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Either that or I accidentally ran into an author with a rod up their ass. Either way, to say I am non-plussed would be an understatement. I got a ambiguously worded email this morning after finishing Satan’s Affair. This is a Kindle Vella that I’ve been working on since November 2021, and Actually, earlier than that. I started the book in a legal pad, and it stayed in that legal pad for at least a year because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do with it. It didn’t fit anything I was currently writing or had currently published. So, it sat. And it sat for a long time.
While I was deciding what to do with it, Kindle Vella appeared. So, I dug out that notepad and input the story onto my computer. I then published it via Kindle Vella, where it sometimes gets read and sometimes doesn’t.
Now, I looked at this book yesterday and decided it was done. All the main plot points were completed. So, I added a final paragraph to an existing episode and republished it.
All of a sudden, I am inundated with Amazon emails stating that I ripped off another author because the title is the same. It took two emails for Amazon to kinda, sorta tell me that. Keep in mind that I had no idea the other book existed until I looked it up this morning. I take these complaints very seriously.
So, I sent an email stating that X author and my name are not the same. Neither are the covers or the premise. Nevermind the fact that the book is a KINDLE and my story is a KINDLE VELLA.
BUT BUT BUT it might be confusing to readers!
That’s an impossible metric. At no point can any author stay up to date with every book that’s every been published and its title. And Uh oh, this book was published on November 4, 2022. My first episode was published on November 1, 2021. Who ripped off who? The best-case scenario is that this author and myself were both working on these books at the same time. Now, I wouldn’t normally get upset about this. This type of shit happens all the time. I don’t think much about it unless I see a lot more similarities.
But to get your panties in a wad because someone else’s title is similar to yours is asinine. Get your panties in a wad if the premise, plot and characters are the fucking same. Other than that, keep working on your shit.
But for Kindle Vella authors, you may want to double-check your titles to make sure there’s nothing else published on Amazon with your title. It’s a quick search. Then, make your Kindle Vella title unique. I’d recommend going with long-tail titles.
If you were going to call it – Love on a boat, I’d go ahead and expand that to Love on a Cherry Red Boat in the Atlantic. If you were going to call it the Tomato Wars, I’d take a 1960s approach and call it – the Red Atomic Tomatoes of Doom.
God forbid anyone else get caught up in this BS.
As for my situation, I’ve retitled my Kindle Vella – Cort Witherspoon’s Lost Inheritance.
Why?
Because I really don’t give a fuck. The story is finished, and probably had I not finished it, I wouldn’t be dealing with this problem. My first thought was to just delete it. It’s not that popular. It’s not like I get 100 episodes read a month. It did get more popular in October, but that’s probably because of Halloween. It’s really not a Halloween story. Unfortunately, I could not delete it, so I opted to change the title. As far as I’m concerned, I’d rather let one go than lose the other 50+ books I’ve published, but Amazon didn’t give me that option, so I was forced to continue to deal with it. In the end, one Kindle Vella that makes $5 a month isn’t a hill to make a stand on. My tiny vampire from outer space books do a lot better, and when it comes right down to it, I’ll take a hit on a false accusation to keep those other books in circulation. I make my money off those tiny bitey books, and it's not income I can live without. Amazon is notorious for deleting entire author accounts for the hell of it. I was trying to avoid that scenario. As it stands, it looks like all they wanted was a title change. Let’s hope that’s all they wanted. If you want to avoid this same scenario, I’d recommend that you use very verbose titles for your kindle vellas to the point of being almost rediculous.
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The realm of literature has always been a mirror reflecting society's evolution. In recent years, the concept of "wokeness" has gained prominence, embodying a heightened awareness of social issues and a call for justice. Integrating wokeness as plot points in your novel can not only create engaging narratives but also contribute to meaningful conversations. In this article, we delve into the art of using wokeness as plot points, exploring how to weave social consciousness into your storytelling with finesse and impact.
1. Choosing Relevant Themes
Keywords: Social issues, Relevant themes, Intersectionality
Begin by selecting relevant social issues that resonate with your story's context. Address topics such as racism, gender equality, LGBTQ+ rights, and environmental concerns. Consider how these issues intersect and impact your characters' lives.
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X Writing Site is Not As Helpful as It Should Be
Let’s think about that for a moment. A writing website, some writing website is not as helpful as it should be. Can you think of any writing websites that fall under that category? It’s a writing website, but it’s not as helpful as you’d want it to be or as any writer would want it to be? I can think of over a dozen by name. Even this writing and author website is probably not as helpful as it should be, even though it pretty much takes you through the entire process from concept to book publication, if you read enough of the articles.
