I remember last year when the social media went wild because of the drama of Cait Corrain her review bombing authors of color and what amounted to starting a fight with herself to get reviews and notoriety. The problem was, she was already on the fast track to being the next big thing in the romance world. After that came the Freydis Moon controversy where a white author pretended to be multiple authors of color. Then came the authors who admitted, out loud, that they write their KU books via ChatGPT.
What is going on in the publishing world these days. Over the past year, it seems as if every week there’s a new controversy involving an author or even editors now doing something so utterly ridiculous its leaving readers wondering how the hell these people got deals with Big Publishing much less the deals they’re getting.
Over the last week alone, I’ve stumbled on three new problems.
The first was the male author who told everyone on Twitter that the right way to interact with his readers was to basically comment on every single one of his one-star review on Goodreads. By now, everyone knows Goodreads are for the readers, not the authors. If you publish a book, you best just ignore Goodreads unless it’s to add a new book you’ve read to your list. Or to curate books you want to read. Under no circumstance should you go search yourself on Goodreads. It’s tantamount to Googling yourself. Don’t do it.
The second was the author who, again, came on Twitter and gave her step-by-step instructions on how to write a book. It basically boiled down to using a talk to text app to write the basics of the chapter while she did other chores. This is fine. Not everyone can type or have the ability to sit down for periods of time in front of a computer. A friend of mine finished most of his final book using a talk to text app while he was in the final stages of his life because it was easier on him.
No, the issue was that she took that and entered it all into Chat GPT to “clean it up.” Then went through it again to fix errors. She even boasted about having all of her sex scenes written by AI. Spoiler, from the reviews I’ve seen from ARC readers and other readers, the editing she did to correct spelling errors didn’t work. There were so many people downvoting the books because of the multiple errors and the plot inconsistencies.
The final person was an editor who was given a query. Loved the idea, hated the author who pitched it. They came onto Twitter (yes, again) to asked everyone if someone could write this idea for her. Admitted it was a query, but she didn’t like the way the person pitched it. The companies she worked with parted ways, and it send dozens of editors and agents to come on social media and promise that agents do not do this. This is tantamount to theft. To plagiarism. And an agent was blatantly asking for someone else to do this for her, supposedly with the end game of this agent pushing the book for publishing. Instead of telling the original author that, their idea was great, they just needed a bit of rework for it.
All of this happened within the last seven days.
Now, I’m not saying that small press, independent, or self-publishing is better. There are people like this everywhere. What I’m saying is these people have more to lose. They aren’t backed by the big Publishing companies. They’re willing to take chances even though they know there’s a huge chance that they won’t have the hit book of the summer. If controversy hits them it’s going to hit them harder than one of the bigger companies. Self-publishing is worse, it’s you and your book and the audience. Small and loyal. There’s smaller chance that they’ll hit but the success and repercussions are the same.
So why are these people out here acting like fools? Fifteen minutes of fame can’t be it. There’s a Robert Greene quote that ends with “any attention is good attention, even if it’s bad attention” No so in the publishing industry. If an author is getting attention for not the book itself but the controversy surrounding it, people aren’t going to buy their books. They’re more than likely taking them off their lists. Nobody wants to read a book that has a flaming trash heap for an author. And even if the author does manage to make it big, just remember, the adage of the bigger you are, the harder you fall is true. It might take a while, but it will happen. Stephanie Meyer went from being on top to her last few books not selling at all. There are racism controversies surrounding people like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros. The plagiarism controversy will never leave Cassandra Clare. In several decades JKR will go down in history as being nearly as horrible a person as HP Lovecraft.
It’s better for an author to get their name out in the public by the good they do, or the quality of the books they write, rather than the fact that they use AI to “write” their books or that they are horrible human beings. Is that really how people want to be known years from now?
It’s been a busy week, as you can see friends. And there will probably be more on this tangent. So buckle up.
Meanwhile, welcome to the end of June! Half the year is already over, when did that happen? July is around the corner, more hot weather, more vacation. So enjoy it friends, and as always, with the holidays, there will always be time to relax and curl up with a good book.
Mouse's Reading Nook 