The AI Petition - 70 Authors just BEGGED the Big 5 to Stop using AI - Why Apathy is the Way and AI must be Side-Lined & Hard Work is the Way
An attack against the using of AI
When Anger doesn’t Work, Beg…
Something has happened…. yeah okay that much is plainly obvious to anyone with a brain, as there’s always something happening. That something though is that a group of almost 70 authors have gotten together to do something totally expected; beg the big 5 Publishers not to use AI.
You can find the report here; https://www.npr.org/2025/06/28/nx-s1-5449166/authors-publishers-ai-letter
I’m sure some such as
who is leading the charge against AI usage by authors will be pleased. There’s good reason to resist the usage of AI outside of for book-covers or audio clean up or video-development as it isn’t good for anything outside these things.The trouble is that writers in general have a shit understanding of technology, and how it operates. AI is not a threat to any serious author worth his or her salt. Could an AI write half or a quarter as well as say
, or myself? Of course not. It is preposterous to think so.And yet there are authors who are firmly convinced that this isn’t the case and that we should all be hitting the ‘panic’ button. Naturally if you disagree with some people, the go to insult has been ‘you use AI’ which is totally irrational.
The solution to killing the AI trend is that which has always worked; apathy. Apathy will kill this thing faster than what people realize. The people who signed onto the 70 author petition though are bubble-brained. The reason this must be said is simple; people don’t buy books from Stephen King or something for any other reason than his name is on the logo.
But you see if someone forges his name onto a book what is all King has to do to kill it? Announce its a fake and it will likely die not long thereafter. So these bestseller writers hold all the cards.
Certainly they can’t stop the companies from using their books as training manuals for AI, but what they can do is kill the companies’ capacities for publishing in their names. Not only that they can take ownership of future books of theirs, unionize/go Indie and bring many of the Big 5 to their knees.
The ‘Big' 5 are at their most vulnerable for the first time in history as Indies as proven by
has proven with various pieces of data, citations and sources have devoured ever more of the market-pie so to speak. What is more is that the main thing propping up the Big 5 are the Classics and big names, so that you take one away and their likely to have a seismic collapse.I know some will propose that since a lot of these big names were astro-turfed to their present level of popularity won’t the Big 5 just go full AI, and astro-turf a made-up author to such a high place and push it forward. Of course they will, and of course they’ll push forward these ‘fake authors’ and there’ll be nothing we can on the surface do about this.
Arguably they’ve done this before. They astro-turfed the likes of Rowling, Martin, King and many others to their present popularity while other authors such as Crichten, Follett, Tolkien, Howard and so on had to struggle to gain popularity. Some with greater and others with slightly less mainstream attention.
The media’s ability to astro-turf things shouldn’t concern we authors and artists. Why? Because it doesn’t matter.
If you’re truly invested in your craft you’ll keep plugging away at your writing and leave the AI to others to worry about. I’m not saying you shouldn’t care about the usage of it. I’m arguing for the same ideals that Miyamoto Musashi advocated for in his magnificent Go Rin no Sho, which is to say practicing 1000 sword slashes until you’ve perfected it.
Keep writing until you’ve mastered your craft. We are basically mountain-ascetics there’s no getting around it, you have to embrace and love your destiny and keep scaling the mountain before us. Nothing we can do about it, save try to avoid the climb and try to master and perfect our art.
We can only improve and improve and improve.
Leave the worrying over AI nonsense to others. It isn’t worth any additional stress, precisely because the cause for concern doesn’t really matter. There’ll be no Skynet. There is no master-Shakespeare AI and there will probably never be one. What AI will be churning out will be more of the present slop that dominates the market.
I’d argue it has already been used for a number of years, if one looks at what’s been pumped out since covid, so that it is hard to care one iota. People want authentic work, and so long as Old Pub continues to push forward AI slop they’ll become steadily more ‘Dead Pub’.
