Sept. 13, 2026: Feeling Cheated

A book came in the mail last week.  Not an unusual event at my house. In fact, if I am to be honest, it is a pretty regular occurrence.

The feelings I had however, when I opened the package and perused the book, were unusual.  Confusion. Disappointment.

No, there was no physical damage to the book. But as I looked closely, there was no author listed. Flipping through the book, I could find no copyright page.  The size of the book felt odd for a biography.  I started skimming.  The formatting was not logical.  The structure seemed amateurish.

So, I decided to do a little digging into the publisher.  It was very hard to find anything that was not convoluted and tortuous.  And repetitive.  My feelings of annoyance grew.

In my opinion, self-publishing and AI had roared their ugly, unscrupulous, and clumsy head. 

When I did a more specific, directed dive into the publisher and their policies, it said no work was ever 100% AI created and that humans always laid eyes on it.  Translation- it was AI crated and then proofread by a human.

Now I was angry. As a writer myself, I know the passion and devotion writers bring to their work. As a life-long educator, I understand the importance of work being created by experts.  This was a biography- I wanted an author who did the research, understood the nuances, fact-checked and verified, and took bias into account.  As a traditionally published author, I value the layers of scrutiny that a work goes through before it ever sees the light of day.

With AI currently vastly unregulated, it is easy to see how fraudulent, unprincipled publishers and inferior, substandard work gets published. 

Yes, part of this falls on my own lap.  I should have been more vigilant when searching and ordering this biography. I have learned my lesson. I had quickly read the summary and made a snap decision to buy the book.  I will now:

Pay more attention to the author, and if one is not listed, proceed with caution.

Notice the publisher, and do a little digging if I am unfamiliar with their work.

Pay attention to any sample pages provided when searching online.

While I do not think that all forms and uses of AI are evil, I do believe that right now, our capability far exceeds our standards and principles. Like most forms of progress, as a culture we must come to a consensus on the ethics involved in its use. We have not yet done that.

So in publishing and writing right now, it is truly, buyer beware.