Welcome to the next edition of My (Mostly) Monthly Author Newsletter. I hope you’re enjoying the summer. The family and I enjoyed our time down in Cape Breton last month, despite the horrendous rain and the flesh-eating no-see-ums.
My wife Natalie proved herself a match for driving the steep and winding Cabot Trail, as well as the cramped streets of Old Quebec, with a rented RV. (I still have a medical restriction on my license, but she trusted me to serve as navigator. I blame my map app for the occasional wrong turn 🙂 ). Our son survived over a week without TV, though getting splashed by pilot whales helped make up for it.
Sunday, Aug. 13: Hometown book signing
Don’t forget, if you haven’t already marked your calendar – Violet’s Vault in the town of Iroquois, starting at 1:30 pm. Likely wrapping up by 3:30.
It’s hard to believe it’s already been over a year-and-a-half since Bane of All Things published. Between my health issues and the pandemic, I never did have a proper book launch/signing event where I grew up.
For all of you in the Morrisburg/Iroquois/Winchester/Cardinal areas (and beyond) who supported me on the long road to first published novel, you can finally get your copy of Bane of All Things signed and say “hi” in person. I will have some fresh copies on hand for sale, too.
Please support my next novel!
I’ve had some encouraging response so far for The Crucible Tree. If you are one of those kind souls who has already pre-ordered it, thank you very much.
But here we are, a third of the way through the campaign and definitely not a third of the way to the goal. We’ve got a lot more ground still to cover, and every pre-order counts! If you haven’t yet, check out The Crucible Tree on my publisher’s website and consider a pre-order.
This works like a Kickstarter – we need to achieve a critical mass of pre-orders for my publisher, Inkshares, to take The Crucible Tree into production. If we don’t, all backers get refunded, no strings attached. But it also means Inkshares won’t publish the book and I have to consider other options.
This is how Inkshares, as an independent press, keeps its costs down, can pay better-than-average royalties, and can give fledging authors like me better odds of getting noticed. Unlike self-publishing, I don’t incur the production and marketing costs out of my pocket. Inkshares pays those bills out of the pre-order revenue. Inkshares also handles the production, marketing, and distribution like any conventional publisher.
But first, we need those pre-orders!
Creators take action against AI
I don’t know about you, but I continue to be fascinated by how writers, artists, and other creators are responding to the use of their work by artificial intelligence companies.
See this story as an example: Thousands of authors demand payment from AI companies for use of copyrighted works. More and more, creators are considering their legal options to protect their interests as AI companies use their creative work, without permission or compensation, to program AI systems. I have called it before derivative plagiarism by machine.
To quote an open letter recently signed by more than 8,000 authors and released by the Authors Guild:
“Millions of copyrighted books, articles, essays, and poetry provide the ‘food’ for AI systems, endless meals for which there has been no bill,” the letter reads. “You’re spending billions of dollars to develop AI technology. It is only fair that you compensate us for using our writings, without which AI would be banal and extremely limited.”
The (American) National Writers Union released a similar statement earlier in July. In this case, not just writers, but a coalition that also includes illustrators, photographers, graphic artists, digital media workers, journalists, novelists, playwrights, composers, and songwriters. That statement read:
“As creators of copyrighted works – including text, illustrations, photographs, lyrics, music, audio, and video – our economic and moral rights have been gravely harmed by the copying and ingestion of our work, without permission or payment, to compile generative artificial intelligence language models – through the process disingenuously and anthropomorphically referred to by AI developers as ‘training’ – that reuse our works forever after to ‘generate’ derivative works as their output.”
In other words, with a few prompt questions or menu choices, anyone could use an AI system to quickly generate new content, without any particular skill or talent, at the expense of the people with the actual skill and talent who are being plagiarized by the AI system.
I see it this way: It’s kinda like putting in the time and effort to study for a test or complete a work assignment, only to have the slacker at the next desk cheat their way to success by ripping off your hard work.
That’s all for now
Stay safe, keep reading, and please appreciate the time and effort that real creative people put into their work, even if it’s not your particular cup of tea.
Cheers
Leo
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