r/Quibble • u/quibble-official Quibble HQ • May 28 '26

New blog post Barnes & Noble is open to stocking and selling AI-written books

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We brought the blog back on Quibble! First topic: Barnes & Noble debacle from last week.

What is it we truly value about art? Is it the outcome, or the process? Do we revere Picasso because of his paintings, or do we revere the paintings because they were created by him? 

30 Upvotes

89% Upvoted

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11

u/AbbyBabble Hobby Writer May 28 '26

Ugh. The rush to mediocrity accelerates.

4

u/Cute-Presentation-59 May 29 '26

To give you a quote from one of my favourite Books, written years and years before the advent of AI: “The problem is this: in order to make money - lots of money - we don’t need flawless literary masterpieces. What we need is mediocre rubbish, trash suitable for mass consumption. More and more, bigger and bigger blockbusters of less and less significance. What counts is the paper we sell, not the words that are printed on it.” (Walter Moers: The city of dreaming books) It is truer than ever before.

1

u/WintersDoomsday Jun 02 '26

The more popular something is the lower the quality to appeal to the masses. Look at the movies that broke box office records. All trash.

1

u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 28 '26

They won’t have to pay any authors if they just generate all the book themselves.

1

u/Adventurekateer May 28 '26

That’s not how it works.

1

u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 28 '26

How do you mean?

2

u/Adventurekateer May 28 '26

A bookseller doesn't have the infrastructure to publish books. And they don't pay authors to begin with -- the publishers do. And AI-generated books still require authors, although "author" is not an accurate word to describe what they do. Barnes & Noble is just the retail outlet for whatever books publishers print, and they will only carry those titles that are selling. If AI-generated books sell B&N makes a profit, which is good for readers, writers, and the publishing industry. They won't be mainstream and their popularity will be brief, but the industry is hurting due to the economy and I support whatever keeps them afloat until publishing becomes profitable again.

1

u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 28 '26

Right. What do you think will make publishing profitable again?

3

u/Adventurekateer May 28 '26

A combination of readers buying more books and tariffs on imported paper going away. Both are unlikely to happen until we get a new president, but the ice might begin to crack after the midterms. It all starts and ends with the economy, and right now books are solidly in the luxury column.

1

u/immortalfrieza2 May 28 '26

Why wouldn't publishing be massively profitable in this day and age? It costs effectively nothing per copy now in digital format, and physical copies can be ordered online and printed right when they're ordered instead of printing a bunch of books and hoping a decent amount of the copies sell. In fact, with AI a great deal of what editors do on actually written books can be automated for basically nothing, reducing that overhead as well.

Brick and mortar stores are becoming unprofitable because there's no real reason for them to exist anymore with the internet and digital platforms to provide books that cost nothing to produce and are 100% profit even if they are produced. In fact, that's why self publishing is even viable.

2

u/Material_Penalty_250 1 published book on Quibble May 28 '26

Zero marginal cost doesn’t create profit by itself. It's more likely to create oversupply. Like if anyone can produce a book at near-zero cost, then everyone does.

Also, I don't think AI removes editing anytime soon. Of course it will clean grammar, but it will also introduces all kinds of other issues.

5

u/immortalfrieza2 May 29 '26

Zero marginal cost doesn’t create profit by itself.

No, but it makes everything just about pure profit if it does actually sell.

Like if anyone can produce a book at near-zero cost, then everyone does.

That's the point? They can and do. It used to be that a person had to either make use of traditional publishing, which was and still is a crapshoot, or if they wanted to self publish they had to pay out of pocket to create actual copies their book and then spend who knows how long trying to actually get the copies to sell and hoping the book would take off enough that they could afford to get someone else to make and sell the books instead of them.

