August 15, 2023 • 46 mins
Writer Jane Friedman has a stellar reputation in publishing. But a huckster, armed with AI impersonations of her writing, was trying to scam folks by using her name on Amazon GoodReads. She raised hell, and last week Amazon finally took them down. But what about new authors who don’t have her huge platform? Who is looking out for them?
Jane joins to talk about the threat AI presents to authors, publishing, and the rest of us.
I Would Rather See My Books Get Pirated Than This (Or: Why Goodreads and Amazon Are Becoming Dumpster Fires): https://janefriedman.com/i-would-rather-see-my-books-pirated/
Author discovers AI-generated counterfeit books written in her name on Amazon: https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2023/08/author-discovers-ai-generated-counterfeit-books-written-in-her-name-on-amazon/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
They are not prepared for what's about to happen, or
what is already happening, which is this flood of AI
generated material being uploaded.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
There are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget
Todd and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
Our names hold so much power. When Anna made Bullock
left her abusive husband Ike, she famously said that she
didn't want any assets, only the stage name that he
(00:38):
had given her, Tina Turner. So much of our reputation
and who we are to the outside world it's wrapped
up in our names. So what if someone was using
AI to scam people using your name? This is exactly
what writer Jane Friedman woke up to find last week.
Someone was selling bad AI versions of books with her
(00:59):
name listed at the office and selling them on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
When we sat down.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
To talk about it, I quickly realized that I had
Jane mixed up with another woman who is also a
big name in publishing, who was also named Jane Friedman.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Well, you may want to back up and reconsider that question,
because there's another Jane Friedman in publishing who is the
former suit you of HarperCollins and the founder of Open Road.
So you fight want her instead for this podcast?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Out embarrassing, right, I know, not an ideal way to
start an interview, and I wouldn't ordinarily include my mistakes
in the show, but I felt like it highlighted the
importance of and complexities around names, especially in a field
like publishing. Jane says that she gets confused for the
other Jane all the time, and I was struck by
what a headspinner this all was. Jane having to differentiate
(01:51):
her name from another Jane in publishing, while also going
up against Amazon to differentiate her name from an AI
enabled scammer. Well, I hate that I am starting off
this interview with a big mistake, but it does kind.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Of feel relevant to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
No, it's totally all right, I completely understand. So I
started in publishing right out of college. Actually, while I
was still in college, I had an internship at a
traditional publishing house in the Midwest in Cincinnati. I stayed
there for twelve years, which was pretty unusual. Most people
hop around in publishing jobs, but I stayed put. I
(02:30):
took a dtour as a writing professor for a couple
of years went back into publishing, working for a literary journal,
the Virginia Quarterly Review, and then around let's see, this
was twenty fourteen, I went full time freelance entrepreneur, and
so as of today, I write I published mainly for
an audience of writers and publishers. So it's a very
(02:52):
meta career that I've developed.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Something that I read about you in my research for this,
which hopefully is the right Jane Friedman, is that you
have this reputation of being like an honest broker of
information about the publishing space, and it's a space that
can sometimes be kind of opaque, kind of murky. Do
you think that's one of the reasons why whoever was
trying to use your name to publish these fraudulent books
(03:17):
targeted you as someone who is known for giving honest information.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
It's a fascinating question because I would really love to
know what motivated them to target me and my name.
Was it actual knowledge of what I do, or was
it some spreadsheet that told them my name ranks well
for the topic of e books and publishing and they're
just like that, you know, and I was just picked
out of a hat. I'm not sure, but certainly there's
(03:43):
demand surrounding what I do because I'm seen as trustworthy
and i' I mean, and that's very intentional. I try
to be to give people a three hundred and sixty
degree view of the publishing industry. I don't consider myself
necessarily by a for any publishing path. It's really what
(04:04):
suits this author at this time, what's going to best
further their career goals.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I do feel like it is a space where there's
a lot of people selling a lot of things, whether
it's their course or whether it's you know, oh, you
should be doing xyz on Amazon, You're going to make
so much money. And I think the space can be tough,
and I think someone giving people like the honest rundown
of what's happening is really really valuable.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, I think so too, because there are a lot
of promises made. Writers are also susceptible to flattery, and
there are a lot of people services companies that pray
on writers' dreams for their work, and I find it
pretty shameful because I think what's not really understood is
(04:53):
that sometimes there's more money to be made from the
writers themselves than from actually selling their writers work.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
That's pretty disappointing to hear.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yes, yes it is, and I don't candy coat things,
so yeah, I think that's why people trust me to
tell it like it is.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Last week, Jane Friedman was alerted to the fact that
someone who wasn't her was publishing books under her name.
