Listen, I’ve been staring at this bottle of Wild Turkey for the past hour trying to make sense of what’s happening to books. Maybe it’s the bourbon talking, but we’re witnessing the McDonald’s-ification of literature, and nobody seems to be hitting the panic button.
Microsoft - yeah, the folks who can’t even make Windows update without breaking your printer - just launched something called 8080 Books. Their first masterpiece? A tech optimism manifesto by their own CTO. Because what the world really needs is another tech executive telling us why we should be excited about the robots taking our jobs. They even made a chatbot for the book, in case reading it wasn’t dystopian enough.
The whole thing reminds me of last night at O’Malley’s when Brad kept insisting his protein shake cocktail would revolutionize drinking. Nobody asked for it, Brad. Nobody.
But here’s where it gets interesting: There’s this outfit called Spines promising to pump out 8,000 books a year. Eight thousand. That’s not publishing, that’s literary diarrhea. They’re bragging about two-week turnaround times from manuscript to market. You know what else takes two weeks? Getting over a proper hangover. Some things shouldn’t be rushed.
And then there’s ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, waltzing into publishing like a drunk teenager at their first high school party. They’re targeting Gen Z readers with something called 8th Note Press. Because if there’s one thing missing from literature, it’s viral dance challenges between chapters.
The real gut punch? These AI-powered publishing platforms are putting editors, designers, and translators out of work faster than my last relationship went south. They’re replacing craftspeople with algorithms, turning the art of bookmaking into the literary equivalent of a vending machine sandwich.
You want to know how bad it’s gotten? Amazon had to limit self-published authors to three books per day. PER DAY. I can’t even finish three drinks before noon (okay, maybe I can, but that’s not the point).
The kicker? All these tech bros keep spouting the same buzzwords: “democratizing publishing,” “accelerating the process,” “disrupting the industry.” Translation: “We’re going to flood the market with so much AI-assisted crap that finding a good book will be like finding a clean glass in my kitchen.”
Here’s what nobody’s talking about: Books used to mean something. They were slow-cooked meals in a world of microwave dinners. Now we’re turning them into literary McNuggets, processed and packaged for maximum efficiency.
Remember when writing a book meant pouring your soul onto the page, wrestling with every sentence until your fingers bled and your liver begged for mercy? Now it’s just “Hey AI, write me a bestseller about a vampire who’s also a cryptocurrency trader.”
The worst part isn’t even the AI - it’s the mindset that everything needs to be instant, effortless, and optimized. We’re losing the beautiful mess of human creativity, replacing it with something sanitized and algorithmic.
Look, I’m not saying we should go back to stone tablets and quill pens. But maybe, just maybe, some things are worth taking our time with. Like a good bourbon. Or a book that makes you forget you’re drinking bourbon.
I need another drink.
Until next time, Henry Chinaski
P.S. - If you’re reading this through an AI text-to-speech program, I hope you choke on my syntax.
Source: The Tech World Is ‘Disrupting’ Book Publishing. But Do We Want Effortless Art?