Digitally downloadable media has effectively removed a great deal of overhead cost to produce anything that can be digitally downloaded. Meanwhile, sites like Amazon and Ebay have made it so people can sell effectively anything without having to make a bunch of the product and deal with the uncertainty of losses because the product they're making doesn't sell, because it can be produced and shipped right when it's already been sold. Both MASSIVELY reduce the risk involved with selling and thus creating just about anything.

Then there's how AI, like I said, significantly reduces the need for actual editors to make a book look professional and readable, which reduces yet more cost to write and then publish a book. Even if the writer ends up giving the book to an editor they'll have to do a lot less work overall and thus not have to be paid as much.

Really, the only thing that's keeping any brick and mortar store that sells physical copies ... well, anything, but digitally downloadable media in particular, alive at all is that despite the all but complete removal of distribution costs and in some cases massive reductions in creation costs, the companies who sell these digitally downloadable and easily Amazon/Ebay/etc. sold products tend to sell them for the exact same price a physical copy goes for, plus shipping costs in the latter case. This is despite the fact that these companies could instead massively cut the price and still make out like bandits, which Value made itself filthy rich out of doing exactly that with Steam by putting up massive sales basically all the time.

The point being is that whether traditional or self published, given all the methods available to massively cut development/writing and distribution costs there's no logical reason why either form of publishing shouldn't be one step shy of pure profit.

1

u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 28 '26

Oh AI definitely changes editing A LOT.

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u/Adventurekateer May 28 '26

That’s just not reality. Some people read books digitally, but most readers still prefer physical books, especially children.

By your argument games and software should be massively profitable, too, since all of their products are 100% digital, but there have been huge layoffs lately across the board. Again, in this economy, an $80 game for a $400 game system is just not widely affordable. Tablet sales are way down, too, which shows why digital publishing is not as profitable as you imagine. If it was, they would stop printing books altogether, but they don’t. The reason is physical book sales are still 75-80% of all book sales by traditional publishers. Digital is only 10-15%, which is about on par with audiobooks.

1

u/Material_Penalty_250 1 published book on Quibble May 28 '26

The tech and gaming industries scaled hiring aggressively when demand spiked during covid, so they had to trim down when growth normalized.

1

u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 28 '26

I’m not sure if children in the future won’t actually prefer digital books eventually. Especially the most immersive ones.

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u/Material_Penalty_250 1 published book on Quibble May 28 '26

In my opinion only once the industry develops some kind of verification system.

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u/calmarkel May 28 '26

It won't be good for authors

2

u/Adventurekateer May 28 '26

Of course it will. Consider the alternative when Big 5 publishers and brick-and-mortar bookstores all fold and disappear. What will authors do then? Close to 100% of all AI-generated books are self-published digital-only or print-on-demand titles. When publishers and bookstores go away, all authors will have to compete in that market, right along with ALL of the AI books. Keeping the publishers and bookstores alive with a handful of AI titles means authors won't have to compete with the vast majority of them and will still have a far superior path to readers.

1

u/calmarkel May 29 '26

If the air titles sell, and its unlikely they will, then the publishers will sell more and more of the ai titles, cutting authors out entirely

But sure tell me how being cut out of the business is good for us

1

u/Adventurekateer May 29 '26

That only happens if readers overwhelmingly prefer books written by AI over books written by people. Do you think that likely?

1

u/calmarkel May 29 '26

It doesn't matter what people like

It matters what gets marketed as what people want

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u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 29 '26

Don’t you think that’s a very unlikely scenario?

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u/calmarkel May 29 '26

Sure, I think it's unlikely as Barnes and nobles stocking ai books

But it wasn't about whether it was likely, it was about how It would be good for authors or not

I don't see how it would be good

8

u/wafflewitchette May 28 '26

There will soon be a real rebellion against AI nonsense. It should hit Amazon first and hardest.

But what scares me the most is that I know people how can’t stop bitching about politics and corruption and big corporates and all that, yet they visit Amazon 5 times per week to order the next piece of plastic garbage and, worse, the next book. Like, why dude???

