I am reasonably certain (and this is why I will never make a pundit or a politician, because those folks have to make grand pronouncements with no qualifiers or intrinsic admissions that they might be wrong) that the current wave of scammers using AI slop to flood Amazon, etc., with terrible "books" under ablative pen names is going to drive a return to readers seeking out hand-selling, personal recommendations, word of mouth, and physical bookstores where you can browse.

Publishing has always been a reputation economy--”I liked the last Ann Leckie book so I am going to buy the next!”--and the proliferation of slop is only going to drive that.

People who buy some generated crap and get ten pages in will never buy another book by that “author.” Which is why the con artists doing this (not to be confused with the much, much bigger con artists pushing it as a business model, who terrifyingly make up a third of the market value in the United States right now) have hundreds of pen names.

It is the exact equivalent of the widgets you find in online stores sold by a company rejoicing in the branding of RandomSauce Bunchanumbers, which, you know, I probably wouldn’t let kids or cats play with once you discover it doesn’t work because who the hell knows how that’s gonna fracture.

It increases brand reliance, and an author name is a sort of brand.

What does this mean?

Nothing new, really. If you are a real person and you like a book also written by a real person, tell a real-person friend.

Maybe by getting together in person and going out for coffee, if they live somewhere close to you.