Is Your Work AI-Assisted, AI-Generated, or Neither?

AI is everywhere and relatively cheap right now. Since AI companies are losing money by the billions, I expect this to change as soon as enough people have become addicted to using it. However, in the meantime, places like Amazon are asking people to confess if they used AI-generated work in what they are self-publishing. The problem is that there are a lot of people who either blatantly lie about the origins of their work or they are blatantly ignorant about them. One example is the books by Special Fiction Books. I am going to believe that their statement, "We’ll be upfront about AI. We use it to help with our marketing, because no artist alive can draw the 50 unique ads we need every week. We don’t use it in our writing..." is simply a misunderstanding on their part (i.e., that they fall into the blatantly ignorant category). The clearly use AI to generate their covers, but I guess they can qualify that as "marketing" images. 

Then there are their books, which have a plot and are clearly very edited and not pure AI generation, but at the same time there are sections that are 100% AI-generated according to checkers, and which read 100% like pure AI-generated garbage. I have read two of these books now (the second one I clicked on as a recommended read and got into it before I realized). They both contained AI elements.

First off, you can only say that you do not use AI at all in your work if you wrote it on a typewriter or you wrote it in MS Word and didn't use its grammar check. If while typing on your typewriter, you happen to be at a hotel in Hawaii and you ask Google to tell you where the nearest Mexican restaurant is, you would be using AI, but not using it for your manuscript, so you can claim that your work is 100% human-generated. If you have the funds to go to a hotel in Hawaii to write, my question is why are you reading my blog? You clearly have made it as an author, unless you are in Hawaii because you are the CEO of some company, but you really want to be an author.

Right now, I am typing this into Blogger, and I have Grammarly's check turned on, so I am technically using AI to produce this blog post, even though I am not accepting all the changes Grammarly would like to make. (Disclosure: I frequently use Grammarly to check my work and have for most of my writing career.) AI-assisted writing, such as using spell checks, is often encouraged and used throughout the publishing industry, so it is unlikely you will get in trouble for neglecting to tell anyone you use it. It also won't drastically change your writing (although it is getting worse about that as AI "improves"). Just don't have it rewrite every sentence in its own voice. (Unless you are said CEO in the above paragraph and you need to write a business e-mail.) 

The grey area with AI-assisted writing is when you brainstorm with AI or you use AI to help you research. Both of these are extremely dangerous areas. I rarely use AI to do research unless I ask it a question and then click the links it provides to see what the truth is. If it only turns up suspicious links, I go back to just looking at the search results. I know it is much easier to read the AI answer at the top of the search engine and much more difficult to skip it, but AI has (frequently) given me fake or false answers. You have to modify and limit your search using special terms to prevent it from doing so, and then, you might not get anything back at all. I do also sometimes brainstorm with AI. If I am having difficulty with a chapter, I might ask DeepAI a question like, "Why would John leave Martha if he loved her?" Google sucks at writing anything creative in my opinion. DeepAI isn't great, but it is better in my opinion, and it's a small company, which I prefer. 

The problem with grey area assisting is that it is relatively easy to go from picking out the interesting reasons John would leave Martha and incorporating them into your book to cutting and pasting responses to questions like: "Tell me in 1000 words why John left Martha." If you are cutting and pasting or looking at what AI wrote while you are actively typing (as opposed to reading it, closing it, and then typing), you have moved into the realm of AI-generated work. If you allow Google to do your research and again use what Google (or whatever AI) tells you without fact-checking it, you also have moved into the realm of using generative AI because there is a chance AI hallucinated your answer.

