The science fiction short story magazine Clarkesworld is now temporarily closed to submissions after a deluge of AI-generated stories.

(Neil Clarke's blog post mentions that the February numbers are only for the first 20 days of the month, when they paused submissions.)

The problem, Clarke explains, is not that the AI-generated stories are as good as human-written ones. The problem is that lazy grifters think they are.

This clarification they posted is pretty grim.

[ID: A screencap of a quote-retweet by clarkesworld's official Twitter account. It reads: "Just to be clear, this is NOT the number of submissions we receive by month. This is the number of people we've had to ban by month. Prior to late 2022, that was mostly plagiarism. Now it's machine-generated submissions." The tweet being quote-retweeted is also from clarkesworld's official Twitter. It's an image of a graph that lists months by year on the X-axis and numbers going in intervals of 100 up to 500 on the Y-axis. The data shows every month having significantly less than 50 bans until December 2022 when it hits over 100, and then February 2023 when it skyrockets to over 500. The caption for the tweet simply reads: "Updated version of the graph." End ID.]

February 21, 2023 - FINAL UPDATE

For a chronological timeline of the entire Harper strike, click here.

Today was the Harper Union’s first day back at their desks.

Collective action works.

The union tweeted out a full summation of their agreement with HarperCollins here, but the highlights are as follows:

The above are just the guaranteed, contractually mandated changes that will be implemented at Harper. This does not include the ripple effects that have already begun in the rest of the industry.

Collective action works.

If you want to see more exciting & interesting queer art you're going to have to support independent queer creators and look at the stuff they make.

Y'know how The Owl House is such a great show, but they put one trans character and one lesbian romance in there and the Mouse was like "nah" and tried to hamstring the entire thing?

Imagine, if you will, a world where the Mouse just isn't involved at all

That world exists already in a thousand thousand beautiful variations. You only haven't heard of it because none of us have the budget for marketing.

I had a conversation with an anarcho-sybdicalist friend about whether The Owl House was moral because of the way it was produced and who is profiting from it. And it hit me as we talked that, for me at the time, the medium of animation was a large portion of the enjoyment of TOH. And that got me thinking about how difficult it is for indie queer creators to gain any foothold. Because, I can write a queer and trans novel, but it's not going to reach the same audience as TOH, not just because of marketing, but because I cannot leverage entire animation studios to put my story in a medium people want to engage with.

This isn't a "touch grass" message about how people should stop watching kids' cartoons to get queer stories, but it is sad to realize I had so easily fallen into the trap of thinking an animated queer story was inherently more entertaining than a novel or comic or any other more democratized medium.

Stop stealing my dang book

HEY, UH

The people who are putting my tiny self published book (Here, the World Entire, aka the book I poured my whole dang soul into!) up on piracy sites / requesting a pdf of my book on piracy sites:

CAN YOU LITERALLY THE FUCK NOT

I'm very glad that people want to read my book! It brings me joy that I very truly cannot even begin to explain! It's basically my dream come true! But please don't steal my work!

I don't have the backing of a big publishing house. I self published, so there's no advance for me. The only money I make off that book is through sales, and although it's not a lot at all per sale, it's the only source of income that book produces. I very strongly believe that writers deserve to get paid for their work. That includes me.

If you want to read my book but really can't justify using the funds you have to do so (because hey, we're all in different financial situations, I get it), I know it's in a couple of library systems so it's worth trying that. I'm reluctant to send out free ebooks now because the last time I did that someone put it on a pirating site, but you're welcome to ask and I may decide to do so on a case by case basis.

Please, please don't pirate books. Authors really don't generally make a lot as it is. We're not all JK Rowling. Minimising our already low revenue stream, especially self published authors, is shitty. It actually upsets me to think that someone who follows this blog might be one of the people pirating or asking for pirated copies. If it is you and you see this, I'm asking you to stop. I will be telling you next time.

Ehhh im pretty pro.pirate if you cant afford it you cant afford it. Pirate sites get you more audience which means more people can share it.

If you wanna stiffle that be my guest.

But your only gonna damage yourself.

Literally no. Stop. Desist. This is a super Bad Take, and also incredibly inappropriate to add to my post here. Let me explain.

I don't need exposure. I don't need 'audience'. That doesn't pay my bills. That doesn't compensate me for my months of hard work. I don't need people to 'share' my work for me free of charge by stealing it and distributing it for free without my consent.

You fundamentally misunderstand how the publishing industry works. It doesn't work by people stealing books. That sure benefits the reader, but it royally fucks over the author. Work being shared on pirating sites does absolutely sweet bugger all for me as an author. Audiences who know they can get my shit for free aren't going to suddenly start paying for it just because they've now heard of me, so your comments about building an audience are asinine; it's not building a paying audience for me, but an audience of people who steal my shit. Some audience.

I've sold hundreds of copies of my book based on the quailty of it (presumably; either that or my mum has been bribing people). It's selling itself pretty well, thanks. It's been performed as a play! It has pretty good reviews! I don't need to eschew being financially compensated in exchange for more audience, especially not if that audience isn't going to fucking pay. An audience gained from a pirate site is useless to me. It does nothing for me. I have one book out currently. Every person who steals it is someone who doesn't buy it. It's another sale lost. It's nothing gained. I don't have a back catalogue for people to buy once they've heard of me. It's theft and then fuck all benefit to me.

Writing isn't all about making money and it's a privilege to have your work out there and read, but it's also work, and in a capitalist society, that merits being compensated for the acknowledgement of that work. I'm not just a money hungry piece of shit (or I'd have priced my book at an actually decent profit margin) but I need money to, y'know, eat. Writing is one way I do that. I can't do that if people steal my work.

I don't give half a sodden shit if you're pro pirate. I'm not, and it's my livelihood on the line here, so maybe consider people's feelings before adding your two cents to a post. You've basically just ignored my feelings completely in order to add your spicy hot take to a post because apparently your misinformed opinion is more important than my livelihood. It's not. There's a time and a place to espouse your viewpoint. This was categorically not it.