The Northmen used to disrupt monastic scholars with axes and fire, but nowadays they plan to use AI. I think the publishing industry might cry out for a return to more brutal forms of barbarity after seeing this team of bearded bros climbing out of their longships.
New publisher Spines aims to ‘disrupt’ industry by using AI to publish 8,000 books in 2025 alone
Once upon a time, ‘disruption’ was not a desirable result…although I guess you could call what a slaughterhouse does to a cow “disruption.” It doesn’t help that the description makes it look like yet another grift.
A new publisher has claimed it aims to “disrupt” the books industry by publishing 8,000 books in 2025 alone using artificial intelligence (AI). Spines, founded in 2021 but which published its first titles this year, is a startup technology business which—for a fee—is offering the use of AI to proofread, produce, publish and distribute books. The company charges up to $5,000 a book, but it can take just three weeks to go from a manuscript to a published title.
Respectable publishing houses pay the author for the right to sell their books, not vice versa. If it’s a good book, and if the publisher does their job of promoting and distributing the book, there’s no reason to bill the author. If, on the other hand, your company is just churning out books through a print-on-demand service and is going to do nothing but skim off the profits, they might well decide that there are enough gullible wanna-be authors out there that they can gouge out $5000 before letting the product wither.
You know what they say: great minds dress alike!
AI can write texts (and I’m grateful for the possibility to communicate with my pupils’ parents thanks to it), but only humans can write stories. Though, many humans tend to write the same stories, so I guess those would be indistiguishable from AI
Books about what?
This is so far beyond me that I had trouble understanding what they are doing. Thanks for clearing that up, PZ.
Also, ‘using AI’ has become quite the buzzword.
It’s not obvious that these are northmen?
Self-publishing sites have been around a long time. My mother used lulu.com to publish her fictionalized memoir about her own mother, and that was two decades ago. They only charged a few dollars per copy, and I see it’s still on sale at their website. Charging $5000 up front is ridiculous.
That photo is AI generated. You can tell because only one of them has a manbun.
This used to be called “Vanity Publishing.” Usually for writers who can’t admit their writing is bad and no reputable publisher would buy it.
Vanity presses have been around for over a century. They suck lots of money out of foolish people who think people will read their words. However, 99%+ of these books are a waste of paper. These clowns have just found a way to streamline the process.
As a publisher of artistic works, we purchased a block of 100 ISBNs from Bowker. But, we could not publicly present our works because two evil behemoths were stealing and digitizing copyright works by the tens of thousands. Coalitions of authors and legitimate publishers spent vast amounts of time and money but those two founts of greed buried the legal system in money so they could continue their plunder of other peoples creative works.
This is all consistent with the shallowness, ignorance and monied corruption of our failed society.
To those who still have any intellectual ability to perceive : WTTNDA (yes, Welcome To the New Dark Ages)
Disruption, eh?
I guess it’s vanity publishing for those who are to lazy or inept to write and can’t afford a ghost writer?