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Amazon Restricts Authors From Self-Publishing More Than Three Books a Day After AI Concerns (theguardian.com) 57

Posted by msmash from the cracking-down dept.
Amazon has created a new rule limiting the number of books that authors can self-publish on its site to three a day, after an influx of suspected AI-generated material was listed for sale in recent months. The Guardian: The company announced the new limitations in a post on its Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) forum on Monday. "While we have not seen a spike in our publishing numbers, in order to help protect against abuse, we are lowering the volume limits we have in place on new title creations," read the statement. KDP allows authors to self-publish their books and list them for sale on Amazon's site.

Amazon told the Guardian that the limit is set at three titles, though this number may be adjusted "if needed." The company confirmed that there had already been a limit to the number of books authors could list a day, but declined to say what this previous limit was. The post stated that Amazon is "actively monitoring the rapid evolution of generative AI and the impact it is having on reading, writing, and publishing" and that "very few" publishers will be affected by the change. Authors and publishers will also have the option to seek an exception to the rule.
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Amazon Restricts Authors From Self-Publishing More Than Three Books a Day After AI Concerns More

Amazon Restricts Authors From Self-Publishing More Than Three Books a Day After AI Concerns

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  • from each (fake) "author" account, but don't hold us to it, and we already had a limit, but don't ask, because we weren't serious about that one either.
    There. That'll learn them.

  • This rule unfairly discriminates (Score:5, Funny)

    by TomR teh Pirate ( 1554037 ) on Monday September 25, 2023 @04:55PM (#63876481)
    against Stephen King

  • By lunchtime I will positively die!

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by The Cat ( 19816 )

      Don't know. Why don't you ask the black box that decides which books sell and which don't? Ask the robot that decides which books are deleted from search results without notice.

      It's address is in Seattle, WA.

  • Why so high? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by bob_jenkins ( 144606 ) on Monday September 25, 2023 @05:01PM (#63876493) Homepage Journal

    Is there a legitimate use case for an author publishing 3 books per day?

    • I'd guess they picked that to allow for publishing a trilogy all at once.
      • Seems unconvincing. Even if the trilogy is available simultaneously, a reader needs time to progress through the books in order.

        I guess if the author was stranded on an island with spotty wifi, and absolutely had to upload the three books (s)he worked on for the last 3 years in a single short time window of 2 minutes because there's a tsunami on the horizon and it's now or never, yeah that would justify the limit, most certainly.

        • Seems unconvincing. Even if the trilogy is available simultaneously, a reader needs time to progress through the books in order.

          I guess if the author was stranded on an island with spotty wifi, and absolutely had to upload the three books (s)he worked on for the last 3 years in a single short time window of 2 minutes because there's a tsunami on the horizon and it's now or never, yeah that would justify the limit, most certainly.

          If you look at typical book sales I suspect there's a big spike on day one as you push out the announcement across your social media followed by a rapid and steady decline, so make the most of that first spike.

          If it's a trilogy released all at once you have a shot at turning that 1 sale into 3. Not to say 3 separate announcements won't do better, but I'm guessing that's the idea.

          • The traffic spike is not a new phenomenon. I remember the first time I was slashdotted in the early 2000's my site at the time registered hits for about 3 days with exponential (not linear) decline. There were ancillary blips over weeks as different small communities around the world discovered it.

            It was obvious then that the way to maximize eposure for a project would be to space out regular updates at least a week apart. I am sure the same is true for trilogies. You do not want to publish them all on th

            • The tricky bit will the trilogy is that no one is going to buy just books 2&3, and there probably is a bias toward buying new releases, so if they only catch the book 2 or 3 announcement they may skip altogether rather than starting with #1.

              I don't know how it balances out, but in sales obvious logic doesn't always win.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

        I'd guess they picked that to allow for publishing a trilogy all at once.

        You can accomplish that many other ways. Say, 10 books a year - you can publish 10 books, all at once or spread out through the year. That way your trilogy can be released on the same day just fine.

        And honestly, if it's popular, you probably will have an agent and a publisher and they can release your entire library of books all at once through negotiations with Amazon directly.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by mysidia ( 191772 )

        I'd guess they picked that to allow for publishing a trilogy all at once.

        The way they could handle that would be "Your account gains 0.2 points per day until you reach 3.0 points or higher, after which, points will accumulate at a lower rate until reaching a maximum balance of 5.0, or maximum 30.0 total recharge points in a month." -- Publishing a book depletes 1.0 points.

        So you can publish several books at a time, But Not several books every day over and over again.

    • Presumably, the AI will start repeating itself if you ask for too many books a day. You need time to give it enough detailed instructions to prevent two books being largely the same. At least it seems that's the concern with AI that they are trying to address because if they were wanting to prevent AI-authored books a much lower rate would have made sense.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by CAIMLAS ( 41445 )

      Sure - if I write a series and want to publish them all at the same time, perhaps.

      I would think something like 5-per-month might be a better way to stop it. It won't impinge on legitimate individual authors in the least bit, but would effectively prevent someone from publishing garbage - while still leaving room for "legitimate" AI-generated works, where people take the time to curate the result into something holistic and not-complete-shit.

      Is there a realistic model for someone publishing that many books a

      • You're thinking full-length adult novels. Short stories that back in the day might have been submitted to an anthology magazine like Asimov's might get published individually as "books" these days (because why not? there's no printing or distribution costs). I could also imagine writing more than 5 children's books per month.

        Granted, they're not going to be quality works at that rate, but a human could certainly do it.

