers are the gatekeepers. I mean, in the end, they are the ones, you know, there there isn't that quote unquote gatekeeper. It's the reader who enjoys a book who purchases the book. And that's that's if we have to answer to anyone, that's that's it. And that's uh I guess in some ways right now, a little bit of a difficulty with all of the AI kind of witch hunt going on, but it's also the empowering part of it, too. You can write what you want to write, what you feel, you know. May or might not sell, and then the readers decide. You know, sometimes I think about getting back to a little bit of that freedom. I think the more we do things of for me personally, you know, my original series is my bestseller. I know it's out the longest, but I I also think some of what you're supposed to do as an author has gotten into my head over the years. And I think there's a little bit of freedom. Maybe, and that's actually what I'm hoping to do with the pirates. I'm I'm gonna take a little bit of the advice that I've been given over the last few years, even about writing, and just kind of trust myself and trust my gut and write the book that I wrote in 2017 when I wasn't quote unquote, you know, a tuned-in author and see what happens. But I think there's a little bit of something to that.

SPEAKER_02 44:50

I'm really pleased you said that because I think you know the very best material you find, whether it's books or films or comedy, is when people are doing it because that's what they want, because they enjoy it. Um, and I'll give you a little example of that actually. We've just launched in the UK our own version of SNL, Saturday Night Live. So Saturday Night's a very long-running traditional uh sort of live sketch show in the US, SNL, and we now have SNL UK, and the the guest host for episode one was Tina Faye, who came over from the States and helped launch it. And everybody was expecting it to be awful, and it actually wasn't. Um, it was pleasantly good. I mean, of course, every sketch show is hit and miss. That goes that's part of the territory. Some of them don't work, some of them do. But I thought it was above average and uh enjoyed it. And I remember so I started to look up the the writers, and it was a quote from one of them saying we have the the spectre of this huge legendary SNL over us. And we worried about that, we worried about what people would think. So in the end, what we decided to do was make each other laugh.

SPEAKER_03 45:56

Oh, I love it.

SPEAKER_02 45:57

And that's why it worked, because they they're doing what you're sort of thinking about doing, which is not worrying too much about what you should be doing and doing what you love doing.

SPEAKER_03 46:07

Yeah, oh I love that. That's perfect. And we didn't even plan that little circle moment there, James.

SPEAKER_02 46:13

It's almost like we're we are writers. Um, yeah. Okay, well, look, that's it. Thank you very much indeed. I'm gonna have my soup before my call with Damon Courtney. We're doing about four calls a day at the moment. Uh yesterday I had five to talk to everybody who's taking part in SBS Live this year, and it's killing me. It's killing me, sis.

SPEAKER_03 46:32

That sounds intense. Well, you have fun with that.

SPEAKER_02 46:35

And I'm going for dinner in London tonight with some old BBC colleagues, so um, yeah. Which is like you going to New York.

SPEAKER_03 46:43

Very redditch. I'm going to London and Peter.

SPEAKER_02 46:48

Um, so but there's some soup in the microwave is what I'm trying to get at, which I need to.

SPEAKER_03 46:52

James is hungry, so it's time to go.

SPEAKER_02 46:56

Exactly. Alright. Lovely to catch up with you. I'm so pleased you're looking so radiant, even though you're ill. You didn't come across sick at all.

SPEAKER_03 47:04

Good. I'm glad because I don't know, I got something on the plane, but it was totally worth it. I I would do it again.

SPEAKER_02 47:10

Yeah. Alright, I'll speak to you next week.

SPEAKER_03 47:12

Okay, ciao.

SPEAKER_00 47:14

This is the Stealth Publishing Show. There's never been a better time to be a writer.

SPEAKER_02 47:20

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