So rather than wielding their big names against the Big 5, these ‘petitioners’ would rather already surrender and beg. Because of this they’ve forfeited what edges they have and are already perceived as weak (because they are), by the Big 5. Who will just continue to use AI for slop stories, and you know what? Fine. These writers are afraid of a machine that honestly will never compete with them.
Like a feline they’ve shown their belly when they ought to have kept it covered up.
AI can only replace the lesser writers out there. It can’t replace the talented or those already stably in place with a decent following.
How To Fight AI?
How to fight it? Simple as said practice a ton, and also keep writing and keep pouring your soul into it. That’s all there is to it.
But do not get angry, do not panic and certainly do not go pouring any more time and energy on things that are inconsequential to your Craft if you’re a writer. Why? Simple; the industry wants you to waste your precious time on slop like this, as do the big name authors. Few if any of them are loyal to their fellow writers, so that one must treat their objection with little interest.
Dead Pub will do what Dead Pub does.
Big names will do what they do, until they finally die and people stop reading them entirely. Few if any of them will actually have any lasting impact and it is important not to get caught up in their nonsensical drama.
AI is a fad. It’ll fade. It isn’t good enough to compete, and so only the talentless will rely on it for the most part and if you keep your nose clean, it shouldn’t matter to you. So fight on, keep marketing your books, keep fighting the good fight and you’ll make it.
All these pictures were drawn by hand. Perfectly crafted by Inoue Takehiko, with the story by Yoshikawa Eiji and the historic tale of the legendary Sword-Saint in mind.
If we compare those screaming for and against AI to Denshichiro all I can wonder is; ‘Why are you yelling like that? Is that how you should be swinging your sword?’
Musashi is right. Treat your art like it’s sacred and all will begin to flow naturally. Panic about things you cannot control such as AI and you’ll lose the flow, the control you must have over yourself.
Develop yourself, your philosophy, your relationship with your readers. Pour your soul and love into them, into your projects and they’ll come. Scream madly and they’ll go elsewhere as all you’ll convince them of is that you’re batshit insane. Stress about what big corpos will do when you have them at your mercy as they depend on you for money and you’ll break your own legs. Those writers could bring the industry to its knees yet choose to beg because they are spiritually and artistically weak.
They depend on the Big 5 for emotional and spiritual support. They cannot understand that the Big 5 are not important. Readers and the Art are.
You must have a strong stomach, you must continue swinging your proverbial sword and you mustn’t worry about nonsense like automatic word generators like AI. If you live in fear of it, I hate to say it but it will show in your writing.
If you live in fear, your mind will become paralyzed. So unshackle it, free it and focus on your craft. Write. Write. Write.
This is how you fight it, and with networking and building up your audience. Readers like authenticity and like people who are honest and earnest with them, they don’t like madmen.
So model yourself after Musashi in this scene; don’t yell, don’t shriek and don’t freak out. Denshichiro lost to Musashi precisely because he freaked out here, while Musashi won because he was cool, level-headed and stoic.
This is the key to success in all things in life, not just writing.
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Also Crown of Blood has a new edition, with maps, character bios and more!
 | A guest post by
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I agree that AI systems are going to break the modern publishing environment. I also think that 'human-made' productions are going to be valued more highly IF THEY'RE GOOD. There are a lot of trash writers out there who have been employed for far too long. What we're seeing is almost a return to pre-industrial creation, where those who create have to do so for its own sake rather than to make a buck... which often has led to greater creations built over longer periods.
The real risk of AI is not that it replaces human creators, but rather that it replaces human desires. I think it will have a significant and potentially catastrophic effect on human nature. I'm not worried that it will replace the heights of human ability; I am worried that it'll replace the desire of average people to ever look upwards.
AI will not devalue writing the same way photography did not devalue painting. What it will devalue are the many authors that only want to follow trends, that see their books as a checklist of tropes and clichés. So, the boring ones.
What I'm really worried about though, is what imact, if any, AI can have in the marketplace: Can we expect readers to move through piles of AI slop to find authors that aren't big names? Maybe this will bring back collections and anthologies, small names curated by big ones.