So, that brings us to AI-generated work, which I use for my book covers (with heavy editing) and am experimenting with right now for writing. (Don't worry, I am only planning to use it on one book, and it is being thoroughly rewritten. I have enough ideas of my own; I don't need AI to help me write them at this point in time. I will let people know if that changes.) Most people who feel they need to use AI to generate their book and are satisfied with the garbage it pumps out have no clue about writing and probably don't read much either. Still, I come across these books all to often when I am reading. AI can't format a book properly. It does not understand paragraphs, and you have to give it specific instructions if you want it to write sentences and dialogue correctly. It doesn't understand and will never understand human emotion in a way it can replicate in-depth characterization. It can't create real suspense because its programming kind of prohibits it from doing so. If you can't write, fork over the excess cash and have a freelancer write it for you. (Just make sure you use a couple of AI checkers to make sure they aren't using AI to write.) If your writing registers as anything more than 30% AI-generated, do not expect to copyright it. AI-generated work can't be copyrighted. From 1-30% you fall in a legally ambiguous area because some people do write like AI after reading so much of it. (This is one of my biggest fears when I am reading other people's undisclosed AI-generated books.)

So, my experiment is that I gave AI a detailed prompt and asked it to write an 8000 word romance based on that prompt. Now, I am converting that into a 50,000-word book, and I am about halfway through. I am checking what I write with AI-checkers to make sure it comes back 100% human and I am not accidentally or subconsiously copying sentence structure or issues that AI writing has. I also did not divulge my full plotline to AI because I didn't want the AI to ruin it. I used a simple plotline: a male hairdresser who is harassed in a small town. The AI did surprisingly well with it, I think, but I will see when I release it what other people think. I plan to start posting information about some of my books on here soon because I would love your opinions about them. Still, even if I am transforming AI-generated work, either in my covers or in my writing, I disclose it. I disclose it to Amazon, to the people in my review groups on Goodreads, and on my copyright page. If you use generative AI, you should do this, too. If you don't drastically alter AI's work, you should also expect lower reviews, and some of those reviews will probably make the disclosure for you.

Finding A Voice Actor for Your Audio Book: Pros, Cons, and Methods

I stumbled across a YouTube video the other day that was posted under the title: Is ACX Royalty Share a good deal? Upon clicking play, the first word out of his mouth is "No!" Of course, he is trying to be funny and get people to watch his 20-minute video that is basically complaining about Royalty Share because the chances of voice actors getting enough money out of it are low. In his video, he only devotes 2 minutes to telling authors it is a bad deal for them, too, because only cruddy, new narrators will narrate a book for Royalty Share. 

If you've been following me for any time, you know that I have been a freelancer for a long time. I haven't been able to get a job since 2023 because, let's face it, AI-generated material may suck, but it is 100% cheaper than a freelancer at this time. I still occasionally put a bid in on something, but I am mostly focusing on my own books right now. That said, I know how hard it is to make a living as a freelancer--whether you are a writer, translator, or voice actor. I do understand where this guy is coming from as a voice actor, but he does a one-sided, one-argument video that is more of a rant than helpful information that will lead people to make informed decisions. I want to break down the pros and cons of ways to find and pay for narrators.

So, first off, narrating a book well takes a lot of time, effort, and patience. Unlike many freelance jobs, with voice acting, you can overwork your voice and lose it--causing you to be out of work while you rest it for a few days. That said, some of the things this guy was complaining about are universal to any freelancing job. When you are starting out (even if you are good and know what you are doing), you are going to have to take on jobs you are getting paid practically nothing for. The first book I freelanced (and I ended up doing 3 books for this guy), I did for $50. (My family, in the early years, said I was a writing prostitute because I would take so many low-paying jobs just to build my profile.) It took about a month to write because it was non-fiction. When it was still being published on Amazon, it had an average 4-star rating and 36 reviews total. Yeah, it did very well, and I got nothing for it. That said, I also did not have any of the risk or marketing costs. Publishing a book is always a risk. If you are an Indie author, you take on all the risk. The people you hire to edit/write/transform/translate/narrate your book do not have to put one penny of money into it. In most cases, they get paid whether or not you make any money off your adventure. 

