Update (Aug. 21): I corrected this article to note that authors using Amazon’s Expanded Distribution can purchase and use their own ISBNs instead of taking free ones from Amazon.
Also, Barnes & Noble has removed the book from sale.
Just two days after the Maui wildfires began, on Aug. 10, a new book was self-published, Fire and Fury: The Story of the 2023 Maui Fire and its Implications for Climate Change by “Dr. Miles Stones” (no such person seems to exist). I learned about the book from this Forbes article, but by then, Amazon had removed the book from sale. Amazon had no comment for Forbes on the situation.
Curious about how far the book might have spread, I did a Google search for the book’s ISBN number (9798856899343). To my surprise, I saw the book was also for sale at Bookshop and Barnes & Noble. I tweeted about the situation, noting that IngramSpark, a division of Ingram, must be distributing these books to the broader retail market. My assumption was that retailers, in particular Bookshop, would not accept self-published books coming out of Amazon’s KDP. (Amazon KDP authors can choose to enable Amazon’s Expanded Distribution at no cost, to reach retail markets outside of Amazon.)
It turns out my assumption was wrong. Bookshop does accept self-published books distributed by Amazon, and here things get a little convoluted. Amazon Expanded Distribution uses Ingram to distribute; Ingram is the biggest book distributor and there isn’t really any other service to use for distribution as far as the US/UK.
However, Bookshop’s policy is not to sell AI-generated books unless they are clearly labeled as such, so Fire and Fury was removed from sale after they were alerted to its presence. Bookshop’s founder Andy Hunter tweeted: “We will pull them from @Bookshop_Org when we find them, but it’s always going to be a challenge to support self-published authors while trying to NOT support AI fakes.”
And now we come to why self-publishing authors have reason to be seriously concerned about the rising tide of AI-generated books.
- Amazon KDP is unlikely to ever prohibit AI-generated content. Even if it did create such a policy, there are no surefire detection methods for AI-generated material today.
- Amazon KDP authors can easily enable expanded distribution to the broader retail market at no cost to them. It’s basically a checkbox.
- Amazon uses Ingram to distribute, and Ingram reaches everyone who matters—bookstores, libraries, and all kinds of retailers. Ingram does have a policy, however, that they may not accept “books created using artificial intelligence or automated processes.”
- Based on what happened with Fire and Fury, Amazon’s expanded distribution can make a book available for sale at Barnes & Noble and Bookshop in a matter of days.
If the rising tide of AI-generated material keeps producing such questionable books—along with embarrassing and unwanted publicity—one has to ask if Barnes & Noble and Bookshop might decide to stop accepting self-published books altogether from Ingram or otherwise limit their acceptance. Obviously not good news for self-published authors, or Ingram either.
What are some potential remedies?
- Ingram is an important waypoint here. They’ve put stronger quality control measures in place before. Perhaps they can be strengthened to prevent the worst material from reaching the market outside of Amazon.
- Amazon’s Expanded Distribution requires use of ISBNs; if authors don’t purchase their own ISBNs, they can take Amazon-provided ISBNs. Would it be possible for retailers to block any title with an Amazon ISBN? (ISBNs identify the publisher or where the material originated from.) Or any book distributed via Amazon? While that may be unfair to honest people who prefer to use Amazon’s Expanded Distribution, such authors/publishers would still have the option of setting up their own IngramSpark account. IngramSpark has no upfront fees and also provides free ISBNs.
- Maybe IngramSpark or other retailers put a delay on making Amazon’s Expanded Distribution titles available for sale. Amazon already states it can take up to eight weeks for the book to go on sale. So why not make such titles wait?
Free ISBNs from Amazon unfortunately contribute to this problem
ISBNs are a basic requirement to sell a print book through retail channels today. In the US, it is expensive to purchase ISBNs—it’s nearly $300 for ten. Amazon KDP does not require authors to purchase ISBNs and will give you ISBNs for free all day if you need them. Over time, others like IngramSpark and Draft2Digital have also made ISBNs free to make it easier for self-publishing authors to distribute their work.
While it’s admirable to lower the barriers for authors who have limited funds, free ISBNs are supercharging the distribution of AI-generated materials to the wider retail market. An immediate way to stem this tide of garbage in the US market? Stop giving out free ISBNs. Make authors purchase their own. (Lest I be misunderstood, by “garbage” I mean books that are questionable in the extreme, like the Maui book mentioned above, or shoddy travel books that The New York Times reported on, or other materials readers would not buy if they understood what it was.)
