I can’t not sneak a breaking story in here. If you have been living under a rock, you may not have seen the incident involving the Chicago Sun-Times and AI-generated fake books titles. If that’s you, go over here and have a chucklesnort. Fortunately, this column will never be in danger of that particular embarrassment!
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
Last week saw the annual Independent Book Publishers Association (IBPA) conference, which I will report on to end the week because they are really up front about the presence and value of self-published writers in their midst at the event. Therefore, the discussion that took place will likely be full of twists and nods in our direction.
Fortnite Returns to App Store
But first, a brief update to bring the ongoing Apple saga to at least a temporary close. That comes with the news that Fortnite is back in the App Store in the U.S.—which bodes well for every other app that seeks to enable in-app payments to be made directly to the creators.
AI Dominates IBPA Conference
Back to the IBPA. As you can imagine, a key subject at the three days of proceedings was AI. Indeed, Trip Adler of Created by Humans—the AI licensing platform and formerly of Scribd—was one of the key speakers.
Maria Pallante, the head of the Association of American Publishers, who it seems is addressing everyone everywhere all at once right now, gave an interesting twist on copyright and AI discussions. She talked about copyright as first and foremost an economic right. No doubt this was a play to encourage those who see the economic benefits of technology balanced unfavorably—positively, even—against something fluffier and harder to quantify.
She also made a (more, if I had to clamber temporarily off an editorial fence) compelling argument about the importance of putting up a wall against “fair use” mission creep.
But the most interesting comment on AI came from Amanda Zila, who essentially sees it making huge efficiencies for publishing by doing much of the slush sifting for traditional publishers and agents, enabling them to find manuscripts of best fit.
Cynics might say that is an incredibly powerful rationale for being an indie writer. It is also worth noting that Zila runs a company that—checks notes—uses AI to sift slush piles for agents and publishers. But we know this happens in the recruitment of people, so I suppose it is inevitable it will happen in the recruitment of manuscripts.
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I’m not trying to defend the Sun-Times, but it’s worth noting they weren’t the only paper to run that supplement. They just happened to be the first to get caught — mainly because one of the authors mentioned lives in the Chicago area. The piece was actually distributed by Hearst to their entire syndicate.
Not to defend the Sun-Times, but they were not the only newspaper that printed that supplement. They were just the first to get caught, by one of the authors on the list, who lives in the Chicago area. Hearst sent it out to their syndicate. Only the Philadelphia Inquirer admitted to publishing it. I’m sure there are more.