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Apr 27, 2024 17:32
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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So I don't know how many people here are in the 20books group on Facebook, but its Overlord, Michael Anderle, recently announced his plans to publish 10,000 books in a year, using AI. Sharing of that plan with the general public went over about as well as one would expect, and to be fair, it is a bonkers idea that has some pretty awful implications. Granted, it's not 10,000 original(?) works, but like 2,000-3,000 originals a day, plus translations, so, you know, just 5-10 new books released every day. No biggie.
I'm off-put by this idea, if you couldn't tell. Anderle says he's going to sell these direct, so they won't overwhelm a bunch of subcats in the Kindle store, but what if he changes his mind? Also, how many copycat dipshits are going to do the same thing and suffocate discoverability through the Kindle store? I'm sure it'll be more than zero, because if there's one thing I've learned over 8 years in this industry, it's that every half-decent idea is copied to the point of absurdity.
I did find it funny that a bunch of his co-authors are defending him in the comments. Apparently they haven't realized they're the first to get the axe under Anderle's new, bold scheme.
Anyway, I hope this poo poo fizzles out and amounts to nothing, and Anderle looks like a complete dipshit in the process and loses his cult of personality, but I'm a dreamer, and I hope for a lot of things that probably won't happen...
A team automated the creation of bad mobile slot machines for Android several years ago. The project was quite profitable.
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Apr 21, 2023 16:47
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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Self-published fantasy blog-off has cover art controversy this year. I've been caught up in this over the weekend given my YouTube channel AND that I'm an entrant in this year's contest. Full tweet thread summarizing all the things:
https://twitter.com/DeborahLau/status/1662636248480251905
https://twitter.com/DeborahLau/status/1662636625967579136
The TL;DR if you don't want to click through and read the whole Twitter thread:
- An author hired an artist and believed that no AI was used in the creation of their book cover. Entered the book in SPFBO9 and ticked "No" box in response to the entry form that asks authors whether or not AI was used in their cover.
- The SPFBO cover contest specifically disqualifies covers with any AI components from entering. It's unclear at this point whether there were any formal processes established beforehand as to how this was going to be vetted.
- Nothing in particular was widely noted about the cover (which was an early favorite with both blog judges and public votes) until it won the #SPFBO9 cover contest.
- Artists on Twitter put forward arguments the cover included AI generated art. Most of them very politely, imo.
- Cover designer & author both deny the allegations. Mark Lawrence responded with a tweet to the effect of "the entry form required people to self-declare use of AI in the cover"
- Artists understandably not satisfied with this and produced more detailed arguments for why they believe the cover contains AI generated elements.
- Mark Lawrence requested additional proof from both author and cover artist that the cover did not contain AI generated elements. It takes a while.
- Meanwhile, there's Twitterstorm escalation on both sides. Another author (a fairly high profile one) came forward in strong support of the first author and defended the cover designer under fire, disclosed that he hired the same cover designer to do 2 covers for him, one which is pending a cover reveal on 5 July.
- Mark Lawrence received and publicly released a layered .PSD file of the cover art. (The accompanying tweet and the blog post containing said evidence was, imo, worded quite poorly. It had a rather put upon tone that came across as dismissive of the numerous, specific arguments artists had put forward.) Authors without any graphic design or art experience conclude the evidence is compelling proof of innocence. Artists (including authors who are also artists) maintained the cover contains AI art and are frustrated that authors (who are not artists) are not giving the evidence they are presenting due consideration. Authors (who are not artists) and bloggers started throwing the term "witch hunt" around. Further escalation on both sides ensued.
- While the Twitter ragestorm continued, said .PSD file and accompanying evidence was torn apart by artists on Twitter. The smoking gun: multiple layers within the .PSD file definitively proved AI elements were used because the cover designer forgot to change the file names on multiple Midjourney assets used in the cover. (Midjourney procedurally generates the file names which contain the username and prompt for said assets.) Another Twitter user provided a full audit trail of all the Midjourney assets used by tracking down the Midjourney user account and finding the generated images in the user's Midjourney gallery. Yet another Twitter user demonstrated how the "in process" sketches etc were faked. Multiple other artists provided detailed threads breaking down what valid "in process" evidence looks like.
- Mark Lawrence formally announced the cover as disqualified and also that there will be no further cover contests going forward.
- First author went from standing by the cover designer to realizing they were scammed then to confronting the designer.
- The designer disappeared themselves from all social media and went silent.
- Second author who went to bat for both the first author and the designer woke up to the evidence and ran their covers through the same AI detectors. The design brief included "no AI". They panicked at the result, decided to pull the cover, raised enough funds via a GoFundMe in a few hours to get a new one.
- The self-published science fiction contest organizers announced they will likely also cancel their cover design contest going forward.
The cover in question:
https://twitter.com/prindle_matthew/status/1624230169580904449
Sad and inevitable result all round. AI controversy aside, the cover is actually doing a good job for a cover. The book was getting loads of buzz just based on the cover and it was moving copies.
Mark Lawrence made the right call in the end. But as far as I can tell, the whole plan from the get go was "rely on people to be acting in good faith" without any contingency process for bad actors or how people should report concerns or how those reports should be considered and investigated and how comms should go. When things went wrong (because AI and also humans), he responded to developments on the back foot, didn't think to consult someone with relevant expertise on the evidence before publicly releasing it, and didn't think through the consequences of how he worded the comms accompanying the release of that evidence.