Those titles were added to her Goodreads author page and
Amazon page, so a casual observer would probably think they
were written by Jane. Jane tweeted, as of today, there
are about half a dozen books being sold on Amazon
with my name on them that I did not write
(05:35):
or publish. Some huckster generated them using AI. This promise
is to be a serious problem for the book publishing world.
So you wake up one day and you see a
bunch of books on your Goodreads profile. For folks who
don't know Goodreads is owned by Amazon, is it. What's
your first reaction when you see this?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
A panic? Panic, because I know how hard it's going
to be to correct, being very familiar with Amazon's procedures
and policies, which I've dealt with in the past. I
know countless authors who have to deal with this, and
it's like banging your head against the wall. And I
was notified by someone who was aware of my name
(06:17):
and my work. Not super like fan, but someone who
you know, was just curious enough to go looking for
what I've written and published in book form, and you know,
it's these fraudulent books that they stumbled on first. And
thank god they had the critical thinking skills to alert me,
rather than assuming I was trying some new, weird experiment.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Like Jane's writing has really gone down of you not
just right exactly. Okay, So, I, like a lot of
people listening a thousand percent assumed that the way that
you that a writer controls what shows up under their
name on their good Reads page.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
But that is actually not the case.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And so what did it actually look like to get
a book removed from your good week page?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, it's kind of insane. You know, most social media
sites or community sites, you do have one hundred percent
control over your profile. But that's not the case that
good Reads, nor do they notify you when something has
changed on your profile as sub like as substantial as
a new book has been added. You have no idea
unless you're monitoring it yourself. So if you want to
(07:26):
get a book removed from your profile, which just to
be clear, it's automatically added by Amazon. Also, individuals can
manually add books to an author's profile. So like any
any like Rando can go and just look for the
fine print. You can find it. If you really want
to screw with someone, I don't suggest you do that,
(07:48):
but if you really had you know, an enemy out
there anyway, So if you want to get the book
removed or books removed in my case, there's a Librarians group.
It's a group of volunteers who try to keep the
good Reads data appropriate, in line, clean, useful. And if
you go into this group, you'll see that there's like
(08:10):
thousands upon thousands of requests from authors to have their
profiles corrected. And so I just had to join the
line please correct my profile.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
So the Librarians group, these are like unpaid volunteers.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yes, it's what's.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Wild to me about this is that both the way
that it works, this Librarians group, and the way that
you had to really raise hell on social media to
get Amazon to do anything. Yeah, Amazon is this billion
dollar global company. They don't have people internally who could
be paid to keep their platforms reliable, safe, accurate, etc.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Etc.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
It's curious to me that they would not be invested
in that and instead are relying on the labor of
volunteers and people who have no business doing this, like
it's not your job to do this as a writer.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, I could and agree more, and that there are
two sets of problems here. Unfortunately, there's the Goodreads problem,
which that's a company that they bought. It's been maybe
ten years ago, and they basically bought it and abandoned it.
And I've been told by people behind the scenes that
the coding of that side and just the whole like
structure and ability to change it is not straightforward. So
(09:22):
rather than do the right thing and improve it, they're
just kind of letting it decay. Is that the right word.
It's like, you know, duct tape. That's how it's surviving
at this point. So like I could understand, maybe like
they don't want to get into that mess. However, the
other side of this is Amazon itself and how books
(09:43):
get uploaded to their site, and there are more formal
processes with what I assume are paid employees looking at
these infringement claims, which is what I had to submit.
But there are different tiers and you know, you're our
initial request is going to go to the lowest level tier,
and it's like corresponding with AI. Ironically, you don't get
(10:08):
any sense of if it's a human being. On the
other side, you feel like they're going through this really
rigid rule book of you know, did they provide X,
did they provide Y? And if not, close the case.
So they're trying to get rid of you, in my opinion,
as quickly as possible. And I have a tiny bit
of sympathy just because I've been around writers for so long.
(10:29):
A lot of them are going to be upset annoyed
by all sorts of things that happen on Amazon site
that really don't constitute infringement or what I would call
more of an annoyance. And so Amazon must have to
filter through thousands of these things a day, so I
get it, but they are not prepared for what's about
(10:49):
to happen, or what is already happening, which is this
flood of AI generated material being uploaded.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
So when you first alerted Amazon to what was going on,
how did they initially react that The person that you
reached out to first was what was the vibe?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
So the first response I got was it felt very automated,
which was it wanted me to itemize the offending products
or books and then also linked to what work was
being infringed upon. So it wanted to know you're the
copyright owner of what book and what are the books
that are infringing on it? And of course if it's
(11:25):
AI generated, well, A, it's not copyright protected in the
first place, and B it's not necessarily infringing on existing work.
