Good afterevenmorn, Readers!

I was today years old when I learned that Kindle Unlimited has now become Kindle Plus. The change was made in the tail end of October. A rebrand is nothing new for companies. Hell, HBO has done it more times than I can count. The rebrand in and of itself is not the issue. The problem is that it appears that it’s packed full of AI slop; most especially the audiobooks. And this is by design.

Before I dive into how much I hate it, I want to make a couple of points. I think I may have mentioned it before, though I cannot remember whether it was here or on my personal blog. In any case, the first point is that I stopped selling on Amazon entirely this year. I made the decision that I cannot stomach even a single penny of my earnings going towards this behemoth company that treats its authors horribly, its workers even worse, and throws money at things that I fundamentally disagree with. So, no more listings on Amazon, Unlimited/Plus or otherwise.

This is, I recognise, an absolutely stupid business decision, particularly if I’m serious about my goal of earning enough from my writing to write full time. Cutting off the largest bookseller in the world is a stupid thing to do. I did give it a lot of thought.

I am fortunate, through a certain lens, in that I don’t sell much anyway, so really the loss of revenue from abandoning Amazon on moral grounds is quite minimal. It also makes it a symbolic gesture. My little protest won’t be registered at all by Amazon.

Secondly, I also want to make it perfectly clear that I don’t judge or blame authors who will not break from Amazon. It is the biggest bookseller in the world. It has a host of features that are really useful for self-publishing. Plenty of indie authors make really, really, really good money selling through Amazon. As such, they’re much less capable of cutting that company off, whether or not they care about the issues Amazon and Bezos remain in the centre of. In many cases, it would asking them to deliberately starve themselves.

Okay, with that out of the way, I can now grumble about this new, rebranded Kindle Plus.

First, the good news. As of the writing of this, prices have not risen, though the great fear amongst users is that this rebranding is indicative of a forthcoming price increase. This is a very justified fear, and it will surprise absolutely no one when it happens.

Shall we take bets on when? I’m going to be generous, and guess that Amazon will wait until after Christmas to make the price hike announcement.

Now, there have long been complaints that Kindle Unlimited was quickly filling with AI generated books. There’s no point in hashing out here why that’s such a problem. Needless to say, I do not think much of people who use the environment-destroying plagiarism machine to produce the slop that is infecting all the creative industries right now.

Many readers are quite annoyed about. There is no way currently to filter out books that are marked as being AI generated. Even if there was, that would only be useful for those works whose commissioners (they’re not writers, damn it) are honest enough to mark their books as AI generated. There are more than plenty of people who are exceedingly dishonest.

Worst of all, however, is that it appears that if a writer does not have an audiobook ready when they upload their books to Kindle Plus, Amazon will create one for you. Using AI voices. Because everyone has been clamouring for that. Clearly.

Now, this is opt-in, which is a relief, because if it was automatic, I’d be having a genuine conniption.

Much like with the written versions, there is no way to filter out AI generated audiobooks on this new Kindle Plus. However, there is a way to tell. They do list the narrator, and it’s usually very obvious about whether or not it’s AI. So, if you’re a reader who wants to support human-made things, and really want to avoid AI generated anything as much as possible, all you need do is look for a narrator credited as “synthesised,” “digital,” or “virtual” voice (perhaps “artificial” as well, though I didn’t see that on the list of terms to watch for). And then avoid that title like the plague.

I do think very little of writers who will use AI in this way. I do understand it, though. Human voice actors are paid, as they bloody well ought to be. And for those of us with no money, the thought of paying for real voice actors can be incredibly daunting. And is entirely out of reach for most of us. There is a reason why my books do not have audio versions (yet. I’m trying to raise the money via my Ko-Fi to get my first audio production out; a short story). It’s money. It’s expensive to do. So the temptation to make an audiobook cheaply (or even for free) by using AI is so tempting as to be nearly impossible to resist.

I, personally, refuse to use AI for any of my creative endeavours. For better of for worse, my books are written by me. My AI assistance is limited to spell and grammar check. Any art appearing on my book covers is either created by me, or I’ve hired a real human being to do it. When it comes time to do the audio editions of my books, I am determined to hire human voice actors. It’ll be slow going trying to raise the funds to do it, but I’m going to get there.

Kindle Plus is not a part of my world, but I do know that is part of the writing and reading worlds of millions. It’s hard to avoid. And Amazon and other companies seem absolutely determined to shove their AI slop down our throats. If you want to stand with real human creatives… and the planet, actually… you now have to tread very carefully, and pay attention or do your research in order to do so.

It sucks that we all have to work so hard because of this.

Ugh. I hate it.

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When S.M. Carrière isn’t brutally killing your favorite characters, she spends her time teaching martial arts, live streaming video games, and sometimes painting. In other words, she spends her time teaching others to kill, streaming her digital kills… and sometimes relaxing. Her most recent titles include Skylark,  Human and The Timbercreek Incident.