Between the surveillance bills being passed and the un-opt-out-able AI initiatives on Amazon (one of the most accessible platforms for self-published authors to publish on), I’m starting to think what options we all have to exist freely online without running the risk of having our work stolen – because that’s what generative AI is.
I’ve mulled it over and came to the conclusion that self-hosting is the optimal choice (for me). I know that means not casting a wide net of readers and comes with a lot of risks, but I guess I’ll just have to figure that out. Publishing ebooks, especially self-hosted is risky, because someone could more easily feed my book into chatgpt or whatever other slop machine, but I don’t know what other options I have to make sure my books are accessible to people who want it but can’t afford to order a physical copy.
I’ve been operating under the Costco $1.50 hot dog and soda combo idea: keep it affordable for others and enough people will talk about it, be interested, and want to support a self-published author that it won’t be necessary to raise the price. I don’t factor in the hours (ahem, years) I’ve put into my books, because the important part for me has always been accessibility. I used to post some stories as serials, like Dickens, totally free, because the fun part was leaving people on cliffhangers and doing occasional “choose your own adventure” polls within the community.
My renewal is coming up for this site, so I’ll be private-ing a bunch of posts and working on the back end of things until we’re ready to launch. Well, re-launch. Don’t worry, these posts will be made public again, but they’ll be under a different tab and things will look different around here.
If you’re interested in getting your hands on my ebook, TEETH, before I pull it it’s only 99 cents on Amazon.
Catch you on the flip side.
Raine August 