Former editor & publisher at several houses, opiner on books, publishing, etc. Author of WHAT EDITORS DO. Mainly posting at https://xitter.cf/t.co/symkhdRkO0
New York, NY
Joined March 2009
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Peter Ginna retweeted
Congratulations are in order for Joseph Earl Thomas (@jetvgc), author of GOD BLESS YOU, OTIS SPUNKMEYER, and winner of The Center for Fiction’s 2024 First Novel Prize!
Peter Ginna retweeted
Internationally acclaimed drone pilot @HamptonsDrone shared this INCREDIBLE aerial compilation of ocean side and marine life in Hamptons, NY USA.
Enjoy the show the humpback whales, spinner sharks, bottlenose dolphins, bluefin tuna, cownose rays, bluefish and menhaden bait fish put on for the drone! #unitedbydrone 🐋
Watch the full video → bit.ly/3OtZJ7e
10/ Final thought: “Disruption” hype aside, if self-pub/vanity mills & content farmers (see Slate article in TL) spew ever more low-quality books into the marketplace, it will only increase the value of established publishers who curate with taste & knowledge of audiences.
9/ E.g. I wouldn’t trust AI yet to copy edit a book, or proofread w/out a human check. But it might be able to pull metadata tags for online marketing, a low-level but valuable task.
8/ I believe AI brings serious threats to creative workers but it also holds some promise for publishers & authors. If it can (eventually) do some of the marketing grunt work, that’s good, bc there are never enough ppl/$$/hours in the day for publishers to do everything they cd.
7/ All publishers are always looking for ways to cut costs in a low margin business. Spines may just be on the leading edge of this development.
6/ Commenters fret that Spines’ model of using AI for proofreading/design/marketing functions will displace humans doing their jobs. But that is, frankly, likely to happen all across the industry if/when bots can do those jobs as well (or nearly as well) as ppl, because
5/ BTW, Spines’ promised 2-3 week MS to book time is not that much faster than existing services like Amazon KDP, Ingram Spark et al, but is a lot more expensive than doing it yourself and comparable to hiring those services yourself. Also quite possibly lower quality.
4/ There’s no mention of them making any effort to select—or to market—what they publish. Their speed of MS to book is another sign they are not competing with real publishers, because marketing any book properly requires months, not weeks, of effort BEFORE books go on sale.
3/Spines claim not to be a vanity publisher but that’s basically what they are. Their CEO says publishing a book is “a self-branding process.… most people publish a book, not because they want to make a living from that. It’s their hobby.”
2/The “disruption” comes from cost savings on those services and supposedly reducing manuscript-to-book time to “2-3 weeks.”
1/ They are not proposing to have
#AI *write* books. Gnashing of teeth on that account is misplaced. They *are* planning to have AI do “proofreading, cover design, metadata optimisation and limited translation services.”
Key things to observe about this week’s so-called “disruptor” of #publishing using #AI, Spines.
A 🧵
#writing #editing
thebookseller.com/news/new-p…
2 stories this week that highlight the rising tide of junk
#publishing
enabled by online platforms, accelerated even more by the use of #AI. Here's one 👇
#editing #writing
thebookseller.com/news/new-p…
Peter Ginna retweeted
Every single Institution failed. Kind of incredible when you think about it, but don't think about it too hard
xitter.cf/MacFarlaneNews/status/…
ALERT: Special Counsel Jack Smith also files to dismiss his appeal in Trump's classified documents criminal case
storage.courtlistener.com/re…