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If you’re not up on the latest freelancing news, you haven’t been paying attention. Within 7 days, the entire industry has been upended and disheveled due to AI knee jerk reactions by clients and content platforms.
What Could Be Revolutionary in Content Writing and SEO Is Now a Pariah
If you’ve spent any time looking for high-quality articles to research topics in the last two to five years, you know that Google, Bing, Yahoo and DuckDuckGo et al just keep getting worse. They promote low-quality content at the top of their search engine results and bury well-researched informative content that could actually provide you with knowledge. It gets even worse when you start looking for statistics. Need a stat on HR or another technical industry. Forget it. It’s behind a paywall. Are you researching a new medical procedure to help out your end client and need real facts and research studies on it? Forget it. It’s behind a paywall.
Enter AI
AI is a game changer when it comes to researching topics and getting information you can actually use to create in-depth high quality content that is human-readable. It also saves time on research because the AI just summarized those 10 good-quality web pages you were going to spend three hours looking for in order to properly research and craft your content. All you have to do is fact-check it and put it in your writing-experienced words.
Content Platforms Jump the Gun. Clients Freak Out: Industry Tanked.
If you haven’t seen the disclaimers and warnings on many of the content platforms these days, you’ve missed a whole industry shift. Many of these sites now require their writers to check a box that states - They did not use AI in any capacity nor did they copy any content or summarize any content from any existing page.
Uh oh….
No AI. No Copying or summarizing anything.
If you’ve ever researched anything, even at the academic level, you know that existing content and research on topics are reviewed first. In fact, sometimes this research is used to do a study on what’s already been studied in order to get a baseline. But, now, because of AI panic, writers are now not allowed to research, summarize or use anything existing. Huh?
So just how are content writers supposed to craft those articles? Under those rules, there can be nothing else written unless the writer already knows about it and can pull from their wealth of information. But then, how old is that information? Did you want the latest trends? Technological advancements? Well, if you did, your writer can’t go get it because that would constitute rewriting something that already exists on the Internet. Whoops.
Is the Industry Really Tanking?
You betcha.
Writers at WordAgents recently revolted, according to a post on Reddit. WordAgents actually did the exact opposite of most platforms. They embraced AI wholeheartedly. And wholly wrongly. Now, their base rate prior to implementing AI technology was 3 cents per word, according to the post and some comments. That’s already dangerously low for good-quality content.
Once they introduced the AI, their account managers ran all the articles through AI. Then, they pushed them through to the platform for writers to edit at 1 cent per word. The writers revolted, and understandably so. AI + human should be posting at a much higher rate than either one of those alone.
Another platform, Writers Access, decided to implement its own AI checker. If you know anything about AI checkers, you know that they are highly unreliable. They will say that content is clean that isn’t, and they will say that content has been partially or fully written by AI that hasn’t been put through AI, and the writer may not have even sampled any AI platforms to even begin to understand how they work.
Of course, Writer’s Access didn’t just implement this faulty AI checker, they accused writers of using AI without any basis, according to a post on Reddit. they also threatened to remove writers from the platform suspected AI as indicated by their haphazardly put-together checker and to send content back for AI-suspected revisions, which we all know there's no baseline for trying to edit content that's been flagged for AI. There's not even any protocol for defending yourself against such accusations. To make matters worse, WA no longer in-houses its own content for its blogs and marketing materials. Could it be due to the AI checker they just installed or the fact that they can’t even afford to pay their writers their worst rates on the platform? Makes you think, doesn’t it?
How Should AI Be Used?
AI should be used in a hybrid approach. When used correctly, it can increase your informational content, speed up the writing process, improve SEO and provide better end results. This means that if you want the best SEO content for your business, you should use writers that use AI but also know how to fact-check and clean up any content they may have used from the AI system.
But but but but but.... Google downgrades AI content! No, it doesn't. Who told you that? They advertise Bard on their front-end search page in order to encourage people to give it a try.
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The answer to that question kinda depends on which end of the science fiction stick you’re on. There are people who love it and people who hate it. There are also people who will avoid it like the plague because it’s too hyped, and some people just don’t want anything to do with any type of new technology.
What Are the Benefits of AI Technology Today?
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It can help you start a project.
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It can give you ideas.
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It can clarify certain aspects of certain topics.
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It can give you an overview of a topic.
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It can help you expand on a brainstorming session.
What Are the Drawbacks of AI Technology?
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It’s not going to reliably write anything for you.
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It’s not 100 percent correct.
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It is biased on some topics, especially fiction.
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If you ask it for facts then tell it to give you the sources, 99 percent of those sources go to 404 errors.
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The writing is flat.