Blog

NOTE: Happy opening day for the NY Mets to all who celebrate! LFG!

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AI and Publishing: FAQ for Writers | Jane Friedman

If you primarily learn about generative AI and large language models from social media, or from the opinions of average people, then it’s likely you are misinformed about it. The majority of what I encounter on a daily basis in online forums is outright false. Even agents and editors get basic things wrong about the law surrounding AI.

Friedman is far more tolerant of authors and AI shenanigans than I am, but she’s one of the very few people I trust to offer level-headed insights on divisive industry issues like AI’s impact on publishing. Her unique combination of extraordinary patience, keen appreciation of nuance, and continued engagement with the industry from various angles ensures she’s never in a rush to be first, and her perspective is never skewed by undisclosed conflicts. She’s always been more interested in being thorough and helpful, the stable foundation of her work over the nearly twenty years (?!?) that I’ve known her.

This FAQ is yet another one of her excellent and generous free resources, and it pairs well with her coverage of the Shy Girl shitshow that’s still unfolding as I write this: “Even if against AI, no one working as a publishing professional can afford to remain ignorant of its capabilities…” (gift link)

That’s from the latest issue of The Bottom Line, her paid weekly newsletter, which I wholeheartedly recommend to anyone with the slightest interest in understanding the modern book publishing industry.

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Franchise Architecture in the Age of Generative Systems | Jeff Gomez

The more expansive the generative engine, the more essential the mythic framework guiding it. AI can recombine patterns. It can simulate style and extrapolate arcs. It cannot independently determine what must remain sacred within a world. It does not instinctively know which philosophical pillars hold a universe together. It does not understand which narrative boundaries protect emotional continuity. It cannot assess when variation strengthens mythology versus when it destabilizes it. Those decisions remain architectural.

As I’ve said many times before, “I am not ‘anti-AI’… I am pro-craft,” so I agree with Friedman that no one can be willfully ignorant about what “AI” can and can’t actually do. While I continue to draw the line at using AI tools myself, I still actively seek out informed insights — pros and cons — to update and refine my own stance as things evolve. Other than the goal posts constantly shifting, nothing’s changed my mind about my own avoidance of AI tools, and I’ve yet to come across any compelling industry-wide applications that offer more than marginal short-term improvements while the myriad short and long-term costs are becoming clearer.

That said, if there’s someone who might convince me to consider a compelling AI use case, it’s Gomez — the godfather of transmedia himself — proposing what sounds like technical infrastructure for supporting organic emergent narratives. As one of the core elements that made Football Manager one of the best RPGs ever, it’s the rare idea I can potentially wrap my head around as a legit (if ambitious) use case that builds on what already exists, and clearly codifies the human-driven craft required to make it possible. Still not worth burning the planet down for, but I suspect his underlying approach doesn’t actually require that kind of scale.

Related-ish, I just read The 10 Commandments of Successful Corporate Narratives, Alan Berkson’s corporate spinoff of Gomez’s transmedia principles that he first delivered at the first and only StoryWorld Conference back in 2011 — which I’d conceived and was preparing to launch as our next big event before I left Digital Book World earlier that year. Arguably the biggest door that slid for me that year.

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Workers who love ‘synergizing paradigms’ might be bad at their jobs | Kate Blackwood

Essentially, the employees most excited and inspired by ‘visionary’ corporate jargon may be the least equipped to make effective, practical business decisions for their companies.

This study isn’t about AI hype, but it easily could be, as the latest form of “corporate BS” to go viral. The Venn diagram of people who swear AI makes them more efficient/creative/interesting and those who are demonstrably bad at their jobs is nearly a perfect circle.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “culture fit” lately, a concept I generally despise because it’s almost always top-down and exclusionary, even with the best of intentions. My personal resistance to “AI all the things!” is particularly challenging because it’s becoming nearly impossible to avoid, and SO MANY companies are centering it in jobs I might otherwise be interested in, albeit often as vaguely as possible.

I’ve always been more likely to call someone on their BS than play the corporate BS game, and most of my bosses over the years have generally appreciated that. ChatGPT won’t tell you when your idea is bad, but I always will — and I’ll be able to explain why with as much, or little, corporate jargon as you need.

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Episode 297: Absolute Reimagining of DC Comics | Imaginary Worlds

We are constantly changing our business practices around these comics at this point in terms of keeping issues in print, normally a monthly comic comes out and it disappears within a month in favor of the next one. We’ve just gone back to press on the first 14 issues of Absolute Batman when there are only 17 issues. So they’re all permanently available now in a way that has required sort of DC as a company to think differently.

I haven’t been tempted to read a new DC or Marvel series in years, finally accepting that I haven’t been their target audience for a  very long time. I also don’t do floppies, so I rarely visit our local comics shop, and I rarely browse the couple of cramped shelves dedicated to them at my local B&N.

Other than Batman, I was always more of a Marvel fan in the past, but neither the Ultimate line nor New 52 worked for me, so I wasn’t initially tempted by Absolute Batman — partly because I didn’t know much about it beyond it was edgy and Batman looked like Bane. Although Batman will always be intriguing, I’m actually more interested in the new Martian Manhunter and Wonder Woman…

Coincidentally, Molinsky’s podcast was my gateway into Warhammer 40k a few years ago, and with this episode, he may have sold me on giving the Absolute line a shot, too. Not enough to buy the floppies, but it might be time for a trip to the library when the collected editions are available!

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Get weird again | Sara Wachter-Boettcher

But when we let ourselves be weirder and wilder with our skills—when we reclaim those skills for ourselves, and not just for our career progression—I think some important things can happen. We can start to remember why we value our skills—even if our companies don’t.

While this is about UX, I think it will resonate with anyone whose work straddles a line between the creative and corporate. My blogging over the past several years, anchored by this pseudo-newsletter, has definitely erred on the side of keeping it reasonably professional rather than indulging in the weird. That friction has been particularly notable the past few months as my professional life got (and remains) a different kind of weird, and I frequently struggled with writing anything at all.

Over the years, this blog has been everything from a personal journal and a comics reviews site, to “professional” commentary on various industry issues related to my day jobs, to… a kind of weird combination of all three?

Unofficially being on the job market for the first time in almost 10 years probably isn’t the best time to get weird on main, or maybe it is? What would “weird” even look like for me at this point in my life? What do I want to do when I grow up? Am I having a midlife crisis?!?

To be continued…

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