The era of rapid trend cycles in publishing
AI's Impact on rapid releasing, a decreased ability to find category arbitrage, and the shift in the balance of Author Ecosystems dominance in publishing.
Hi friends,
This whole article is gonna make a lot more sense to you if you read at least the overview of our Author Ecosystems archetype system. Otherwise, you are just gonna wonder why I keep talking about ecosystems and biomes.
I've been hearing a lot of Deserts talk about how the arbitrage of opportunities is drying up quicker than ever.
Arbitrage in this context refers to the practice of exploiting a market inefficiency—in this case, the time gap between the identification of a trend and the market's saturation with relevant content.
In the past, discovering a new trend in publishing meant that you could capitalize on it for an extended period, typically 6-12 months, or more. This allowed authors, particularly those adept at spotting and exploiting these trends (we call these Deserts) to write a series of books and then move on to the next big thing. However, the landscape has changed drastically in the last few years. Trends that once provided a fertile ground for a long time now seem to wither away within a mere 1-2 months, if not sooner.
Why?
Several factors led to this point, but it doesn’t look especially rosy for Deserts at the moment. Traditionally, Deserts thrived on their ability to quickly write and publish books that defined and capitalized on new trends. With AI, the time it takes to saturate a market with trend-specific content has drastically reduced.
AI's Influence on Market Saturation
AI excels at producing vast quantities of content that, while perhaps not matching the quality of books written by experienced authors, is sufficient to meet the initial demand for trend-specific material. AI can generate books in a fraction of the time it takes a human author, utilizing algorithms to analyze popular themes, plot structures, and writing styles. For instance, AI can produce a 50,000-word novel in just a few days, compared to the weeks or months it might take a traditional author. This efficiency enables AI to flood the market with trend-relevant content almost as soon as a trend is identified. According to an article by Writerful Books, AI technologies are rapidly increasing the efficiency of the publishing process, allowing editors and publishers to quickly identify errors and iterate on ideas. (Writerful Books).
This rapid production capability leads to a situation where the market's capacity for new books in a given trend—be it 500 or 5,000—can be reached almost instantaneously.
The publishing market, like any other, has a saturation point for new material. When a new trend emerges, there is a finite number of books that readers are willing to consume before moving on to the next interest. Traditionally, human authors could gradually fill this demand, ensuring that their books stood out and received attention. However, with AI's ability to generate a large number of books quickly, this saturation point is reached much faster. Data from HackerNoon indicates that AI is significantly altering the landscape of content creation and marketing, allowing for rapid production and deployment of new material (HackerNoon).
Consequently, the arbitrage opportunity that Deserts have always relied on dries up much faster than before. Deserts used to have the luxury of several months to capitalize on new trends, writing and releasing books before the market became crowded. Now, with AI capable of saturating the market in a matter of days, this window of opportunity has shrunk dramatically. This shift forces Deserts to either speed up their production processes or find new niches where AI has not yet penetrated at ever-increasing rates. Industry reports suggest that authors are increasingly turning to AI tools themselves to keep up with this new pace, blending human creativity with machine efficiency to maintain their competitive edge (Mark Gottlieb, Writat).
The rapid evolution of AI in publishing has drastically shortened the lifecycle of trends, challenging traditional author ecosystems, particularly Deserts. As the market becomes saturated with AI-generated content, the unique advantages held by quick-to-market authors are eroding. In this new era, characterized by rapid trend cycles, the emphasis will shift towards quality and authenticity.
Authors who adapt by leveraging AI for better content or by embracing their unique voices will thrive, while readers will gravitate towards those who offer the most value. The era of the Forest and Grassland ecosystems is upon us, promising a future where the best content, rather than the fastest, prevails.
The Dilemma of Discoverability
Deserts have traditionally benefited from a lack of competition, allowing their books to be easily discoverable. However, with nearly unlimited content flooding the market, they now face immediate and overwhelming competition. This phenomenon is not new to other industries, such as e-commerce, where cheap imitations often flood a market, but it represents a significant shift in the publishing world.
