[DIGEST] Cyborgs vs scabs

Your weekly stackable roundup

February 17, 2024

Hi friends,

With our Future of Publishing Mastermind kicking off at the end of the month, I’ve been thinking a lot about AI and specifically our relationship with it.

Talking with a lot of creatives brought me to one overall conclusion.

I am generally pro-AI when it makes you a cyborg and anti-AI when it makes you a scab.

What does that mean?

If you are a writer and you want to use AI to help augment, improve, or speed along your process, that makes you a cyborg. Approved.

If you are using AI to do tedious work you would already do anyway, that makes you a cyborg. Approved. 

If you’re a writer who has never picked up a pen, and you are using AI to create imagery when you would otherwise have to hire an artist, that makes AI a scab undercutting a human doing the work. Not approved.

Are you an artist who can’t write your way out of a paper bag, and uses AI to write a story when you would have to hire a writer? That makes AI a scab taking money from a human. Not approved.

This is a tricky line, though, and I’m constantly wrestling with it in my businesses. After all, I hire international artists who work for less than US-based artists. Does that make me, or them, a scab?

We are quick to think anything we already do is okay, but have I really drawn a reasonable line? What if I’m taking money from a VA by automating my tasks, even though I would normally do them myself?

What does that make me, then? I don’t know.

This also doesn’t deal with the huge problem of AI models stealing copywritten work to build their model, and taking money from creatives to feed the gears of capitalism.

I want to be able to protest against AI in those cases, but the genie is already out of the bottle, and at this point, you’ll probably be left behind at an ever-increasing rate if you don’t at least consider integrating it into your practice.

There has been an ever-present friction between creators and tech since the beginning. Facebook built itself on the backs of creators and then shut us out of our own audiences. Other platforms saw how well it worked and copied them en masse.

That said, we still use social media even though it destroyed a lot of lives, so I built this modality assuming I would have no choice but to live in a world where AI is ever-present and ubiquitous.

Now that productivity has started to plateau for businesses, the only way to extract more stockholder value at this point is to augment human productivity with AI. Since our entire economic system is based on line going up forever, I don’t see how anyone can put the brakes on this thing.

In capitalism, we all have to eat our values to eat at all, and I’ve drawn my line taking into account how much I’m willing to winnow away my ideals without losing myself in the process.

I won’t vilify anyone who makes different choices, though. It’s not their fault they live in a terrible system that forces them to constantly eat their values to get ahead. We all have to make compromises, but in my own practice, that is how I view my relationship with AI.

brown artificial hand

If you want to share how you are doing this week, then there are two ways to interact with this post.

1 - If you don’t want to say anything, or bristle at identifying yourself, then you can reply with this nifty poll.

2 - If you’re feeling very brave, then reply below and tell us how you are doing right now on a scale from 1-5.

I’m finally on beta blockers after a year of having sinus tachycardia brought on by my long COVID. It has been a nightmare of a year jumping through hoops first to get diagnosed, then to get tested, and finally to get the prescription. I’m still shaky, but it seems to already be working, at least somewhat. Still a 3…but with a bit of hope finally.

WHAT WE WROTE ON SUBSTACK: This week I showed you how to build a basic, beautiful one-page author website.

Two bonuses this week, one interview and one article. The article is one I wrote for all about how to build a transmedia practice even if you aren’t a NYT bestselling author.

Finally, a new interview was released this week by the legendary wherein I talk about all sorts of interesting bits, like how my bunny always loved my wife more than me, even though I was the one who saved it from being eaten by a snake.

I didn’t make it to small towns very often. Most of my work centered on major cities and their surrounding suburbs. Every now and again, an object or potion led me to one of the world’s smaller towns, and Plockton was one of the smallest I had been to in recent memory.

One thing about small towns that was consistent across my experience was that there was a dearth of monsters and magical people in them since it was easier to blend in with the milieu in denser populations. Plockton was different in that respect. It was overrun with monsters everywhere I looked. You could toss a rock from one side of the city to another without much effort, but you would certainly hit some monster or another with it.

We walked down the town’s main and only street until we found a pub called The Seamus in the town square, just like Mom said it would be, sitting on an unassuming corner. The Seamus might have been impressive by small-town Scotland standards, but wasn’t much more than a two-bit saloon in Los Angeles. Fewer than a dozen monsters speckled the bar, all drinking by themselves, staring off in silence.

“That him?” Blezor asked, whispering to me.

“Unclear,” I replied.

“What can I get you?” A brightly-colored demon said, wiping down the end of the bar. Most demons were a dull red, orange, or burnt yellow. However, this one shimmered like a diamond. I could see what my mother saw in him, I guess. If I were to picture an angel with a demon, he would be the type I would imagine them with—also, gross.

“Ummm…I’m looking for The Bar?” I said.

“You found it,” the bartender replied. “Unless you think all this liquor is just for show.”

All chapters of The Godsverse Chronicles are now free for all subscribers. You can read the whole series from the beginning right here.

You still only get access to a bunch of free books and stories from my back catalog by becoming a paid member. You can start your membership with a 7-day free trial.

UPCOMING ARTICLE: Next week I talk about why and how I fell back in love with advertising.

As a person who specializes in author growth, especially the type of free, viral growth that doesn’t cost a lot of money, I have a confession to make.

I’m tired. I’m tired of showing up on social media. I’m tired of constantly coordinating collaborations. I’m tired of spending all my time and energy thinking about how to get the next subscriber to fall in love with my publication. All of it takes up valuable energy that I could spend on writing or recovering.

Which is why I fell back in love with advertising in 2023.

Cards on the table, I’ve always run ads for other people, but last year I fell back in love with spending money on advertising for myself…and since I did I’ve seen my subscriber number go up every single day.

It’s not that I didn’t get a lot out of our advertising when I did it. I just started producing upwards of a book a month and didn’t have the funds to advertise and produce at the same time, so I chose to spend my time producing my work and launching it to my audience.

ROUNDUP: Here are some of my favorite articles of the week.

Business-y:

Publishing-like:

Culture-ish:

Find anything you loved enough to swoon over or hated enough to make your blood boil? Let me know.

If you like what I’m doing around here and want to check out the archives, you can do that with a 7-day free trial, or simply go straight to being a paid subscriber. You also get access to my YA alien invasion book, Invasion.

Aliens are invading. The Earth is doomed. The end of the world is a bad time to fall in love.

Joshy is a normal kid from an average town suffering through a mediocre road trip with his family. He's positive this vacation will be just as bland and uninteresting as every one that came before it.

Then he meets Debra. She's everything he's ever wanted in a girl. She's smart, funny, and radiant. They love all the same things, right down to the same obscure comic books. There's a definite spark between them.

Literally.

The moment they finally kiss, a bolt of electricity from Debra's mouth knocks Joshy unconscious. He wakes up to a shocking truth.

Debra is an alien. Worse yet, another race called the Globorians are about to invade Earth and enslave all of humanity. Now, Joshy and Debra must race against time to stop the Globorian plot and save the planet before it's too late.

Paid members can access the entire archive of this series from the beginning, along with other series and every article I’ve ever written.

If you are not a paid member, you can read everything with a 7-day free trial, or give us a one-time tip.