It's it's it's creating new work in the style of
So when I said, when I tried to explain this,
I was asked for my trademark registration numbers instead. But
(11:46):
most authors do not trademark their name. It's a pretty
expensive process and also would only pertain very narrowly to
your work. And so I couldn't satisfy that request either.
But I tried to, you know, explain and look, this
is false advertising. Nay, my name is being abused here.
It's trying to pass off work as mine when it's not.
(12:09):
But you know, I couldn't check any of the boxes
for them, so they closed the case without removing the books.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
At our back.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Amazon made Jane jump through a lot of hoops to
deal with this issue. After she couldn't produce a trademark
for her own name, who could or the copyright for
the sham books on Amazon. Amazon closed the case and
said they would not be removing the books, but Jane
kept at it. She tweeted, and she published a piece
on her own website called I would rather see my
(12:54):
books get pirated than this or why Goodreads and Amazon
are becoming dumpster fires? And eventually, after lots and lots
of back and forth and raising hell on social media,
Amazon did remove the books. But still Amazon is creating
a system that forces individuals to have to do an
incredible amount of labor just to protect their names and
reputations online. And it shouldn't be the job of writers
(13:17):
like Jane to keep Amazon's platforms authentic and accurate. And
it seems like the only reason that it worked out
in Jane's case is because she already has a well
respected platform. But what about authors who don't, As she
writes in her piece, I'm sure that's in no small
part due to my visibility and reputation in the writing
and publishing community. What will authors, what smaller profiles do
(13:38):
when this happens to them. So first of all, it
just seems like so much work on your behalf to
have to do to like prove that this is going on.
And then also just the idea, like you said, not
many people out there trademark their name, and so it's
just an incredible burden on the harmed impacted party. Meanwhile,
(13:59):
Amazon is just like, Okay, well, can you prove your
case to us? It doesn't seem like the right dynamic
to me.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, I mean, at minimum, I think they have to
implement probably a new process or procedure for this sort
of complaint because it just doesn't fall along the same
lines as a traditional copywriter infringement claim.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So I know that eventually, luckily, probably because of your
platform on social media and like being a loud, respected
voice in the space, Amazon did do. I was gonna
say the right thing, but I guess really more the
reasonable thing and remove these titles from your Goodreads page.
But I guess my question is what about writers who
(14:42):
maybe don't have the time, the resources, the platform, the
energy to go through this incredibly laborious process just to
have your Amazon Goodreads page be accurate. Is it creating
the system where it's this incredible burden on them, and
they maybe wouldn't be able to have success at doing this.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, I think this is the big, big, big problem
that we're now facing because anyone with a name that
carries value, if it's a name that can be profited on,
which describes a lot of authors who depend on their
writing for a living, You're now in this position of
having to police use of that name on two sites
that do a terrible job of policing or verifying author
(15:22):
identities and pretty much have a policy if anything goes
as long as it's not blatantly illegal. So I don't
know how that system can stand moving forward, which is
why I made such a big stink. That said, I
do think authors have remedies that are maybe less laborious
when they find infringement. So, for example, if you have
(15:45):
a traditional publisher, I would certainly be calling them if
you have, if you still have a relationship with them,
if you have a point of contact, they need to know.
If that's not possible, then hopefully you belong to a
writer's organization. The Author's Guild here is particularly helpful, and
they did see what was happening with my case and
(16:07):
we're assisting in the background, so they're very effective at
getting really clear problem material taken down. You know, it
might not happen overnight, but I would say it would
happen in a few days if it's a clear case.
So those are some remedies. But as far as having
to police your profiles and all of that, I don't
(16:30):
know what to say other than I think there are
some tools out there that like will alert you maybe
via email, that oh, this page has seen an update
or a change, so at least you get some sort
of automated notification. But at least on Amazon dot Com.
You know, you can't set up an alert that way,
but maybe a Google alert or other things that would help, yeah,
(16:54):
so that you don't have to be visiting these sites
every day.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
I mean, I do think we're in this weird space
now where technology is really progress at this fast speed,
faster than folks can like make new rules for or
like anticipate, and now we're all just stuck with this
Internet where the bottom line default assumption is that it's
(17:19):
going to be full of scams and fraud and people
misusing your name for their own profit. I just feel
like we deserve better writers deserve better, like we deserve
an Internet landscape that is not trying to screw you
at every turn.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, I agree, and some of there are certain companies
that I think have the ability and the resources to
be helpful. So Amazon being a case in point, they
sit at a very important waypoint for all sorts of
activity that's both good and bad, and they could do
so much better. They could take more responsibility. I think
(17:56):
they have a duty of care. Why they don't know
wake up to that. It's hard for me to say
other than capitalism, but I think they're one of quite
a number of companies that I hope that can be
pressured to do better.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, and something about Amazon is because they're such a
big player in the space. You know, so goes Amazon,
so goes the rest, and so they really a big
platform takes a step to make their platform safer better.
