Year in Review: The Most Important Tech Development

As AI makes impressive strides in writing and reading, new services and tools have emerged to meaningfully assist publishers, authors, editors, and marketers

If we set aside the pandemic and social upheaval this year, one long-lasting development has been the advancement of artificial intelligence in regard to writing and reading—and practical tools for harnessing it.

Three immediate uses are now available to authors and publishers alike:

• AI-assisted editing, from manuscript analysis and acquisitions to final proofread
• AI-assisted writing for all genres
• AI-assisted marketing and promotio

While all services now on the market remain in their earliest iterations, they already demonstrate remarkable ingenuity and potential. Some still assume writing and publishing is an industry that’s so creative, only humans can do it, but that position has already become very hard to maintain.

AI-assisted editing
For years now, software like Grammarly has helped amateurs and professionals alike correct surface-level errors in their writing. Higher-level editing tools are now entering the market, some of which analyze manuscripts. We took an up-close look at one of these, Authors A.I., and also saw Fixional demonstrated at Digital Book World (see our Sept. 30 item). Just as plagiarism checkers are now part of every professor’s toolkit, we can envision these AIs built into interfaces like Submittable or licensed to major publishers and agencies.

Note that the developers of Authors A.I. have also launched Binge Books, a book discovery site for fiction. Consider it a more friendly version of Goodreads, with a focus on genre fiction and independent authorship. In the future, Binge Books will be able to recommend books based on AI analysis of story lines you’ve enjoyed in the past.

AI-assisted writing
The broad use of plagiarism detection software has led to the development of ever more creative ways of stealing other people’s work, including text spinning. Text spinning is a fairly crude means of rewriting existing work to make it sound different while saying the same thing—and some authors say they’ve fallen victim to it, as we reported back in May. But this is just the tip of the iceberg. It’s possible to use a natural language processor like GPT-3 to produce original works inspired by any sample texts you choose. When authors start generating work in this manner, who owns the copyright? How far can one be inspired by someone else’s work without infringing? Any answers are sure to be tested in courts.

AI-assisted marketing and promotion
Here is where authors might find the most immediate relief: an AI assistant who can write engaging social media posts and generate marketing and promotional materials. Tools like Lately remain quite expensive for the average midlist author, but we expect costs to come down as more competitors enter the field and technology improves.

Other notable developments this year in tech and marketing

• This is the year everyone started talking about Substack, the email newsletter service that allows you to charge for subscriptions. Meanwhile, ConvertKit has also launched paid newsletter functionality; Squarespace sites now support membership and newsletters.
• Medium made significant changes to its platform this year (again).
• BookClub, a new publishing startup, has raised $6 million to help “scale” author-led book clubs. Meanwhile, Amazon has rolled out a book club feature that remains in “early access” phase.
• Amazon ads are now available in multiple countries and markets, including the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Spain, France, and Italy. Amazon also started offering a new metric for measuring ad effectiveness, KENP Read.
• The all-you-can-read ebook subscription service Kobo Plus launched in Canada. Until this year, it was only available in the Netherlands and Belgium. It costs CAN$9.99 per month. While the financial terms offered to traditional publishers aren’t publicly known, Kobo Plus pays self-published authors based on time read. Authors who participate in Kobo Plus do not have to be exclusive to the service, as they do with Kindle Unlimited.
• Kobo also expanded reach to libraries for its self-published authors. Those distributing their ebooks through Kobo Writing Life will find a new option available for library distribution through OverDrive: cost-per-click or cost-per-circulation. As explained by Kobo, this gives librarians the choice between the “one copy, one user” model (the current model) and the “cost per circulation” model.
• PublishDrive now distributes audiobooks and print-on-demand editions in addition to ebooks.
• NetGalley, the paid service used by publishers primarily to circulate advance review copies, has rolled out an app for Apple and Android. They’ve also added audiobooks to their service. (BookFunnel has as well—see this issue’s Trailblazes.)
• The Alliance of Independent Authors announced a partnership with the Ethan Ellenberg Literary Agency to assist ALLi members in the management and licensing of rights, such as translation and audio. Members can direct questions to the agency via ALLi or obtain one-off representation to negotiate an offer. Qualifying authors can receive full rights representation. Learn more.

Bottom line: AI’s potential to change how we write and publish goes far beyond what we’ve outlined here. Voice assistants (e.g., Alexa, Siri) will become more capable and powerful in the years ahead, adding rocket fuel to an already booming audio market. And text-to-speech technology, improving every day, will eventually become a viable alternative to professional narration—making audiobook production more economical and placing it within the reach of more authors and publishers.