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Is trying to become an author insane in times of LLMs?
A simple question. I know LLMs are currently not a replacement for authors. Will that remain true in 5 to 10 years?
EDIT: No. I never expected to earn a living either mostly or exclusively by selling books. There are however many "side gigs" in my country that can greatly benefit from being published by a real company. Ultimately though, I'm not in it primarily for the money. But I wonder what the future holds for fiction as a whole.
Being an author is already not commercially viable. There's probably only a double digit number of authors out there who can live on book sales, and it's dwindling; most authors come from generational wealth, or take professorships, or are married, etc. But regardless of how LLM development progresses, I know some people will always want to read human writing. I always will. So, don't write to sell books. Write because you have an aching something you need to express, a story that must be told. If people like it, then profit may come, but it's never even likely, much less a sure thing.
Honestly I don’t think LLMs are the competition, it’s TikTok. And TikTok is already winning. The finite resource for consumers of media is time - they only have so much time in their lives, and they can spend that reading a book, watching a movie, touching grass, or watching TikTok.
I don’t think it’ll get all that much worse but I don’t think being an author is particularly viable right now.
I'm already an author, though not one of the lucky few who actually make money from their books. What are your objectives? If you want to make a living through writing, that is a rough road to travel, and I wish you luck. You'll need luck, as well as skill, and most of all, never giving up, no matter how long it takes. The existence of LMM's doesn't change that, nor do I believe they will be a major source of literature in the future.
My objective was a little different. If I make money, great. That's all to the good. But I mostly wanted my stories to actually exist in the world. I wanted to let others see and experience what I saw in my mind. And having a physical object that came only from me... that was most satisfying. One of the best memories I have from my writing process was showing the rough draft of my first novel to my mother before she died. She was ill, but courageously read the whole thing, even though it wasn't a genre she read on a regular basis.
No I don't expect to ever make money through the sale of books. There are other related activities which might generate revenue. I do wish to be read. Have some kind of audience. I'm concerned with the sustainability of building such audience. But earning a living by selling books is not something that I consider a realistic goal.
If you have children, or nieces / nephews, they could be the best readers one can get. Some of my favourite fiction only exist because the author wanted to share with children they know.
As for another kind of sustainable audience, I wonder if pairing up with an illustrator might be worth the try. Many successful manga are author/illustrator duos.
Shy of that, humanity is in a weird space with our attention right now. But I think we'll come around. Write for a future readership who is experiencing a new Renaissance, rediscovering human text and craving for viewpoints not trying to peddle subscription and likes. Perhaps 21st century human literature free from advertising and algorithmic pandering will be especially cherished because of its rarity.
All I can really say is that I'm incredibly confident that in ten years I will still be exclusively reading books written by humans. I have no interest whatsoever in a book that is produced by an AI agent (at least one that is not obviously conscious and having some sort of real, embodied experiences), especially LLMs.
Same. I will either be not reading at all, or still reading human writing. I don't see any value in reading machine output
For me it's similar, but I hardly ever read anything that just came out this year, other than by certain authors I already know. So for new, unknown writers, it probably doesn't help much?
I'm not a writer so I'm not sure if my opinion matters much here. That being said, I don't think it's too insane to try and be an author in the time of LLMs. What comes to mind immediately is hand-built furniture versus factory-made machine-made furniture. I'm not sure if this is the correct comparison but factories can push out thousands of tables in a single day whereas a person may take a whole day to build a single table themselves. In a similar manner, an LLM can probably spit out a fantasy novel in a few minutes where a human author may take weeks to flesh out a similar novel. While the human may have taken much longer to reach a similar final result, there's more intention behind the words on the paper written by the human, which to me adds more value to the human-made story.
I also think of LLMs here in the context of coding as I'm a software engineer. I bounce ideas off of LLMs and then also use the LLM to review my code before I request reviews from my team. Along the same vein, I can imagine a writer using an LLM to bounce ideas for characters, settings, etc. and then also use the LLM to review what they've written before it's sent to their editor.
Express yourself as a human to spite the AIs regardless. Continue breathing human life into creative works. I think a lot of people will forever value that. Will enough value that? Never enough, truly
However, yes, even now, and for a long time past, we undervalue a lot of creative work in society, sadly, and that is unlikely to change (and that lack of valuing is reflected in the desire of some for slop). But my point is if you have something you want to write, don't let any fears of its lack of viability stop you
I think it depends on genre and your motivation. The odds are against being successful enough to make a living, but that doesn't seem new?