Indie authors, as a general rule, do not have a big budget. They wrote a book because they were passionate about their project. They put it on Amazon, and now Amazon wants them to use AI to narrate it so Amazon can build its Audible platform--which happens to be trending right now. 

In general, taking the easiest and cheapest route by having AI convert your book is not going to give you a satisfactory result. Some people don't mind AI narration, but others do, so you will certainly get some negative comments on the narration because of it. However, if you wrote a really good book and this is basically your only option because you can't or don't want to try to figure out an entirely different platform, then I personally feel in the current book climate that having a book AI-narrated is better than not. The YouTuber proved that by managing to sell a book he wrote that was slapped together with his own bad, novice narration and still managing to make a few bucks off of it. At the same time, his completely cruddy product is now contributing to the market saturation with books that should have never been published and that take away profits from real authors. This guy obliviously doesn't realize he is part of the problem, though and encourages other voice actors to follow in his footsteps--instead of just taking a few Royalty Shares of real books!!! Sorry, but he really is a jerk, and he's so full of himself he has no problems creating a video where he literally coughs/complains about a hairball instead of cutting that? And I am supposed to believe his voice acting/editing is superb? But he has a boatload of followers, so who am I to judge his video-editing skills and scripting choices? Just please, if you are a voice actor, don't make a jank book just to "learn" your skills and then actually publish it. Just have a friend listen to it and delete it. Please.

So, after you make sure you have written a decent book, usually by getting reviews from people who don't know you and who you didn't pay, if AI is the only way you can get it narrated, I say go for it because you will get more sales if you do it. 

The next option is to follow the links to ACX and set up a book project that you narrate. WARNING: Once you choose to narrate the book yourself, you will not be able to hire anyone else without extensive discussions with customer service and deleting everything you've uploaded. This is where I am with some of my books, but I currently have 19. Unlike the guy in the video who can, based on his bragging, turn out about 1 hour of recorded work in less than 4 hours, it takes me about 40 hours to edit one hour of my work. I am getting faster, but it is another labor of love. I plan to talk about this experience in a different post, though, so that's all I am going to say beyond the fact that I have currently decided to self-narrate 4 of my books at this time. You will have to learn ACX's rules and follow them. You will have to download Audacity and will probably get Audacity 4 because that's the latest. You will have to learn it and deal with its stupid quirks. You will have to edit out every breath and word spoken too quietly. You will have to redo sections you stumble over, and you will need to make sure your microphone doesn't die. (Tip: Don't switch microphones in the middle of a book.) You will need to record in a relatively quiet place, among hundreds of other things. You might also want to learn more advanced sound editing skills. In short, this method is a pain in the clock, but beyond getting at least a good microphone headset, it shouldn't thin your pocketbook too much since all the software and YouTube training videos are free. (I don't recommend the guy above for advice. I do recommend videos by Gary Terzza and other people, who only post single how-to videos, like this guy who explains how to change a sampling rate correctly.)

Now, if you recognize that AI-generated voices are not the quality you want for your book and you don't have the patience/time/desire/ability (because let's be realistic, not everyone's God-given voice is good for narration), your only option is to hire someone else to do it. For those of you who don't know, I not only write, but I also have a degree in theater and regularly work with and know real professional voice actors. These are not, however, people you can hire because they work for companies like Disney, which pays way more than you would ever be able to and provides them (usually) with full sound studios. If your book is traditionally published, the publishing company will fork over the money for a real, professional voice actor. Those are the only voice actors worth the accolades and money the guy in the video thought he deserved because he wasn't a "novice." They and the teams they work with are completely amazing. That said, if you work with a traditional publishing company, you would be lucky to get any input into an Audible book they produce of your work. 

