KOBO, a subsidiary of Rakuten, which sells e -books and eriders, has created its name to become a more open and convenient author version of Amazon Kindle. Nevertheless, a recent change in the company’s self -publication makes some writers with concern that the reputation may change. Last month, the company updated its His publishing platform, which opened the door for the functions of artificial intelligence on the platform. Due to the fact that this new language of the contract will enter into force on June 28, the authors seem to be no longer, what it will mean for their future on Kobo.
For authors who did not break (or abandoned) the traditional publication of both And Offer a way to sell books without the need for presentation or publication. If they can provide their work and information necessary to create a store page – and will be ready to serve not only the author, but also a marketer – they have everything they need to sell their books.
Consent to sell on one of these platforms contains a list of conditions. The largest is the division of sales. If the author sells his novel for $ 2.99 or more for Kobo’s life, they retain 70 percent of what they earn. On the much larger Kindle Direct Publishing platform, there are two Royalty options – 35 percent and 70 percent – but both have a confusing Some of which can significantly reduce the income of the authors. The calculation of fees against the exposition forces the authors to develop strong preferences for the platform they have chosen. But the conditions of service, in accordance with which their work is also important, are also important – and, according to the visible, can be changed with a small warning.
Angazhet talked with three authors who were surprised by the decision of Kobo to experiment with AI. They all noticed that the company published new conditions of service from a simple banner on the rescue panel of Kobo salvation. Even now, a month after changing conditions, the company cannot clarify how new conditions will be applied to existing work. The authors also have no funds to refuse. If someone in Cobo is adamant against any amount of use of AI, their best and only option is to stop publishing there and probably pull out their existing work from the platform.
The authors with whom we spoke were surprised that Kobo did not turn to the proposed changes in advance, but also that the company generally decided to work with AI. “I appreciate their transparency in the fact that it is frank in their use of AI,” wrote Michelle Manus, the author of the fantasy on the Kobo platform, wrote Michelle Manus. “I think that they have significantly underestimated the degree in which their user base does not like AI.”
The new Cobo conditions clearly claim that the company does not plan to use the work of authors to teach generative AI. However, he reserves the right to use “artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning algorithms or similar technologies” for “reading, analysis and processing” of writing for various purposes that are not related to training, including:
-
“Improving the detection of work” using tags and targeted customer recommendations
-
“Evaluation of the suitability of work” for sale in the Kobo store
-
“Resource generation”, for example, “creation of keywords, advertising content, target advertising, strategies for involving customers and other materials”
-
“Providing a resume, functions of help in reading and accessibility”
The authors do not agree with the obvious absence of an appeal to an overcome. What will happen if the work is incorrectly marked as one genre when its author believes that it is more suitable for another? Or what if the “advertising material” COBO generates, includes any hallucination? The biggest problem for the English writers, with which they said, was the potential for KOBO for the deployment of recaps generated by AI. Amazon is implemented Using generative AIs to help readers return to the series or remember where they were in the novel, and some authors have already found examples of artificial intelligence of the company
“We would immediately leave:“ Ah, okay, we see what you are trying to do, but we do not think that you suggest that you will work to solve the problem that you are trying to solve, ”said Engadget Delilah Waan, the author of fantasy and the creator of YouTube. Since independently published authors are usually more responsive to their audience, such problems can actually jeopardize these relations. “The authors often get a rollback from readers about choosing a plot, and I can only imagine what levels that they can rise if they receive the wrong resume of what happened in the book,” Manus wrote.
All the authors of Engadget talked with the admiring attempts by Kobo to tell about complaints about the public. Michael Tamblin published Bluesky at Bluesky Go into the logic of inclusion of the AI in the company's conditions. In fact, Tamblin wrote, Kobo is trying to facilitate the work from the point of view of readers with the authors and optimize the moderation process that enters the KOBO store, and all this avoids the merchants of copyright. “We are completely not interested in creating new content using the authors' books, and we do not do anything that would allow us to do this,” Tambrin wrote. “And we do not want anyone else to do this because we are selling books and would like to continue to do it.”
Consent not to teach generative AI with the work of the author is that all professional writers were recommended to demand from publishers a professional organization that plays for writers and is currently participating in A lawsuit against OpenaiThe field choosing not to train generative AI for books, Kobo starts with the right leg. Nevertheless, the dubious nature of what material turns into a model of AI still leaves a lot of questions. “Keep in mind that all models are now illegally trained, and I mean all the largest LLM (models with big languages),” says Mary Rasenberg, general director of the authors guild. “Thus, they can use the AI system that is not one of the large LLM, but any system that they use can be based on one of the large LLM.”
Kobo did not respond to a request for information about which LLM he plans to use. As for the work that may be incorrectly classified or incorrectly, the company called on the authors to contact them by e -mail, which, according to the authors, still answered complaints. The company claims that it has not begun to check what it describes as a “beta -function” to create a “personalized resume” in the Cobo app. He notes that “is not interested in making whole resumes of books.” Instead, Kobo plans to make its resume specific to each reader, about 150 words in length based on both the pages that they read in their last reading session, and quotes that they identified.
Electronic platforms widely use a cautious approach to AI. Authors who publish the Apple Books platform Maybe have generated from their work, but this is completely optional. The Barnes & Noble Press platform currently does not offer artificial intelligence products. Amazon resume is currently the most invasive use of AI in different electronic books and authors' markets Of them. “It doesn't matter how much money we earn from the Amazon. We all hate the case with this, ”Vaan said. She made it clear that the authors of the independent publication are afraid that Cobo is changing, because at present he has answers to the author, which can be authoritative answers to most Amazon products. “I can’t describe how much we want Kobo to succeed, how we are rooting for them,” she said.
Each company seems to seek to continue to extend the boundaries of where and how invasively it can realize AI. Now Vaan hopes that Kobo is involved in an open forum with the authors about the proposed use for this technology. “I think it is really difficult to decide as the author:“ I'm going to pull out my books? “, – said Waan. “Because at the moment when you pull your books, this is a whole headache, because you must update all links. If you have advertising, you must pull them. It is not as simple as turning off the light switch. ” No matter how difficult it is, this decision, published by the authors, will be increasingly forced to accept.
If you buy something by reference in this article, we can earn a commission.