A lot of other smaller platforms get in line because
they really set the tone. And so if Amazon is
not setting that tone, they really have this opportunity to
(18:35):
be a leader and a good actor and a you know,
a force for good of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
But they're just not doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I couldn't agree more, and I really wish I understood
the motivations or lack of motivation, as the case might be,
because it certainly doesn't lead to a good customer experience
with which they're supposedly concerned about. You know, if people
can't trust what they find there, what.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Made you suspect that those books were written by AI?
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I think, like many writers, I've done my own little
experiments with chat GPT in particular, and I've used all
sorts of vanity prompts because I'm curious what it's capable of.
And I know for sure that these models have scraped
years of my writing off of my blog, and so,
you know, all inputs something like how do I get
a book published? Or what does Jane Friedman say about
(19:25):
how to get a book club published? Or who is
Jane Friedman? And so I've seen the sorts of material
it's capable of generating, especially in my category. And you know,
it's very surface level, It's not it has some substance,
but if you try to push it, it starts to
repeat itself. Forget, it gets more and more generic. So
(19:47):
when I saw the opening pages of these fraudulent books,
and I read the bio, especially reading the bio. I
could tell I'm pretty sure this has been AI generated.
You know, it's just kind of like bloviating student padded
essay material. It's not you know, it's not someone writing
down and actually trying to present a cogent, you know,
(20:11):
instruction guide.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, it's so.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I mean, I've certainly done what you've just described of,
like what can you tell me about Bridget padd as
a podcaster? And it's exactly that. It's exactly that I mean,
and everybody's done it. But it's one of those things where, like,
you know, when something was written by a human, even
written badly by a human, like yeah, and when something
was written by AI, you can.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Just tell yeah, yeah. It may not always be that way,
but at least today it's painfully obvious.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
More after a.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Quick break, let's get right back into it. Jane's situation
is just another example of the let's say, complicated relationship
(21:04):
that Amazon has with the publishing industry. Back in twenty
twenty one, three of the biggest names in publishing, the
Association of American Publishers, the Author's Guild, and the American
Booksellers Association, sent a joint letter to US lawmakers to
crying Amazon's dominance over publishing and warning that it's threatening
the entire industry.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Amazon no longer.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Competes on a level playing field when it comes to
book distribution, but rather owns and manipulates the playing field,
leveraging practices across its platform that appear to be well
outside of fair and transparent competition. The letter reads, and now,
in light of Jane situation, it seems like Amazon could
be doing a lot to make it easier for authors
to resolve issues that arise from technology like AI, but
(21:48):
they're not. In response to Jane situation, an Amazon spokesperson said,
we invest heavily to provide a trustworthy shopping experience and
protect customers and authors from misuse of our services, But
currently Amazon doesn't really have any kind of plan to
prevent scam books from proliferating on their platform, which is
a real problem. How can Amazon say that they're interested
(22:10):
in providing a trustworthy experience if they aren't doing anything
to ensure that and instead are just moving that burden
onto authors like Jane. What's the relationship between Amazon and
the publishing industry right now?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Oh, that's a big question. So it's always been a
frenemy situation. Publishers have generally not been that thrilled with
Amazon's dominance, and I would say, unfortunately, it's about I
want to say, around sixty percent of books now, regardless
(22:45):
of format, are now sold through Amazon. So despite them
not always you know, being on the same side of
Amazon in terms of their practices, they also can't necessarily
afford to piss off Amazon either, So it's just a
it's a very tortured relationship with the self published author community.
(23:09):
That's yet another side of the story where initially self
published authors kind of saw Amazon as a savior figure
might be going a little far, but finally opening up
paths to a sustainable career without having to rely on
the gatekeepers of traditional publishing. And so many fabulous author
(23:29):
careers have been launched because of Amazon services, and they
do provide something that's super valuable. However, as time has
gone on, I think everyone's realizing the devil's bargain that's
been struck here and how Amazon at any time can
change the rules to press earnings make it so you
(23:51):
have to advertise in order to get your books noticed
at all. So it's I think everyone at this point
today is looking to not have all of their eggs
in the Amazon basket and try to strengthen their careers
so that if Amazon does change something in a dramatic
way that makes people unhappy, they still have a career.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
That is something I always tell folks about navigating this
weird tech time of ours, is like, do not put
all of your eggs in one digital basket, because you
never know what might change. You know, Bezos can make
up tomorrow and be like, no, it's this, It's been that,
but now it's this, and your whole thing could be
could be threatened.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
So really sad. Spread things around.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Have your own platforms that you own that you can say,
you know, you'll be able to invest in if something changes.