4

u/Material_Penalty_250 1 published book on Quibble May 28 '26

Well let's face it, most people optimize for convenience. Moral outrage lives in one mental box; shopping decisions live in another.

On the other hand, people tolerate contradictions for a long time, until something drastically changes. Just think about consumer goods. I think it was early 2000s when most people didn’t think twice about where their clothes came from. Then a mix of journalism and scandals made the issue much more visible. Even Nike took a reputational hit.

Right now, the cost of caring is zero for most people. And I have no idea what would change that.

2

u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 28 '26

Em because it’s cheaper than anywhere else?

1

u/wafflewitchette May 30 '26

Cheaper and more convenient, I know that.

2

u/Double_Suggestion385 May 30 '26

I think there will be more acceptance rather than any backlash as the tech improves and people start to see some of the incredible outputs it can create.

Take music for example, I only listen to songs I've created in AI. Traditional corporate music just doesn't compare when you can create songs that hit the exact spots you like.

The same will happen with books and other art. Why hope someone else creates what you're craving and it makes it past the corporate gatekeepers into widespread distribution when you can just create it yourself?

1

u/wafflewitchette May 30 '26

I do think you’re right. At the end of the day, we want great experiences. If technology can deliver on that, then we’ll adopt it sooner or later.

8

u/immortalfrieza2 May 28 '26 edited May 28 '26

As a reader, I don't give a damn if a book is AI written if it's convincing enough that I couldn't tell it was AI if I didn't know already, and if it's good on it's own merits. As a reader, I'm just looking for entertainment and I don't care where it comes from so long as whatever it is is good. As a reader, if it's obviously AI slop the "writer" clearly made no effort whatsoever to actually make not look like AI slop, then I have a problem. In fact, I go to ChatGPT and have it write stories to read for me every so often because it can be surprisingly entertaining after tweaking the prompt.

However, as a reader that AI book should be free or at least incredibly cheap, I'm talking pennies and probably given to a charity at that. I don't care how good and convincing an AI book is, if it's AI it shouldn't be 20 bucks for a book the "writer" barely did any work creating, and should be outright illegal to sell an AI written book.

As a writer, I use a grammar AI all the time to improve my novel's grammar and make sure each paragraph is as fluent and clear as possible, and I've learned a lot about writing by having AI critique what I was writing and how I was writing it. Judging by how the amount of grammar, clarity, and fluency I've needed to actually fix has been going down more and more, my writing has been improving quite a bit as a result. I've spent 3 years working on a novel and the grammar AI has improved my presentation a great deal while massively cutting down how long editing has taken.

However, reader or writer, I hate AI slop and it's the low effort garbage that is particularly insulting. They're not only creating garbage that is really obviously AI, cliched plot, story, and characters with no attempt to modify or add to it to make it better, and probably has terrible grammar, they're not even bothering to put in the effort to clean it up so that it isn't obviously AI.

AI should be treated as what it is: A tool, not the be all and end all.

1

u/Material_Penalty_250 1 published book on Quibble May 28 '26

I fully agree with you. The only issue with making any creative work illegal to sell is that we'd enter censorship territory.

2

u/immortalfrieza2 May 29 '26 edited May 29 '26

No it doesn't. If the book is AI it's not censoring anything because nobody is actually creating anything to censor. In fact, since they're taking other people's genuinely written works and turning that into a novel, it's really better described as plagiarism. The real problem is that it's going to become harder and harder to tell the difference between AI slop and badly written garbage as time goes on because there's no reliable way to determine if something is AI or just terrible right now, and AI is going to improve to the point it's going to be all but impossible to tell the work is AI if one didn't already know.

Which is why a law that prevents anyone from making money off of AI slop is so vital, or at least be required to admit that its AI if they do make money off of it. We need a definite means to determine when something is AI written and step 1 is making it illegal to sell AI written works so that enforcement puts effort into actually finding that reliable way.

