If, like Balzac and Zola, you write a lot, often and for a long time, in short, if you are a convict of the pen, and in addition you publish your works on Amazon, know that the Seattle firm has made a decision which could directly impact your turnover.
Amazon now limits the number of self-publications you can upload to three per day. Obviously, no normally constituted human being is capable of such literary output. The productivity record in this area is held by Ryoki Inoue, who totals 1075 publications in 37 years of activity. The company imposes this restriction because it has been swamped with books and comments written by artificial intelligence for several months.
Kindle Direct Publishing is a platform that, since 2015, has offered authors “ become their own publisher, earn more by collecting royalties of up to 70% of sales.” The advent of generative AI and the ability it gives to create content very quickly and with very little effort has gave the idea to certain Internet users to take advantage of the system and to flood readers with books written by or with the help of artificial intelligence.
Amazon imposes publication limit to stem the flow of AI-generated books
Amazon claims on the Kindle Direct Publishing forum that this measure is above all preventive. For now, the company is “actively monitoring the rapid evolution of generative AI and its impact.” According to her, “very few publishers will be affected by this change”. Moreover, “authors and publishers will also have the possibility of requesting an exception to the rule.”
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This restriction comes with the authors and publishers of theobligation to declare when their content is generated by AI. That said, according to Miriam Johnson, interviewed by The Guardian newspaper, it is not certain that these measures will have any effect. The expert is certain, “changing the rule will probably not change the situation […] Those who make money by flooding the market with AI-generated books and publishing more than three per day will find a way around the problem “.