Chat GPT takes on haiku

In a rare confluence of luck, two people downloaded e pluribus haiku anthology near the same time, and it got #8 in the Japanese Poetry & Haiku category, Amazon.com, e-books. I was excited! I went to the page and prepared to tell everyone that I was in the top ten. But then, I noticed that Chat GPT had written the book that was #4.

I was flabbergasted! But I had to download it and see what it was about, even though I know that downloading it will basically make it get an even better rating.

The book, called Autonomous Haiku Machine, advertises itself as having Chat GPT as the author. The editor must simply have waded through thousands of three-line nothings and picked out whatever looked like it could remotely be called poetry. No seasons, no attention to nature, no syllable pattern, none of the traditional characteristics of haiku. But sure enough when I looked later that evening, it was still ahead of me; it was #13 while I was at #14. Tonight it's at #32 while I'm at #36.

We will probably sink together in the ratings until, after about a week, we'll cross the hundred line. That is, if you the reader don't read this and go and download one of the books. A download will shoot a book up into a pretty low rating but as you can see it's all pretty temporary and it starts coming down (getting higher) pretty quickly. If for some reason two or three people download it, it will have a somewhat better ratings jump and then come back more slowly. By watching Autonomous Haiku Machine I can learn a little about how fast a book comes back to earth.

In truth Japanese Poetry and Haiku is a pretty wide-open category, and they put comics in there and it still doesn't get thousands of people buying and selling every day. It's just not a very fast or lively category. In a way I feel like it's cheating, knowing I could write just about anything and with the help of a few friends, possibly get it into the top ten. This is what happened to the machine haiku. People will download it, sure, but does that make it good? This particular haiku is not good, but, who am I to say? You can read a little of my rant here.

I'm not really mad at these people who are flooding the market with ChatGPT-written stuff. If anything, it shows what we genuine writers have that a computer will never have. It makes ours look good, in other words.

Another surprise to me was that this book was written in 2021. Apparently it's not that new. It's just that now is when we are finally reckoning with the consequences of having this new elephant in the marketplace. Things will never be the same!

Chat GPT

OK so I'm a short story writer (I have ten volumes). And the world is being flooded by Chat GPT stories. And I take this seriously: "You won't be replaced by Chat GPT, but you will be replaced by someone who knows how to use it." So should I be learning how to use it? It wouldn't be that hard to learn.

Lately I've been fantasizing about figuring out how to crank something out that would actually make money. The problem with what I write now, is that not enough people know about me. That wouldn't change if I started creating Chat GPT stories, but if I could truly crank them out people would find me just because of sheer volume. Rather than putting out a book of short stories every year or so, I could put one out every week. Or every month, at the very least.

I've noticed that themed stories in general do better than a book that just says, short stories. I'd like to do one about Disney, for example, twenty-five stories (or whatever) from the Magical Kingdom. But that's the kind of thing Chat GPT would do very well on. I could tell it I want ironic commentary on the nature of loving fantasy, of being taken in by that whole Mickey thing. I'm sure Chat GPT would understand - actually I'm not sure, but if it were to put a lot of Mickey and Goofy in there, that would have the same effect.

Another thing I thought of is making my next collection of short stories (I have about six so far) all about writing in general, and name it, A Real Person Wrote These" or some such thing. Not that I really know what's going on; I don't. I might try to download a couple of ChatGPT short stories just so I'd know what I'm talking about. Or write a few.

One interesting experiment would be to see if I could hide ChatGPT stories inside a book of real ones, and see if people can detect the real ones. I could become famous that way, especially if nobody could. It would be worth a try.

Stay posted, and I'll let you know. Is ChatGPT like an app or something, that I can just download?

Another one bites the dust

You don't have to look far in this business before you find someone who's discouraged. They put hundreds, if not thousands, into launching their indie book business, and it's just sitting there waiting for someone to buy it. Sales are too low. They're not getting their money back.

The problem is, throwing in the towel means giving up on the dream. They had a dream, they might have even gone to school for it, they invested in it, and now they have to admit it didn't catch.

I feel for them, and I know how hard it is to get someone out there in the Amazon sea to notice that you're there. They don't just come to you out of nowhere. Word doesn't catch that you're good, or if it does, it catches very slowly. It's like you have to make 100 good experiences to get one to tell his/her friend that you're good. that's a lot of hustling.