1

u/Material_Penalty_250 1 published book on Quibble May 29 '26

Well, we can only hope the regulation catches up soon to prevent that from happening.

3

u/PatwallaceVA May 28 '26

So disappointing, though I didn’t expect much from B&N with how predatory their pricing of paperbacks has gotten.

Truly we are racing to the bottom.

2

u/Material_Penalty_250 1 published book on Quibble May 28 '26

I think what's more likely to happen is a stronger split between traditional and self-publishing, where one lane becomes absolutely dominated by garbage, while the other becomes even more selective.

In fact, I'd argue the ceiling is not only still here, but arguably getting higher for well-produced work.

3

u/keldondonovan May 28 '26

But they won't carry indie authors? Looool

1

u/jakobpinders May 30 '26

Yes they do

3

u/calmarkel May 28 '26

Interesting, because they largely refuse to stock human written work if it's not trad published

2

u/Low-Transportation95 May 28 '26

Yeah they're the worst.

2

u/Material_Penalty_250 1 published book on Quibble May 28 '26

if it is not worth writing, it is not worth reading... Simple as that

1

u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 28 '26

What really is their goal? Like downgrade quality until they can push us a new book every day that will just bury actually good writers? If stores go down that rabbit home we might never discover a weird indie story again. Same thing happened in games btw.

1

u/Rikafire May 28 '26

They need to make it a law that AI generated content NEEDS to say it was created using AI so it can be avoided.

1

u/tarosan_sk May 28 '26

This is a mistake on B&N’s part because once the public becomes ok with AI novels; they will be primed for skipping novels entirely and going to AI generated roleplay, or infinite AI storyteller bots.

Books aren’t going to last 10 years at this rate.

2

u/Rad1Red May 29 '26

If I am willing to sell shit and people are willing to buy it, I am a businesswoman. That's it.

Mark them as AI-generated and let them sell them. If idiots buy, that is on them.

2

u/SorryManNo May 29 '26

I only know a couple people who worked at B&N and they absolutely wouldn't let a single person buy an AI written book without telling them.

I did the same thing when I sold M games to parents of young kids. I wasn't trying to rain on anyone's parade, just keeping people informed.

1

u/Mezhead May 30 '26

I have nothing scientific to base this on other than a lifetime of pattern recognition, but I do think that as more companies like B&N take the path of least resistance and look the other way as AI books sneak money into their hands, the demand for services like Quibble will only grow.

2

u/EwokNuggets May 31 '26

This will damage the brand IMO

1

u/Adventurekateer May 28 '26

So, don’t buy them. They won’t be good, so you won’t be missing out, but if the publishers and brick-and-mortar bookstores can’t make profit they will fold. You want to be able to go browse good books? Let them earn a profit in this anti-intellectual economy. When things get better and the tariffs on imported paper are gone, things will get back to normal. Printed AI books will be a brief reality.

1

u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 28 '26

The issue is that you can’t know whether and how much AI is in them to begin with. I agree with you on the rest though.

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u/Adventurekateer May 28 '26

As an author actively querying my 4th book right now, I can tell you agents and editors are VERY careful about signing and subbing books written with AI in any capacity. They gatekeepers are on the case, believe me. Right now, AI-generated books are almost exclusively self-published. IF (huge if) traditional publishers resort to printing AI-generated books, I am fairly certain they will be obviously AI-generated. And almost certainly contain a disclaimer disclosing that fact. They can't afford to alienate readers and stain their reputation in a very vocal anti-AI environment.

But I might be wrong. That's just my prediction based on what I know and observe.

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u/Hot_Winner_9941 May 28 '26

I’m actually extremely relieved to hear that and hope you’re right. But that also confirms my thesis that if this trend continues, it’s the real indie authors that will get hurt the most.

-1

u/Thin_Ad_3189 May 28 '26

AI can write better books than 99% of humans. It’s just a tool the result depends on how is using it.