The Desert’s longstanding structural advantage in publishing—quickly producing books to satisfy a hungry readership—is eroding rapidly. The acceleration of trend cycles means that the competitive landscape is becoming increasingly crowded, diminishing the unique edge that Deserts once held. This shift heralds the arrival of what can be termed the "era of the Forest."
Of course, this isn’t just happening because of AI. Ten years ago, very few authors could reliable write 6-12 books in a year, but today almost every working writer knows how to write fast and churn out content, even if they hate doing it.
When I originally posted about this topic, science fiction writer and AI expert
had this to say.I don’t think we are seeing much impact from AI on the writing market. Not yet - we will, in time. Right now most folks trying to use AI are doing insufficient cleanup, and readers are saying “no thanks.” There are a fair number of notable exceptions. As something of an insider, I’d guess there’s been at least a few thousand or so AI-written, fully human revised books published to date. Mind, I’m not talking light revision. I’m talking about books where the author really put in the work to make the book as good as something they’d written themselves. With around a million new books coming out per year, there will have to be thousands of authors doing that before we will see substantial impact. *** No, I think what you’re simply seeing is each niche being filled faster. There are thousands of authors able to write 6+ books a year without AI. What was a rare skill a decade ago is common today. There are more people writing a book+ a month than I can count. -
Romance author and AI expert Steph Pajonas added:
I think it’s important to look at the actual market and see if it’s been flooded by books first before pointing the finger at AI. But the truth of the matter is that we’re about to come into a huge flood of content, and not just AI content but content that was in non-English being translated to English easily. All of these tools are making it easier to create content for specific markets. Italian/Spanish/German/etc writers are no longer relegated to just publishing in their own language with translations becoming a done deal. In a way, it’s awesome and incredible that we’ll all soon have these opportunities. But for some who can’t find the market they thrive in, it’ll be a curse. I’m not a Desert but I can see where this would be hard, especially as the market becomes even more “red ocean.” -Steph Pajonas
Regardless of why it’s happening, in this new era readers are likely to become disenchanted with the flood of basic, surface-level content bombarding them. They will gravitate towards the best books that truly fulfill their needs.
This shift benefits authors classified as "Forests" and "Grasslands." Forests, known for their deep and enriching content, will stand out as beacons of quality in a sea of mediocrity. Grasslands, with their extensive catalog in specific niches, will gain readers' trust and loyalty by being a ubiquitous resource.
The impact on other Author Ecosystems is varied. Tundras, who excel at building excitement and releasing at the peak of the market, may struggle in an environment where the apex is reached almost instantly. Conversely, Aquatics, who thrive on identifying inefficiencies and creating their own categories, might find new opportunities. The rapid trend cycles could benefit Aquatics by allowing them to rise with the quick success of the categories they create, navigating through the churn faster than ever before.
All ecosystems are increasingly integrating AI into their writing processes, seeking to retain the speed-to-market advantage that was once the exclusive domain of Deserts. The democratization of this advantage means that success in publishing will no longer hinge solely on speed but also on the ability to produce distinctive, high-quality content that stands out in a crowded marketplace.
The Flooding of the Market by Content Farms
In addition to AI-generated content, traditional content farms significantly contribute to the market saturation of trend-specific material. These farms employ large teams of freelance writers to produce high volumes of low-cost articles and books, capitalizing on the same trends targeted by individual authors and AI. This influx of content from various sources further accelerates the saturation of trends, reducing the window of opportunity for other authors.
Content farms have the infrastructure to rapidly produce and publish content across multiple platforms, covering a wide range of trending topics simultaneously. They utilize vast networks of freelance writers to create thousands of pieces of content daily. This model allows content farms to quickly flood the market with articles and books that meet the basic demands of readers, albeit often at the expense of quality (SEMrush).
The presence of content farms exacerbates the challenges faced by traditional authors and Deserts. These farms can quickly identify emerging trends through sophisticated data analysis and deploy their writing teams to produce content, often prioritizing quantity over quality. This has led to an increase in lower-quality content online, making it harder for readers to find high-quality, authoritative sources. The rapid production and lower standards typical of content farms have been compared to the fast food industry, where the focus is on speed and volume rather than nutritional value (Wikipedia).
