The first story is a reminder of that old adage about today’s news being tomorrow’s chip paper (something I realize only those of us of a certain age will get). I don’t normally give the time of day to something I come across as a piece of advertorial. But this caught my eye because it threw me back to a different time.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
Written, which I believe has crossed my editorial path previously, is a new platform that seeks to tap into the self-publishing 3.0 model that offers writers the chance to sell digital products directly to readers. And it does so through yesteryear’s hype model: blockchain. It’s a reminder both that new technologies can fall out of fashion as quickly as they fell in, and that once the hype cycle has run its course, there may still be something remaining that captures the actual value of a technology—however much smaller it may be than the original puff pieces suggested.
In the case of Written and blockchain, the use of smart contracts enables writers to retain control of the sale and resale of a book (and take a portion of the resale value). It also enables readers to actually own rather than merely license digital products. Whether there really is a future for blockchain in the book world remains to be seen—but it’s still with us.
Writers’ Survey Shows Rising AI Adoption
Which is a perfect landscape against which to view yet another survey on writers’ opinions about AI. That survey, from Gotham Ghostwriters, took the temperature among nearly 1,500 writers. Significantly, only around a fifth of them were fiction writers, which may explain the high level of concern (90 percent) among AI users about hallucination. Overall, 61 percent of the writers surveyed said they used AI (falling to 42 percent among fiction writers).
In a clear indication of what the survey conductors were trying to uncover, three-quarters of that 61 percent said they found AI made them more productive. And in a quite staggering figure that feels like it needs comment and further investigation, AI users reported earning $47,000 more per year than their counterparts.
I suggest reading the survey in full—Publishers Weekly has a good summary—but what it clearly shows is that, despite the many “pros and cons,” some signs of polarization are beginning to emerge.
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