I can share my secret of success. I was lucky to not need the money when I got into it, and I'm still ok without making a whole lot of money. In fact, I make very little money but I make sure the balance sheet is positive every month. No matter how little I make, at least I've made something. And if I put in six or seven hours a day to make only fifty bocks a month, I'm ok with that, at least I'm not draining the household economy.

Now how do I keep my expenses down? Well I do myself everything a publisher would ordinarily do. I hustle. I market. Whatever is out there, I go for it. But by keeping a positive balance sheet I keep my spirits up, as that's absolutely essential. I don't mind losing the time. I'll figure out how to make my time more efficient. I don't mind my wife thinking I'm just wasting my time on some foolish hobby. She rides a horse so she's the one spending the money. I am obsessed, yes, but I'm able to live in my own world and choose how to spend the five or ten bucks I can afford for advertising or whatever, whenever I'm ready. I slowly build up the business so it exists. I freely admit it's not easy and won't come out of nowhere.

I am determined not to be like these people who sink in a thousand or two, and then end up standing there with a pile of books. My system may not work forever but it will at least keep me busy and happy as long as I'm willing to keep it up.

it's February, let's get this show on the road

I'm impatient to get an audience because, well, I've written a lot of stuff, and I just think people should be reading it. The people are out there, I'm sure. I'm not sure if what I write is good enough to merit a big wide audience like the best of writers have. But I know that if I could make them aware of me, I'd have more readers than I do now.

In some ways I feel like my time is running out. I have a lot to write, still, yet marketing the way I do is time-consuming and life has its demands. It's frustrating to feel like I could be doing better especially if I paid a pro, but I really really don't want to pay a pro, don't want to spend more money on it than I have. I've become indie to the core. I've learned cover design (still a ways to go there) and gotten better at proofreading my own (harder than proofreading anyone else's). I've figured out how to maximize my time so I can get a few readers here and there, and keep lowering my ratings (they are much better now than they used to be, though, from the outside you could look at them and say, this guy has a ways to go). Some people are reading some of my work. It's rough though. And slow. I am so glad i'm not relying on this to make a living.

I am thinking of a Little Free Library program. It means, roughly, organizing my extra books (those whose covers have changed, and which I no longer sell) so that they all end up in Little Free Libraries. This is a bottom-up kind of approach. Get the paperbacks in the hands of people who might read them. I have no faith in the brick-and-mortar libraries, though I think that in the big picture they might work too. It's small-town America where people are dying for something to read to get them out of the boredom, the stifling nature of cultural expectations. Starting right here in western Illinois, I'll put my books out and see if it works.

season's greetings

Annual report

As I look back over the last year, one thing that bothers me is that I didn't quite fulfill what I wanted with this blog: to make a post, or more, about the fantastic indie authors I have run across. It wouldn't be hard to list maybe ten that made such an impression on me that it has lasted even until today. And these were for the most part books I never would have even found if I wasn't out there looking to market my own.

Another thing I can definitely say is that I have reached a point of diminishing returns with read-marketing, namely prowling on the six or more sites that I use, to find someone who will read my book in return for me reading another. I enjoy the reading; yes, I enjoy it immensely. But there are increasingly fewer books over time that I haven't already read, and this means a lot of prowling and not enough action. The sites (six or so, as I've said, though there are more and may be some good ones that I don't know about) are well-managed these days. People have figured out how to do it. There is a fairly tight group of authors who have read most of each other's work and are always willing to read something that hasn't been read. But the list of things that I've read is so extensive, I have to wait a week for an opening, and when I get it, some other author pounces on it in a flash - they are in the same straits I am in.

The answer is in pulling in lots of fresh blood. If the authors out there all knew about these sites there would be a lot more of them. I may do some pulling-in myself. It would be in my own self interest.

If the read-marketing logjams are stifling then it's a clear sign I should get back to my writing - I know I have plenty on my plate and plenty to do. The problem there is that so much of my life I'm in "distractable" mode - that is, I can be called away any minute, and am, so I hate it when I've gotten all absorbed in writing and then can't play it out. I save writing for those few times when I can get thinking about something and stay thinking about it, like when people are gone from my house leaving me alone. There are a few of those, but not enough. And late night is the best, but by then I'm exhausted and not good for much besides reading.

Starting this blog was a way of saying that yes, I'm totally immersed in this world these days. I will come out with a "Best of Indie" post soon - it's important to me to at least pass along the most interesting of things that are being written.