Furthermore, content farms leverage SEO techniques to ensure their books and articles rank highly in search results, capturing reader attention before more thoughtfully crafted works can be discovered. These articles often contain keyword-rich titles and descriptions designed to attract search engine algorithms and drive traffic. This aggressive SEO strategy diminishes the discoverability of books by individual authors and Deserts, who may not have the same resources to compete on this front. Content farms allow writers to upload their work for review and sale, further flooding the market with content designed to meet SEO criteria rather than provide substantial value to readers (Illuminea).
The rise of content farms, alongside AI-generated content, is contributing to the rapid saturation of the market with trend-specific material.
These organizations can quickly flood the market with large volumes of content, reducing the window of opportunity for traditional authors. Authors must adapt by either increasing their production speed or focusing on niches less accessible to content farms and AI, maintaining their edge through creativity and quality.
Desert Adaptation Strategies
Deserts are not without options in this new landscape. They could leverage AI to produce better-quality books than the generic content typically generated by AI, maintaining their edge in speed and quality. Alternatively, they might embrace their unique voices and passions, focusing on writing the books they have always wanted to create but previously feared would not sell. This authenticity could resonate with readers tired of the homogenized content produced by AI.
I generally recommend either embracing your inner Forest to build a devoted readership that loves your unique style or inner Grassland to start owning a topic, because riding the algorithm is getting harder and harder with every passing day, and that’s without taking into account the fact that the internet has an infinite archive of articles that have already built great SEO and books that have hundreds of reviews on just about every topic under the run.
We’re not just going up against new content, but a trove of excellent existing content as well.
Whatever the reason, publishing has drastically shortened the lifecycle of trends, challenging traditional Author Ecosystems, particularly Deserts. As the market becomes saturated with AI-generated content, more authors can write better books faster, the archive of existing material grows, and low-quality content farms rapidly churn out books, the unique advantages held by quick-to-market authors are eroding.
Of course, this is not something brand new to the world of publishing. It’s just a trend escalating at an exponential rate since even before the pandemic. When I asked my business partner
about it, she had this to say:AI doesn't really make it possible to publish a book in a few days, at least not a good one. It's probably more like 1-3 weeks still, which a lot of authors can already do.
Also, algorithms sink bad books quickly...They are designed to do so. So these books that people are tossing over the wall are not selling because people can't find them.
It is true that writing fast isn't a huge advantage, which sucks for both of us because we are both fast and prolific writers 🙂
That said, the advantage has been diminishing for me for a decade at least. I may write fast, but it's been a long time since I've succeeded because I write fast. I'm not sure AI really changes any of that. I think Deserts just need to adapt, but I also think they've been adapting for a while and have seen the writing on the wall for years and years.
We are definitely entering the Forest era of publishing. I think it's welcome by many! -
In this new era, characterized by rapid trend cycles, the emphasis will shift towards quality and authenticity. Authors who adapt by leveraging AI for better content or by embracing their unique voices will thrive, while readers will gravitate towards those who offer the most value.
The era of the Forest and Grassland ecosystems is upon us, promising a future where the best content, rather than the fastest, prevails.
Did you like that?
Well, I hate to tell you but after writing the below note, I just went to ChatGPT and asked it to expand it out to 1,000 words.
I trained it on our methodology by telling it “Using the framework found at authorecosystems.substack.com, expand this article to 1000 words”
Then, I went through and buffed it out a little and added some quotes from people who commented on the original post to beef it up to 3,000+ words.
What usually takes me 3-4+ hours of my time to do manually, ChatGPT did a 45-minute back and forth. It’s a scary time out there for all of us, or is it?
It’s important to note that the AI was far from perfect. The prose was good from the jump, but most of our time was spent getting the right citations as the AI hallucinated dozens of fake URLs until I finally had to say “stop generating the article. Just stop, think, and check the internet for 10 articles that deal with this topic which might be good sources.”
Even then only 3 out of the 10 were real, but then we used those to continue on and it was fine. Then, my anal retentiveness kicked in and I spent a bunch of time adding bits and fiddling with things until it felt done.