The next tier down from a real, professional voice actor is a professional freelancer. These people are truly doing this (or trying to do this) for a living because they haven't limited themselves to a risky platform like ACX. As usual, I recommend using one through Guru or Upwork and making use of their escrow systems, where you pay the platform upfront and then release to the freelancer at the end of the project or for milestones. On these platforms, you can see samples and feedback about the voice actors. You can also protect yourself and choose just how new of a freelancer you want to work with. However, you must always pay something out-of-pocket. At the same time, these people are professional freelancers working through a professional platform so they should deliver to you a fully completed product that meets ACX standards. (Make sure that information is in your post/contract.) You would still set the ACX book up as one of your own projects, but you will upload the files to ACX that you get from the freelancer. I don't recommend giving the freelancer the final payment until they are completely uploaded and accepted by ACX. You also need to make sure you enter the name of the voice actor as the voice actor wants you to enter it (and do not enter your own name in that box). You can get duds whenever hiring freelancers, but you can also get some amazing work that parallels professional, even with freelancers who have newer profiles (you shouldn't, however, have to pay as much for a person with a newer profile that you are taking a chance on). 

Finally, comes the ACX internal options for posting your project and hiring a freelancer. These, personally, suck, which is why they are the last on this post. Although I have pulled some books out of self-production to repost them for other freelance voice actors to comment on, I have not tried to pull it out of getting auditions to self-narrate it, so I do not know if that process is easy or difficult. There are three types of "contracts" you can offer narrators through ACX. (1) Royal Share--this means you don't pay the freelancer anything, but s/he gets 25% of the profits, and you get 25% of the profits. (This is the method the YouTuber doesn't like.) This is the best option for authors who are working with a narrator for the first time. (2) A per-hour-rate where, for every 1 hour of completed audio, you pay an agreed-upon rate. There are a lot of intricacies with this method, but it is what you would expect to get if you were hiring a freelancer from Guru or Upwork. (3) An upfront fee and Royalty Share. So the author not only gets a per-hour-rate (presumably lower than they would normally charge) but also gets a part of your royalties. This is the best deal for voice actors because they are not only guaranteed money up front but are also going to probably get some royalties for the rest of the book's publication run. 

The biggest problem with using voice actors on ACX is that there are no guarantees, really or protections. There is no feedback system that allows you to rate voice narrators, so you choose one relying only on the information they have fed to you about themselves and their past work. Don't just look at their ACX profile and think any information you see on it is 100% fact-checked true. You can listen to their samples, and I encourage you to do so, but you really have no idea if those are theirs unless you can get them to submit an "audition" where they are reading your work. There are two different ways to get freelancers to apply--you can post your book and search for auditions from anyone or you can post your book and send it to a specific person (that person does not necessarily need to submit an audition then.) I have done both, and I plan to make a post about that process.

Now, the guy in the video, when "researching" authors who had listed their books for Royalty Share auditions made a lot of misassumptions. First, print and e-books are really a completely different market from audiobooks, which can reach people with disabilities better than print versions. A sales rank on Amazon can be variable from day-to-day. You can also have a book that is a #1 seller in its category, but that doesn't translate into sales because the authors chose an obscure category just to hit number 1. The big thing is that book sales don't translate into audiobook sales. Book reviews are hard to get--I have documented giving away hundreds of books and only getting a couple of reviews. Some authors also have to print their books through Amazon and then spend time selling them in person or through IngramSpark or other platforms because of Amazon's limited distribution ability. What a voice actor needs to know is (1) is this author easy to work with and (2) is this author actively involved in marketing his/her books? Again, ACX makes this difficult because it doesn't have a rating system where voice actors can rate authors either. So how does a voice actor decide whether to take a chance with Royalty Share? The only real way to research an author is to look for his/her online presence. Authors who are actively promoting their books will have a recent, relatively public online presence that you should be able to find by typing in their name. (Unfortunately, authors cannot check voice actors this way because they could be good and still not have an online presence.)