There’s a huge advantage to making authors obtain or purchase their own ISBNs: it creates an identifiable publisher of record. The publisher of record would be listed at retailers. Currently, fraudsters using Amazon KDP are able to hide behind Amazon-owned ISBNs; their books are simply listed as “independently published.” It would be marvelous to take away that fig leaf. Sure, fraudsters could create sham entities that mean nothing and are unfindable in the end, but at least you could connect the dots on all the titles they’re releasing—plus Bowker (the ISBN-issuing agency in the US) would see who’s doing the purchasing and possibly put their own guardrails in place. My hope is these entities would choose not to buy ISBNs at all and this activity would become limited to the backwaters of Amazon.
[Added Aug. 21] In countries where ISBNs are free for authors, my assumption is that one can tie an ISBN back to a real person or publishing company. If anyone can confirm or deny how it works outside the US for free ISBNs, I’d appreciate your comment on this point.
Professional self-publishing authors who distribute widely outside of Amazon are buying their own ISBNs already. Those who aren’t? I would consider it, because if nothing changes about the current situation, we may be entering a period where a book without an identifiable publisher (or author) is immediately considered suspect. And that’s another problem for self-publishing authors.
Jane Friedman has spent nearly 25 years working in the book publishing industry, with a focus on author education and trend reporting. She is the editor of The Hot Sheet, the essential publishing industry newsletter for authors, and was named Publishing Commentator of the Year by Digital Book World in 2023. Her latest book is The Business of Being a Writer (University of Chicago Press), which received a starred review from Library Journal. In addition to serving on grant panels for the National Endowment for the Arts and the Creative Work Fund, she works with organizations such as The Authors Guild to bring transparency to the business of publishing.
I wonder if two-factor authentication could be used in some way when initially publishing a title. I’m not a technology genius. I don’t 100% know how, but it could be a way to confirm titles associated with specific authors.
2-factor authentication is a good solution because you have to be a real person to do it. This more stringent form of authentication is in contrast to the use of bearer tokens, the typical way that programmers access API’s, which — sadly – enables rampant abuse of application platforms, notably social media platforms.
This is indeed sobering. I’m dubious that Amazon will stop the free ISBNs, but hope that Ingram can put some checks in place. The proliferation of AI-generated self-published titles also re-elevates the role of traditional publishers as gatekeepers, which may mean that many worthy voices will never be heard, as the gates are narrow and the flood of potential authors is enormous.
Thank you for continuing to raise these concerns and actually suggest feasible actions that Ingram, Amazon, Bowker, and others can do to help the situation. I know you yourself recently got burned by someone releasing a book under your name (probably produced through AI) so I’m sure having this strike close to home has you even more determined to use your platform to alert others about the possible harm coming their way from unleashed AI. I’m using your columns as recommended reading to all my writer friends.
Interesting article, Jane. I’ve self-published five novels, each with an ISBN I get for free through Library Archives in Canada. I’m thankful the Canadian gov’t. offers me free ones. As for expanded distribution, I publish my books through KDP for Amazon, but choose Ingram Spark for expanded distribution. I hope Amazon does a better job at gatekeeping or else the market will be flooded by AI generated books.
Within New Zealand, we are fortunate that we are able to get our ISBNs for free through the New Zealand National Library. But if removal of “free” ISBNs will help to eliminate this issue, hell, I will gladly pay the bill. As a writer wanting to make a living from my writing and other activities, I need to treat this seriously and treat is like a business. Those ISBNs are just a business expense. So… Suck it up, Buttercup, and buy your own ISBNs.
Judy, I wonder: when you get your ISBNs, I assume you have to give the library your contact info, yes? What sort of requirements do they have or what information do you have to offer to secure your ISBNs?
Perhaps it would be better if the US offered free ISBNs, too, as it might mean a stricter cataloging of who is using them—rather than letting commercial operations like Amazon/etc buy enormous blocks, which disguises who is ultimately using them.
Hi Jane – a bit of a late reply, but I’m Canadian too so I thought I’d chime in here. Our isbns are paid for with our tax dollars which is why they’re free to us. To get one you have to set yourself up as a publisher with Library and Archives Canada, providing all contact information including address, email address, and phone number. You then have to wait for someone from the Archives to review your account and confirm it.
Thank you, Benita!
Thank you, Jane. It’s refreshing to see an article written by someone with experience among all these millennials with no life experiences trying to pass themselves off as journalists or experts on the subjects they’re writing about when it’s obvious through their entire article that they’re clueless.