        • A human could do it, but should they? Absolutely nothing of value would be lost by setting the limit at 5/month. I'd argue for harsher than that. The 154th rainbow magic fairy book can use an alternate pen name if they're cranking out the crap at that pace.

        • I think you under-estimate the difficulty in writing children's books, at least good ones. Dr. Seuss seems to have taken around a year per.

          The real way to get up to something like 5 per month, which is close to "1 per week" would be chapters in a serial - think less magazine and more "newspaper" back in the day, where they might have a new chapter each week.

          One of the most famous examples might be "Uncle Tom's Cabin", which started publication in 1851, and ran for 40 weeks.

          https://blogs.loc.gov/headline... [loc.gov]

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by jabuzz ( 182671 )

            Eh, one of the most famous. You should scratch that and go for anything published by Charles Dickens, which was all serialised because of the rampant copyright infringement going on in the USA. Me I don't respect US copyrights because for ~200 years the US didn't respect UK copyrights. When we get an apology from the US and restitution we can talk.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by vux984 ( 928602 )

      Its not beyond the pale that someone might legitimately publish multiple editions of the same book at a time. (Different languages for example, or might publish a cohesive longer work as a series of episodic 'single chapters' as separate works.

      Or its possible that someone working on a series of childrens books might publish several together rather than one at a time, if you got them edited and illustrated as a group, they might naturally come together and be finished at one time, and you might well naturall

    • It's like asking why somebody might want to list more than 3 items on ebay in one day. It doesn't mean they just finished writing them. It means they're bringing them to that platform. It doesn't even mean you wrote them yourself; nothing wrong with self-publishing old works that have entered the public domain.

    • Is there a legitimate use case for an author publishing 3 books per day?

      Not since George Simenon and Isaac Asimov passed.

    • Is there a legitimate use case for an author publishing 3 books per day?

      Only if you are Amazon and you have your own worthless pulp creation farms.

      I like to read books on certain history topics but I find Amazon can be filled with history books that have interesting titles yet they are "written by" totally NO-NAME authors that no respectable author-historian might reference.

    • I can think of at least one legitimate case for someone publishing n books per day, for some pretty large values of n.

      Imagine someone has written many books over many years, but they didn't try selling through Amazon (which I must admit, is something I wouldn't predict). Then one day, they decide to start selling their books on Amazon. So on the first day, here's suddenly 20 years worth of books that they're introducing to Amazon's system.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by whitroth ( 9367 )

      Speaking as a writer (one novel published, second probably later this year, and I have a small press as a publisher, this is *not* self-published), the answer is NFW.

      Novels these days run 70,000-120,000 or so words. How fast can you type, even if you know every word you're going to write?

  • For authors who haven't proven their identity, have a very small limit per day, per week, and per month. Maybe 3 a week or 10 a month or something like that. In the USA and some other countries, tax-filing requirements will kick in at some point anyway, meaning authors who are making more than a small amount of money would need to identify themselves.

    For new authors with verified government ID on file, have a realistic but small limit that can go up once the author is "established." I would start off wit

  • how long before an AI-written book reaches the top of the charts?

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      When it does, it'll be because of a meme. People will be buying it to show off on social media or whatever, not because they intend to read it.
  • Theres no way a legitimate single author is writing 3 complete legitimate books a day much less a week. Limit should be more like 1 per week

    • You could conceivably have 3 books ready at the same time, after spending months writing then sending them all off to an editor who might do all your material in a batch.

      • So I guess "3 per month" would make a lot more sense?

        • Amazon has decided that writing 90 books per month means you're a real author instead of an AI. Clever of them.

          • Depends. I guess I could write 90 books along the lines of "Jack and Jill go up the hill" and similar stories for 2 year olds.

            Nobody said anything about pics made by AI, right?

    • Theres no way a legitimate single author is writing 3 complete legitimate books a day much less a week. Limit should be more like 1 per week

      Yep. You write one good book then publish three crap ones in a day and hope people buy all three before realizing they're junk.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mysidia ( 191772 )

      Theres no way a legitimate single author is writing 3 complete legitimate books a day much less a week.

      There's plenty of ways they could. Heck there are entire newspapers that roll out a complete issue every day.

      When a blogger wish to release a daily compilation of their postings as a book, then a weekly release every Monday can very well add up to 7 books being published in a day covering the past 7 days.

      If Amazon would like to limit the selection to "higher quality" works, then they should really c

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by jonadab ( 583620 )
      There are traditionally-published authors who would run afoul of a 1-per-week limit. Nora Roberts, for example. Although, many of hers are published under pseudonyms, which hints at a workaround.

  • Micky Spillane (Score:3)

    by BigFire ( 13822 ) on Monday September 25, 2023 @05:51PM (#63876657)

    Wrote I, the Jury in one weekend because he needed some money to buy his house. Still considered a classic.

  • A day. Really. REEEAALLLYYYY?

    That’s like running a university and establishing a rule that “the no student can earn more than 3 degrees a day”. It’s an explicit admission that the product was worthless to begin with.

    • A day. Really. REEEAALLLYYYY?

      That's like running a university and establishing a rule that “the no student can earn more than 3 degrees a day”. It’s an explicit admission that the product was worthless to begin with.

      It certainly suggests that those college essay-research-thesis mills are slacking off on the job.

    • Right? It's like the hollywood writers asking for a ban on AI - it's a straight up admission that they all suck so bad that AI could do their job...
  • ... and hello to the Torrent of Bullshit age!
  • ...there goes my plan to make *absolute* bank by writing 4 novels a day :(
  • So why should you be able to self-publish any works created by AI, since they cant be copyrighted according to US court systems, since they declared you cant copyright AI generated image.

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