• MAY 2024 ISSUE is available for you. Enjoy. CLICK HERE
Now you might wonder why I wrote that. It’s a certainly clever tagline that was made popular back in the 1980s when margarine was the big thing. These days, we have course realize that margarine is basically just fake stuff and totally unhealthy for us. Unlike regular good old-fashioned churn butter. And that’s really what this is all about. Fake versus real. How do you know which is which? A large majority of what you read on social media is fake. That’s what happens when you have a large audience of people who really don’t want to do much research and accept everything at face value without question. Any questioning these days is considered taboo. Question anything makes you a conspiracy theorist. We certainly live in different times. So how does this relate to writing? For one thing there’s a lot of writing out there which I would call fake. This includes people who lift ideas from published works and quickly reformat it with some variations so it’s not to be sued for copyright, the prodigious use of AI, a lazy man’s way to generate large blocks of text sourced from a wide variety of other texts and reassembled by a computer algorithm. But also, having something of substance, not just superficial and frivolous ideas designed to mildly amuse an audience for the sake of a few bucks. If you scroll through the listings on Amazon, you can usually find no shortage of these. In fact, a recent scam involved publishers creating a fake book filled with keywords, absolute gibberish, and publishing them under different titles in the Kindle Unlimited program and then having people and computers go through multiple page reads thus earning royalties from the page counts. A decent author spends a massive amount of time researching before writing, and certainly a massive amount of time, editing and proofreading before publishing. Having so many fake books on Amazon makes it far more difficult to market your own book. Lost in a sea of titles that are meaningless, a fine piece of work can easily get lost and never find an audience. Likewise, there are many awards that are totally fake as well. Designed to look prestigious, they rely on payment rather than credibility. Is it better though to have an award on your book cover, rather than none? You could be a best selling author on Amazon, simply by reaching the top positions in obscure categories where you have a little or no competition. For example, if you take your mystery book and categorize it in the category of of Borneo in the 18th Century, I can guarantee you will be the best selling author. You only have to make a few sales to hit the number one spot. I can guarantee you will be the best selling author. You only have to make a few sales to hit the number one spot. The term ‘best selling’ used to imply a lot of units sold. And for some credible book lists, this still holds true. That said, a lot of it is also prearranged between publishing companies and the holders of the book lists. You just have to ask yourself how someone can make a best seller list before their book’s even available for sale? It’s all a game. Look at me, look at me. If I advertise myself as just another author in an ocean of authors, and my novel has just another novel, will anyone buy it? When I was a young boy, my mother used to tell me that if I had to advertise a good deed that I had done, it was very self-serving and distracting from the good deed. The problem is nobody will notice anything you’ve done unless you stand up and shout it out to the world louder than the next person. So what is the correct answer? I can’t believe it’s not butter! ~William G PS: I hope you’ve had a chance to read our May issue of Books & Pieces. If not you can read it by clicking the cover on the right sidebar (desktop version) or scroll a little until you see the cover. Just wait until the June issue. We have even more additions that I hope you will find enjoyable. And please, share the link and tell your friends about us.
The May issue brings NEW FEATURES to Books & Pieces Magazine, at least in our Flip-Page Edition which works so well in ALL formats. SCROLL DOWN TO READ IT. We now have VIDEO! Right on the digital flip-page magazine you can watch videos. We also feature MUSICIANS, ARTISTS and much more. So tell your MUSICIAN friends we can show their music videos, play their songs and allow readers/listeners to link to them for purchase. Same for Artists—your paintings, scuptures and more. IN THIS ISSUE: WRITINGS FROM: •Nancy Lane •Julian Font •Marjorie Brody •Michael Barrington •Denice Penrose •Roly Andrews •Emil Rem •Books Reviews •Poetry •Artwork •Foolproof Cooking •Take a Poll: Who was the BEST MOVIE PRESIDENT? And for fun, watch Gandalf—Sir Ian McKellen (below) show you the best-scrambled eggs out there. We have more videos in this issue including Julian Font, author, musician and more. He’s on our cover. SCROLL DOWN TO READ THIS ISSUE. Click the [ ] icon to expand to the full size page. Flip pages. You may download a PDF from the cloud with the down arrow icon (Note: Video does not download). Enjoy! And please share!