Even riskier for authors, though, is ACX doesn't have any sort of payment or escrow system. Here is where Royalty Share not only benefits authors in that they don't have to fork over upfront money for a voice actor, but also there aren't any direct, offsite financial transactions that the authors have to be extremely careful about performing. Will you get a newer voice actor if you only find someone who will accept Royalty Share? Most likely. However, a newer voice actor is not necessarily a bad one. Experienced voice actors who want to make this option work for them will help promote the books they are working on--this means reading a little bit of the book before auditioning for it, so you can see if you think it is marketable and then marketing it a bit yourself on your social media. 

Per-hour book deals have to have the financials conducted off-site. Please only use known, secure methods of paying the voice actors if you choose to go this route. Make sure you have clearly outlined what they need to give you in exchange for what exact amount of money and how many payments you will make and when. Never give a freelancer all the money up front for a project. You should see results equal to the amount paid. I, however, am okay with an initial up front partial payment simply because the freelancer may have to purchase something or take some time off a paying job or whatever to get started. Plus, the freelancer must take a risk on you--that you will pay the rest of the money when it's time. If you don't, a first payment gives them something, at least for their work. 

As an author, a freelancer, and a theater insider, I would absolutely never do the Royalty Share Plus--which is a Royalty Share plus a per-hour rate. This is completely ridiculous for a no-name narrator who doesn't have to invest anything into the marketing of your book. This is the sort of contract that Bloomsbury Publishing would give Daniel Radcliffe to do the voice for the main character. It happens when you have a really famous voice actor, and you absolutely must have him/her to do the narration for your book. The only way I can see this working on ACX is if you have a book that you know will have a niche market, so you know it won't do very well sales-wise, and if the author gives you an extremely reduced rate (i.e. $50 per hour instead of $100 per hour). In this case, the book might do well in its niche, but you might not be able to find the niche to market an audiobook to, so both of you take on some of the risk. This method, however, runs the same risk as the regular pay-per-hour because you have to pay off platform. If you are going to do this method, try to arrange it so that, since you are doing Royalty Share, you don't make the payment until the end. 

New (to Me) Scam on Goodreads

I love connecting with people on Goodreads, especially people who have read or want to read my books. That said, I am extremely careful when people randomly want to friend me and have brand-new accounts.  Yes, someone could have read my book, seen that I connect with people through Goodreads, and created an account for that purpose, but if that were the case, s/he would most likely pass the test I give all new friend requests. (Plus, anyone can follow me and see my reviews and new books. Friends can no longer message people privately through Goodreads, so it's odd someone would want to do that when my profile is public.)

First, I check out the person's account. Does s/he have book reviews? How many? Are any of them written and not just star ratings? Do the written reviews sound AI-generated?  Few reviews that are mostly star-only or AI-generated, and a high percentage of 5-star ratings send off warning bells.

Goodreads also allows you to see the activity of members--which is good. Someone who has be randomly friending indie authors (exclusively) and sending them similar-sounding messages is another warning flag. 

Enter "Rose" who recently wanted to connect with me. As usual, it was a brand new account only trying to friend indie authors. Where Rose stood out was that she began messaging the people she friended (publically, so she must not realize everyone can see these) and giving the her e-mail request while asking for a copy of the author's book. The messages were almost identical, but contained what sounded like an AI-generated specific question about a book the authors had written. 

I wondered what Rose's game was. Obviously, she gives you her e-mail address and wants you to reply to her. Giving a scammer access to your direct e-mail is bad on its own, but this seemed like a lot of work just for an e-mail address. So, I dug a little more.

It seems the biggest problem is that you are giving them a copy of your book without any restrictions. Regardless of the protections you have on it, once they get a full copy, they can hack those away and distribute or sell it illegally. They could even use AI to translate it into another language without your knowledge and make money of it themselves. Apparently, this has been a long-running scam on Goodreads. I'm not sure how they missed me until now.

Anyway, Kindle+ (formerly KU) is a relatively easy way to get your books to the masses. If someone insists on a copy of your book, tell them when your next free promotion is, and let them download it from Amazon. Needless to say, this person