3 ms·

Why wouldn’t people read it? The problem is not writing - the problem is finding an audience. Yes, AI means there are more poor works competing. But if it’s act

Why wouldn’t people read it? The problem is not writing - the problem is finding an audience. Yes, AI means there are more poor works competing. But if it’s actually good writing, you will find an audience if you market the book. Pay an editor. Publish to kindle. Pay for marketing. Get people to sign up for an email list.

lacewing 5mo ago
> Why wouldn’t people read it? The problem is not writing - the problem is finding an audience. And that's precisely the issue here. For a while, the internet allowed you to find an audience, just like that. Start a blog / podcast / YT channel, keep going, get enough attention. You could then approach a traditional publisher and tell them "hey, I'm kind of a big deal", or you could self-publish and rely on the word-of-mouth from your followers. Now, how would that work? If you have a blog, AI answers will summarize it without attribution and not send anyone your way. Even the "references" cited in AI answers often point to AI-slop blogs, not the original source. The articles we discuss on HN are often AI-written too. So yeah, it's about reaching the audience, but you're now competing with machines that produce an endless stream of human-like text, good enough for most consumers, practically for free.
- saaaaaam 5mo ago
  Word of mouth is not marketing. The way you find the audience is by marketing. Paying to get in front of people. Targeting people who read similar books. Getting people who already have audiences to review your book or interview you. A book won’t sell itself. Which addresses your second point: machines can produce an endless stream of human-like text, but they have exactly the same problem as human generated text: finding an audience. How are these endless streams of human-like text finding an audience? Most of the time they are not. And as soon as you scratch beneath the surface there is no one to interview. No one to turn up at literary festivals. No one to write opinion pieces or blog pieces for book-interested audiences. As I said: writing isn’t the problem. Finding the audience is the problem. What distinguishes a book that is read by no one from a book that is read by a bunch of people? It’s definitely not the writing. There are great books out there that never find an audience because no one ever went out there to find an audience for those books.
  - camdenreslink 5mo ago
    The low budget marketing channels that worked in the past are harder in this post-LLM world. SEO seems to have changed a lot, email marketing now involves trying to escape the Promotions tab, organic social media marketing is much harder too (I suspect the large social networks want you to buy ads, not get organic reach as a person/business promoting a product or service). Marketing something like a self published book online has changed dramatically.
  - mocpocalypse 5mo ago
    [dead]
jdw64 5mo ago
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ishouldstayaway 5mo ago
> The problem is not writing - the problem is finding an audience. You are literally responding to > I really don't know if it'll have an audience
- red-iron-pine 5mo ago
  the problem is finding an audience with reading comprehension
  - ishouldstayaway 5mo ago
    You're telling me.
  - saaaaaam 5mo ago
    Indeed! It appears the person you are responding to skipped over a bunch of stuff and so missed my response which was “you need to market your book, not just write it”.
    - mihaic 5mo ago
      Sure, I've been a start-up founder before, I know the trap of "if you build it, they will come". It's just that AI is evolving so fast that book do seem like the market for vinyl (as the article said). No amount of marketing can help you out is your entire market is shrinking daily. Shriking markets are also not won by quality. The more competition, the more marketing then becomes the main thing, and you also need to alter the book in the process so that it fits the bite-sized pills you can push on most channels, or worse change it so much for the audience until it becomes something else entirely.
      - mocpocalypse 5mo ago
        [dead]
- saaaaaam 5mo ago
  Yes. And my response was “market your book”.
mocpocalypse 5mo ago
[dead]

lacewing 5mo ago

> Why wouldn’t people read it? The problem is not writing - the problem is finding an audience. And that's precisely the issue here. For a while, the internet allowed you to find an audience, just like that. Start a blog / podcast / YT channel, keep going, get enough attention. You could then approach a traditional publisher and tell them "hey, I'm kind of a big deal", or you could self-publish and rely on the word-of-mouth from your followers. Now, how would that work? If you have a blog, AI answers will summarize it without attribution and not send anyone your way. Even the "references" cited in AI answers often point to AI-slop blogs, not the original source. The articles we discuss on HN are often AI-written too. So yeah, it's about reaching the audience, but you're now competing with machines that produce an endless stream of human-like text, good enough for most consumers, practically for free.

saaaaaam 5mo ago
Word of mouth is not marketing. The way you find the audience is by marketing. Paying to get in front of people. Targeting people who read similar books. Getting people who already have audiences to review your book or interview you. A book won’t sell itself. Which addresses your second point: machines can produce an endless stream of human-like text, but they have exactly the same problem as human generated text: finding an audience. How are these endless streams of human-like text finding an audience? Most of the time they are not. And as soon as you scratch beneath the surface there is no one to interview. No one to turn up at literary festivals. No one to write opinion pieces or blog pieces for book-interested audiences. As I said: writing isn’t the problem. Finding the audience is the problem. What distinguishes a book that is read by no one from a book that is read by a bunch of people? It’s definitely not the writing. There are great books out there that never find an audience because no one ever went out there to find an audience for those books.
- camdenreslink 5mo ago
  The low budget marketing channels that worked in the past are harder in this post-LLM world. SEO seems to have changed a lot, email marketing now involves trying to escape the Promotions tab, organic social media marketing is much harder too (I suspect the large social networks want you to buy ads, not get organic reach as a person/business promoting a product or service). Marketing something like a self published book online has changed dramatically.
- mocpocalypse 5mo ago
  [dead]

jdw64 5mo ago

[dead]

ishouldstayaway 5mo ago

> The problem is not writing - the problem is finding an audience. You are literally responding to > I really don't know if it'll have an audience

red-iron-pine 5mo ago
the problem is finding an audience with reading comprehension
- ishouldstayaway 5mo ago
  You're telling me.
- saaaaaam 5mo ago
  Indeed! It appears the person you are responding to skipped over a bunch of stuff and so missed my response which was “you need to market your book, not just write it”.
  - mihaic 5mo ago
    Sure, I've been a start-up founder before, I know the trap of "if you build it, they will come". It's just that AI is evolving so fast that book do seem like the market for vinyl (as the article said). No amount of marketing can help you out is your entire market is shrinking daily. Shriking markets are also not won by quality. The more competition, the more marketing then becomes the main thing, and you also need to alter the book in the process so that it fits the bite-sized pills you can push on most channels, or worse change it so much for the audience until it becomes something else entirely.
    - mocpocalypse 5mo ago
      [dead]
saaaaaam 5mo ago
Yes. And my response was “market your book”.

mocpocalypse 5mo ago

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