📚 What AI could do to the book industry
And what happened when I asked it to write Shakespeare in the style of Hunter S. Thompson
I’ll spare you a cliché opening about how artificial intelligence is changing everything and instead offer a warning: If you’ve ever worked in the book industry or had your business tied to its fate, you may get some bad flashbacks in the charts I’m about to show you.
How book publishers expect to use AI
If you haven’t read the diagnostic in The New York Times from this past week about AI’s impact on the book industry, dive in. And you may be surprised when you see the key takeways. What interested me most was the idea that book content really isn’t the problem publishers want AI to solve; they seem to care a great deal more about audience reach and marketing.
Just look at this quote:
"The challenge for publishers is not generating more content, it’s solving the discovery problem," said Madeline McIntosh, the former chief executive of Penguin Random House U.S. "That’s really where the gold mine is."
The article gets into a handful of applications: book design, writing stories, and related work. But publishers are understandably hesitant about some of these use cases. First, they see a vested interest in keeping their libraries out of the datasets used to train large language models. Sarah Silverman clearly holds this view — and is suing OpenAI over ChatGPT’s knowledge of her book “The Bedwetter.” Publishers and authors also care about another key detail: Text composed by machines cannot be copyrighted (and even machine-assisted text will have to journey through the court system to show how the law will be applied).
All of this is happening on the heels of a resurgence in print book sales. The COVID-19 pandemic saw a spike that finally lifted the volume of units purchased past their peak in 2008, with 843 million books sold in 2021 and 789 million sold in 2022.
Bookstores didn’t exactly see a parallel return of good fortune. If fact, they took a deep hit during lockdowns. But 2021 and 2022 at least looked better than 2020.
All of this got me thinking about another article in my feed from the past week, though: "What If Authors Covered Books Like Musicians Cover Songs?" by Alice Nuttall on Book Riot.
As someone who loves seeing different directors take on the same plays — and whose first Kindle purchase was "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies" by Seth Grahame-Smith — I thought Nuttall brought up some great points.
Anyway, because AI was already on my mind, I asked ChatGPT (v3.5) to show "the first scene of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet' as it would appear if it were the first chapter of a book written in the style of Hunter S. Thompson." Here’s what it produced:
Chapter 1: The Madness of Elsinore
The night descended upon Elsinore like a deranged specter, suffocating the air with the stench of intrigue and the promise of chaos. The castle's stone walls whispered secrets of treachery, and the moon above seemed to glimmer with an unholy glow, casting eerie shadows upon the Danish kingdom.
In this eerie landscape of madness, a lone figure stood amidst the swirling fog, his name: Hamlet. A troubled soul, he was the prince of Elsinore, but tonight, he was more like a raving spirit, plagued by questions and dark thoughts that gnawed at his sanity like a rabid beast.
Hamlet's mind was a twisted carousel of emotions, each one more vivid and intense than the last. He had just buried his father, the former king, whose death still clung to the air like a grim omen. But it wasn't just grief that tormented him; it was suspicion – a gnawing, relentless paranoia that twisted reality and blurred the lines between friend and foe.
As he paced restlessly through the castle's shadowy corridors, the prince encountered his old pals, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. But tonight, even their familiar faces seemed strange and deceitful, like chameleons hiding in plain sight.
"Hamlet, old buddy! Why the long face? Let's hit the town and drown our sorrows!" exclaimed Rosencrantz, a devilish grin plastered on his face.
Guildenstern chimed in, "Aye, 'tis the cure for all that ails thee, my friend!"
But Hamlet's eyes narrowed, and he peered through their façade. He knew something was amiss, like a gut feeling screaming in his ear, warning him to beware.
"Enough of your drivel! What brings you to Elsinore? Are you messengers of fate, or harbingers of doom?" Hamlet snapped, his words a venomous lash.
Rosencrantz and Guildenstern exchanged glances, their faces revealing nothing but feigned innocence. "We come at the behest of the king, my lord," said Rosencrantz, a hint of unease betraying his tone.
"The king, you say? The same king whose hands are stained with my father's blood?" Hamlet's voice trembled with a mix of sorrow and fury.
Rosencrantz stammered, "We serve the king, but we are your friends too, Hamlet. We mean no harm."
Hamlet's mind was a tempest, a whirlwind of suspicion and uncertainty. His heart told him not to trust them, for everyone had a hidden agenda in this twisted realm.
"Friends, you say? In Elsinore, friends are but vipers in disguise!" he spat, his eyes blazing with intensity.
As the tension escalated, a ghostly apparition appeared on the castle's ramparts. The figure of the late king, shrouded in ethereal mist, beckoned to Hamlet with a haunting urgency.
"Hamlet, my son," the ghostly voice echoed through the night. "Avenge my murder, expose the treachery that poisons Elsinore!"
Hamlet's mind reeled, torn between madness and truth. Was this a mere hallucination born of his tortured psyche, or was it the bitter reality of a kingdom entangled in a web of lies?
In this kaleidoscope of deceit and desperation, Hamlet found himself at the crossroads of sanity and madness. A choice lay before him: to succumb to the darkness that threatened to consume him or to embark on a journey of vindication and chaos that would shake Elsinore to its very core.
And so, with the moon as his witness and the specter of his father as his guide, Hamlet embraced the insanity of Elsinore, plunging headfirst into the heart of darkness, where truth and deception intertwined like lovers in a deadly dance.
Buckle up, dear readers, for the tale of Hamlet, the Prince of Madness, was about to unfold in this twisted kingdom of shadows and intrigue, where the line between reality and delusion blurred, and the scent of revenge hung thick in the air like a drug-induced haze.
I’ll let you judge that for yourself. The paranoid tone rang true, but there’s no substitute for the real thing. Personally, I’d rather do another read-through of Ryan North’s "To Be or Not to Be."
Side work
Watch for an update here next time with a link to something I’m excited to finally share (as soon as I secure the domain).
Here are No. 42 and No. 43 my “Diesel Springs Science Fair” series, which is almost to the halfway point on its way to the 100-post goal.
Recent side reads and watches
"Foundation’s Edge" Isaac Asimov’s first follow-up to the main three Foundation novels, thick on dated gender dynamics and familiar plot devices but strong on the world-building, big idea exploration, and suspense that bolstered the first three books
"Principles: Life and Work" Ray Dalio’s telling of how he developed and committed to bedrock rules that helped him build Bridgewater Associates, an insightful read even if you don’t plan to start a hedge fund.
"Superman: The Last Days of Lex Luthor" No. 1, one of the best openings to a Superman story I’ve read in a long time, thanks to Mark Waid and Bryan Hitch