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In principle you're right, the cost of publishing is decreasing, which increases the garbage out there. But I think there's a tipping point when the cost of an
by FinnLobsien 1y ago
In principle you're right, the cost of publishing is decreasing, which increases the garbage out there.
But I think there's a tipping point when the cost of anything hits (basically) zero, as content creation has with the advent of LLMs. Previously, someone had to at least sit down to write the garbage ebooks.
- mistrial9 1y agoAunt Sally writing a book in her kitchen is not the same as automated publishing using scripts and bots. The ability of machines to generate content is not at all similar to real human authors. Those familiar with online commerce just want to fill pipes with content, and machines can make that content. It is a question of scale, speed and the nature of the material. This is not at all a stable situation IMHO as the larger trends are clear.
- FinnLobsien 1y agoYes, I mean that's true. But the idea that Aunt Sally writes a Kindle ebook in her kitchen is idealizing the self-publishing world. Even human writing for Kindle eBooks was mostly not Aunt Sally's passion project, but someone who hired an overseas writer for a short ebook on whatever topic is popular in SEO. Yes, LLMs supercharge that and set the cost of creation to zero, so it's a different ball game. But even before that, self-published ebooks were largely garbage by marketers.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoLike with email (or SMS, now) spam. The model is basically “arbitrage.” Produce a huge amount of crud, making only fractions of a penny, but there’s so much of it, the pennies add up. This is the kind of thing that can be addressed by well-enforced legislation, but, for some reason, that legislation (or enforcement) never seems to happen. I’m sure that has nothing at all to do with politicians, using the same techniques, to push their own agenda.
- FinnLobsien 1y agowell one of the problems of legislating against these things is that legislation is never global, so as long as there's money to be made, someone, somewhere (where the laws don't exist or aren't enforced) will do it. Also, how would you address LLM writing with legislation?
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoWriting couldn’t be addressed, but distribution could. Same as with spam email.
- guerrilla 1y ago*cost ignoring externalities, that is.
- FinnLobsien 1y agocost to the producer I guess