Fallout is still ongoing. Many authors have continued accusing artists (and those who were siding with them, including other authors) for dogpiling and being witch hunters etc etc etc. Quite a few are up in arms about "presumption of guilt instead of innocence" and they don't seem to realize that what artists were trying to tell them is that based on their expertise, they weren't just firing off baseless accusations; they were seeing like a hundred red flags setting off all their AI senses and guess what, it turns out not all opinions are created equal on that subject. Like I feel bad for the authors who got scammed and everybody who believed the cover to be wholly human created. AI art has gotten to the point where you can't tell as a layperson. (I personally thought there were multiple covers submitted as being eligible for the contest when they had AI generated elements but I didn't say anything about the ones I did suspect because I'm no expert so my hunches aren't that reliable. And this was not one of the covers I had suspected.)
The other other outcry is "but the designer was a lying scammer" and that camp seems to believe that declarations alone constitute sufficient controls/vendor due diligence and there was no way anybody could have known otherwise.
I'm this close to putting my ex-auditor hat on and making a video rant about why people need to trust but verify, why declarations/representations are the weakest form of evidence you can obtain and therefore are also the weakest form of control, and consequently why relying on representation as the sole control over the most significant reputational risk in your entire business goes well beyond a minor control weakness in a process to a significant control deficiency that when you consider it in the context of an assurance engagement over the design and operating effectiveness of controls, any auditor engaged to provide that assurance would have to conclude that the controls are ineffective because they are neither effectively designed nor are they operating effectively.
Do it if you want to bootstrap a YouTube channel talking about people screwing up like this. I'm sure there's a wide back catalog of potential content.
Also that's a good cover.
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May 29, 2023 14:34
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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But how does that make any money? (I swear I’m not a scammer)
Sorry—I’m just baffled by this stuff.
Burn $N getting to the top of the list. Hope you get more than $N gross revenue. At $10/per, you're netting $7/per. So you need to sell more than N/7 to make money.
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Jun 27, 2023 21:04
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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Also I was reading the start of the thread, where it mentioned the goons doing five or low six figures were mostly romance. Is this still true? And are people interested in seeing numbers from a high non-romance author?
I think people are interested in numbers regardless of the sobriety of the author.
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Aug 22, 2023 09:07
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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An extremely random and highly technical question for everyone about your ebook covers on KDP: what color profile are you using? sRGB or RGB? (if you don't know how to check, it's in the file properties under the "Color space" and "Color profile" attributes)
Asking because I just heard an absolute nightmare story from another author first hand where she couldn't get her ebook cover to show on the Amazon storefront because apparently, according to a KDP supervisor she finally got hold of after over a week of escalations, "you're never supposed to use sRGB for eBooks and all of you who have gotten away with using it have been lucky".
It's a super weird problem that I've never heard or seen other people encounter before.
This sounds more like a "new non-technical compliance person"; potentially someone who came from print media. They frankly shouldn't care unless a device doesn't display the thing, but I don't expect that's the problem.
sRGB is used for computer monitors and display. RGB is used for ink printing. I wouldn't use RGB for eBooks because they're not printed and I don't like the idea of compressing the color space of my image for every use -- it will lead to more artifacts.
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Aug 24, 2023 13:22
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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Amazon is now asking if books contain AI-generated content during the creation process on KDP. No idea if it'll actually do anything since, ya know, lying exists, but it's nice to think maybe Amazon is concerned about the market being flooded with a mass of AI-produced books.
They're likely more concerned with the outcome of the USPTO evaluating generative works.
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Sep 7, 2023 13:34
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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Self-pub blurbs are easy because the only "must" is the one that goes on the back of the paperback/in the description box on Amazon. My go-to for blurb advice is Robert J. Ryan's Book Blurbs Unleashed: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07ZB5NJLL/
A 1-liner pitch is always a good idea too.
Querying is a bit different though. I'd check the fiction writing thread for advice on that front.
Re: chapters - I wouldn't stress about this. Nobody's going to decide whether or not to read your book or not based on if it has chapters or not. I'm currently reading The Spear Cuts Through Water which doesn't have chapters. It's great.
My wife buys books that have short chapters because they make her feel like she reads faster.
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Sep 30, 2023 14:19
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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My perception as a non-American (and correct me if I'm wrong) is that it's not so much about whether people are aware of the history, but that for a sizeable number of Americans in the South and Appalachia, things like the KKK/Confederacy being unequivocally the bad guys is a controversial topic in the American culture wars. (Which is not the case in the rest of the Western world.) As such I think it's prudent for Captain Log to make their views* extremely clear in the blurb.
*or to put it another way, their factual assertion of history
The people going on in tyotl 2023 about the war for southern rights know full drat well that they're the bad guy.
The KKK is a hate group, and not inactive. I'd tread very carefully with the topic. Honestly your framing in this comment I find offensive.
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Oct 4, 2023 15:22
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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We were reading erotica shorts, straight-up smut. Like, one of the stories we covered was named "Five D's in Zero G's" and the content involved astronauts breaking all kinds of orbital protocols, let's say. The channel got suspended for content, but I think you can probably get away with the traditional harlequin stuff.
You might be surprised at what research nasa has funded and had performed.
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Dec 8, 2023 04:02
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Apr 27, 2024 17:32
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- leper khan
- Dec 28, 2010
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Honest to god thinks Half Life 2 is a bad game. But at least he likes Monster Hunter.
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I've recently self-published a novel and am trying to find sensible ways to market it.
I'll read back through the thread but does anyone have any hot tips on what actually works?
Be popular from something else and sell to your existing fan base.
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Dec 11, 2023 20:02
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Mar 14, 2023 16:42
CMYK is used for ink printing — it’s a radically different colourspace given you’re going from three additive colours (eg red+green+blue displays as white on a computer monitor) vs four subtractive colours (eg to display white, you need to not print any cyan, magenta, yellow or black).