Grousing about Smart Software: Yeah, That Will Work
December 6, 2024
This is the work of a dinobaby. Smart software helps me with art, but the actual writing? Just me and my keyboard.
I read “Writers Condemn Startup’s Plans to Publish 8,000 Books Next Year Using AI.” The innovator is an outfit called Spines. Cute, book spines and not mixed up with spiny mice or spiny rats.
The write up reports:
Spines – which secured $16m in a recent funding round – says that authors will retain 100% of their royalties. Co-founder Yehuda Niv, who previously ran a publisher and publishing services business in Israel, claimed that the company “isn’t self-publishing” or a vanity publisher but a “publishing platform”.
A platform, not a publisher. The difference is important because venture types don’t pump cash into traditional publishing companies in my experience.
The article identified another key differentiator for Spines:
Spines says it will reduce the time it takes to publish a book to two to three weeks.
When publishers with whom I worked talked about time, the units were months. In one case, it was more than a year. When I was writing books, the subject matter changed on a slightly different time scale. Traditional publishers do not zip along with the snappiness of a two year old French bulldog.
Spines is quoted in the write up as saying:
[We are] levelling the playing field for any person who aspires to be an author to get published within less than three weeks and at a fraction of the cost. Our goal is to help one million authors to publish their books using technology….”
Yep, technology. Is that a core competency of big time publishers?
Several observations from my dinobaby-friendly lair:
- If Spines works — that is, makes lots of money — a traditional publisher will probably buy the company and sue any entity which impinges on its “original” ideas.
- Costs for instant publishing on Amazon remain more attractive. The fees are based on delivery of digital content and royalties assessed. Spines may have to spend money to find writers able to pay the company to do the cover, set up, design, etc.
- Connecting agentic AI into a Spines-type service may be interesting to some.
Stephen E Arnold, December 6, 2024
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