A mailing list tells you a lot. Ours tells us where readers who have signed up are from. Now you might think they are mostly USA or Canada, and that’s true, however, so many readers come from across the world, from many countries we forget are English readers and—writers take note—an added market for your books. If you have not yet joined our mailing list, I hope you will do so. An old list we had from a few years ago was corrupted and so we had to purge a lot of it, asking readers to resubscribe. If you believe you subscribed and have never received our monthly emails, do sign up again. You do not have to worry about a duplicate entry as our system weeds those out. Click the image above or click HERE. The MAY edition of Books & Pieces Magazine comes out in a few days. It includes stories, artwork, poetry, videos, cooking and more! Cheers, William G
It’s the question of the ages, at least the current age, whether or not the use of AI in any form is acceptable. I do not believe that AI should be used as a writing tool for a lot of reasons. Chief, among these, is the fact that it cannot reproduce the author’s voice, or style with any degree of accuracy. I have tested it out to see whether it can do things like generate a short story from a prompt, and, in that regard, it can do so in a minimalistic way, a very generic style, but not defeating the purpose of having an author at all. This is not to say I think it’s a bad tool, but that it needs to be used constructively and not as a cheat. Using AI to develop story ideas, to research, and to assist in all the pieces that go into writing is acceptable. I also don’t have any issues with using AI to generate imagery to use on a blog site or a magazine, so long as it’s identified as such. In the April edition of Books & Pieces magazine, we have used AI imagery, including the cover image. This was identified on the cover and also on the inside. Since I’m not attempting to sell any imagery, it seems a benign way to fulfill the purpose. The transformation of artificial intelligence over the last few years has been astounding. I do not doubt that even within the next year, the progress will be even more astounding. I believe at some point AI could represent the tone of an author accurately. I say this after finding an AI-generated musical group called the AI Beatles in which AI has generated Beatles songs that have not existed prior, and with somewhat similar stylistics of the band members themselves. Is this a bad thing? It depends. On the one hand, it’s nice to hear something fresh with a somewhat Beatle sound to it, yet on the other hand, it’s quite obviously a fake. I guess the ultimate question is whether at some point AI can replace a human being, both in looks, style, speech, and attitude, as well as actions. Will AI take away my job? That’s a bit like asking whether the automobile was going take away the employment of the horse industry at the return of the last century. Progress always inflicts damage and creates change. People must adapt. When I look at the level of our culture now and how computers and electronics have managed to take the most incompetent person and elevate them in their ability, whether in music or art—have you seen some of the things passed off as art, recently?— I realize that is the norm of today’s society and widely accepted by a demographic that has experienced nothing better. So maybe it is not about whether something is good or bad, but whether it fits into the existing world. At the end of the day, I will treat writing as an art form that requires skill, patience, research, and lots of practice. And maybe when AI writes the best-selling novel, and mine struggles to sell, I might think differently. But until then, I believe authors and artists should rely on their talents. What do you think? Let me know. ~ William G. [Note: All imagery in this post is AI-generated.] PS: Next week the May 2024 issue of Books & Pieces Magazine is released. Our flip-page magazine now includes VIDEO!
Books & Pieces Magazine now offers musicians, artists and actors access to be in the magazine. How, you ask? Our flip-page magazine allows us to embed videos, music, and more. This means your music can play right on the page. Your art can be seen. You can shoot a video from your phone and submit it. Include buy links and you’ve just garnered a whole new audience. If you have not yet read the APRIL issue, check it out below. You will see the video links in there. ADVERTISERS can also have a static ad on the PDF but a video ad on the flip page magazine. And WRITERS, POETS, think of videos of live readings, book signings and other events. The sky’s the limit. BTW, our MAY issue is out next week, loaded with videos and content you will enjoy. PS: Double-click while on a page to zoom in. Same for Zoom out. Use [ ] for full screen. And if you want the PDF downloaded, use the cloud with the down arrow (videos do not get downloaded). Enjoy and please let us know what you think.
William Gensburger is the bestselling author of Texas Dead, Angle of Death, American Dead, Homo Idiotus, and Distant Rumors: 10 Short Stories.
He is also the publisher of Books & Pieces Magazine since 2017 featuring short stories, interviews and articles. You can learn more and view his books at www.MisterWriter.com.
©2023 William Gensburger