With that being said… As a writer, everything I put down is from my own imagination and I don’t need any AI to do it for me. And those of us who are intelligent enough to write on our own will always have to deal with lazy, no-talent hacks who use AI to do their work for them.
These AI publishers aren’t clueless lazy millennials, they’re clued up grifters, probably 40+, who style themselves as entrepreneurs in the Reagan/Thatcher tradition. They’ve spotted a weakness in a market of indiscriminating voracious consumers with an appetite for content where quality comes third to cost and supply, and being entrepreneurs – sorry, grifters – they’re ethically unburdened.
They may have no literary talent, but they have mastered a new technology which requires linguistic ability to get results, and we dismiss them at our own risk.
I agree that AI generated rubber DH is a rapidly expanding problem. Not that there wasn’t a lot of untrustworthy rubbish before AI. Unfortunately, I think your idea regarding ISBNs won’t fly because it overlooks the international nature of the ISBN. They are free in some countries, Canada for example, and much cheaper in others than in the US.
All participants in the book world from author to reader need to accept responsibility and act like honorable professionals.
Hmmm. Well, there is another possibility – that the A.I. generated book may have merit. I have not read it, but it seems all writers have a new motivator in that A.I., in its infancy, can produce a pretty decent non-fiction essay. In a recent blog post, (with credit given to A.I. where appropriate, I asked Chat-GPT to write a blog post on the topic of “the impact of A.I. on writers and writing.” It produced a perfectly acceptable, 3 page essay on the topic, albeit a little dry, but accurate with opening statement and conclusion. So I went on to ask it to produce a closing statement for my very brief yet gloomy take on it, in the voice of Dylan Thomas (whom I believe to have been producing work that is still under copyright protection.) Again, it produced a closing statement that was very representative of the poet. My own conclusion was that writers (in general) are screwed. Two weeks of depression ensued, a crisis of purpose, and a half gallon of Butter Crunch ice cream consumed, but I have come out the other side… I think. My new outlook? What if it does? If it can produce copy of equal virtue, where do I stand? I pivot. We’ve had to do it before. We’ll have to do it again, but the next iteration will be even better… maybe acknowledging we are part of the singularity… but take my hypothesis with a grain of salt, because fiction – it’s what I do. 🙂
As far as AI-generated books that are done with identifiable authors and transparency? I don’t really have a problem with them and that’s not what I’m concerned about. My problem is with books with mystery/hidden authors that are either fraudulent or clearly questionable, as in the case of the Maui book.
Interesting. We’re currently having this discussion in morning chat – the question of where we draw the line, especially in light of using AI feeds AI.
Most people don’t know who the authors are. Only the quality matters. What was the quality of writing in the Maui book?
Since the book was published before the fires were even over, I think we know the answer to that question without asking or checking. The author’s name is also a pun.
No, the book was not filled with quality information:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/book-maui-fires/
Interesting speculations, Sophie. As a poet, I do believe that AI (for example Chat GPT), can compose poetry of varying quality. However, all it is doing is trawling a vast online store of existing poetry to produce it’s “own” poem. It lacks any originality. Where a poetic robot able to traverse a woodland or other landscape and on hearing birds or observing other aspects of nature produce something original, we would, I think perhaps be approaching something like the Singularity. However, we are far from such a situation at present.
I am a Canadian writer who is planning on publishing the first thriller mystery in a series of eight novels. I have self-published and traditionally published poetry collections by obtaining ISBNs through our government system. If I go ahead and get my ISBN from our Canadian government agency, will that ISBN be recognized by Amazon KDP and the wider market?
My assumption is yes, but if I’m wrong, please someone jump in and correct me.
I use the Library and Archives ISBNs on any market I use, Amazon, Ingram, D2D, etc. You will run into a problem if you try to use the same ISBN on more than one market. Each version (ebook vs paperback vs hardcover) requires its own ISBN. Uploading to Amazon vs Ingram, for example, they also view the competitor markets as a separate version, requiring its own ISBN for the same book format, even if Amazon does use Ingram’s ebook distribution and paperback book printing.
FYI – KDP Expanded Distribution does NOT require the use of the KDP free ISBN, at least under the US rules. Source: KDP: Expanded Distribution: Requirements: ISBN ( https://kdp.amazon.com/en_US/help/topic/GQTT4W3T5AYK7L45 ) “The paperback can have an ISBN you bought or one assigned by KDP. Your book’s ISBN must not have been submitted for distribution through another service.”
I’ve added a correction. It’s great if the ISBN has been purchased or obtained directly by the author, because then the publishing activity is more traceable to a source.