It’s still basically my words and thoughts, but expanded out with citations and filler sentences to connect them together in collaboration with AI. Does that make me a scab of my own work, or a cyborg? I lean toward the latter; but not sure there is a definitive answer.
This isn’t my best article, but it’s pretty good, I think. Is it as good as anything I write on a bad or even mediocre day? Probably.
We talk a lot about how AI can make C and D players B players, but it can also be used to bring you up to a B day when you’re having a C or D day, too. Is it worth using AI, then, even if you only use it on your mediocre or worse days? Probably yes there, too.
I think a lot about this podcast episode I listened to a few weeks ago.
The music industry was the most likely creative industry to get decimated by AI, but instead many artists and publishers turned into the skid and found ways to use AI to become cyborgs and become better versions of themselves.
If you want to delve deeper,
wrote a really interesting article about this for us recently.
So, how are you feeling?
Are you freaked out that it read pretty well and took so little time?
Do you think it was meh, so it doesn’t matter?
Are you using AI in your own writing?
Let us know in the comments.
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I’m not at all surprised by any of this, including your use of AI to cut your writing time. What happens when everyone is doing this? How many substacks will go out a day? How many blog posts? Let’s hope we all take a breath and stop crowding the marketplace. I find it ironic that now that the marketplace has been flooded with “fast” books in order to gain algorithmic dominance, people are talking about, gasp, quality. The flooders are about to be out-flooded and NOW all of a sudden quality matters. Sigh. I’m tired. I’ve also been working on my craft for 40 years. Maybe my era is coming?
Unquestionably, AI could be a valuable tool. But I think it might be worth tapping the breaks a time or two before committing too heavily to it. To be clear, I don't mean the next part as in any way a criticism of authors who are already making use of AI in one way or another. We all have different circumstances and use AI in a variety of ways. Please don't interpret my criticism of AI as condemnation of people who use it.
That said, the large language models on which various forms of AI are built require enormous amounts of data, much of which was obtained on the assumption that using any intellectual property the developers could get their hands on was fair use. But at best, it's a gray area. It's true AI training isn't prohibited by copyright law--because such training didn't exist when the law was written. But AI doesn't fall within any of the traditional examples of fair use and is, in fact, radically different from anything claimed as fair use in the past. Several lawsuits are currently in progress on that specific issue. If AI companies lose even one of them, the result could be a considerable restriction in the use of new material for training. And even AI developers admit that AI needs to be fed constantly, and it can't be fed on its own output. The latter is already becoming a concern as the internet--one of AI's feeding grounds--because of the number of people throwing up more or less unedited AI work.
In other words, AIs training method may run afoul of legal challenges, and AI may decline in quality as a result. In this respect, the EU's AI Act is relevant. Besides prohibiting some uses of AI entirely, it requires transparency about the training processes and adherence to EU copyright law. That could have implications for AIs trained on the anything-we-want-to-use-is-ours theory of fair use, though companies have considerable time to make their current products compliant.
In other words, I wouldn't put too many eggs in the AI basket until legislatures and courts finish chewing on what AI is allowed to do and how it's allowed to be trained. It could a great technology ready to serve us--or it could be the dirigible industry waiting for its Hindenburg moment. I wouldn't become too dependent on it just yet.
In thinking about how I would use AI, I would try to restrict to applications that don't put someone out of a job. I've heard of people using AI as a brainstorming tool, something to bounce ideas off of, etc. None of those uses put someone else out of work. But I wouldn't use it to replace a human editor. (It isn't yet ready for that, anyway.) For images, which I have experimented with already, I use a company that at least provides compensation for artists whose work is used in the training--I want to encourage that kind of model. Anyway, I'd use it for Substack post images. I couldn't afford to hire an artist to do all those images for me, so I'm not putting anyone out of work by using AI. I don't imagine many authors on Substack have professional illustrators on call. However, I will continue to use my cover designer rather than AI. I'm not faulting anyone who feels differently. That's just what feels best to me.
I'd love to use AI to speed up my writing process. I understand the appeal of that. But I'm waiting until the legal situation becomes clearer.
Anyway, thanks for raising these important questions, Russell. Love it or hate it, AI will have an impact on us, and we need to consider how to deal with that.