But it just I think that's good advice, But it
makes me sad that that's advice that folks like you
have to give creatives.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yes, yes, it's become more and more essential over time,
and you know, if anyone doesn't grasp it. Just looking
at what's happened with Twitter, it is like, you know,
exhibit A for what happens if you rely too much
on a single platform. So yeah, I've I want to
say that from the beginning I've always been about diversifying,
(25:11):
but I think today people are really listening to that message.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
What do you think I.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Think is at stake if Amazon just continues to kind
of not hold up their end of the of the
bargain on responsibility, If we're keeping platforms accurate, you know,
with accurate information and accurate titles and stuff on there, like,
what's at stake for the industry?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Well, fortunately, I think there are chinks in Amazon's armor.
I do think I've noticed a definite tide change in
how people think about Amazon and shopping at Amazon. I'm
looking at this from the consumer side first, but I
have seen so many people shift their purchasing habits to
places like Bookshop, which is what people call the virtuous
(25:54):
alternative divine from Amazon, at least on the book side.
And so you know, when and when I went through
this myself on social media, a lot of people said, well,
that's it, I'm never buying from Amazon again. You know,
these were authors, so just people, I think, you know,
the final straw has occurred for a lot of people
over the last few years, and that has to hurt.
(26:17):
I would expect Amazon, the negative publicity they get from
things happening and publishing or from their marketplace where there's
a lot of knockoffs, counterfeits. I think it has an effect.
Publishing is in a fortunate position at this moment in
(26:37):
time because they're starting to see the potential for reaching
people that's more organic, that's more community driven, that's not
reliant on Amazon. And here I'm thinking of book talk,
so you know that, of course, there are some problems
associated with that as well. I would aid to see
publishers now just lean on TikTok to solve all their problems.
(26:59):
But I think certainly over the last five years, in particular,
the biggest publishers have been more serious about establishing direct
to consumer relationships, whether that's through email, newsletters, social media,
or other efforts. And certainly small and independent publishers they
actually had some of their best performance during the pandemic
(27:19):
when people were more conscious of why don't we buy
direct from the publisher? They probably need our help. Let's
support the things that we believe in. Let's support the
companies that share our values.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
That's really good to see.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
And I have to say, like I am right there
with you with the problems around book talk, but I
genuinely do feel like I have never felt like I
was more part of an engaged community of like minded
readers than with book Talk. Like I know, it definitely
has its problems, which maybe we'll do another episode on that,
but you know, I like to read thriller books, and
(27:54):
you know, I have gotten connected with so many different
authors and titles that I would have never found otherwise.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And I don't know, I think that.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Something about what you're saying, it feels like a double
edged sword when it comes to tech right now, that
there are all these threats and scams and liabilities, but
also all of these really exciting ways to use technology
for readers and authors and publishers to find each other
and connect in these new ways that are also kind
of exciting.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
I mean, despite everything that's happened to me and the
last week or so, I still remain fairly optimistic. I
think that despite some of these scary things that are happening,
I think things the ship will right itself. I don't
think we're I don't think we're headed towards total dystopia yet.
(28:40):
And there's the so called creator economy too, has opened
up a lot of options for writers and all types
of creative people to figure out the business model that
fits them, so no one has to be reliant on
Amazon or a publishing company or a TikTok. I think
there are lots of ways to go about this. There's
a lot of freedom.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
As all of this was happening to Jane, another AI
firestorm was brewing. A computer scientist and computational linguist named
Benji Smith was taking a lot of heat from writers
on Twitter for his platform prose Craft, a platform that
he built quote dedicated to the linguistic analysis of literature
where basically twenty five thousand books were mined, maybe from
(29:23):
pirated sources online to train machine learning algorithms to recognize
which kinds of words can be used and which kinds
of contexts. And authors were pissed. They were pissed that
Benji used their books without permission or consent. Benji apologized
and took the entire platform down. Jane says that it
makes sense that authors were upset, especially out of time
(29:44):
and being in the creative fields feels so fraud and threatened.
But Jane wonders if this was a distraction from some
of the bigger issues in the space. I have to
ask because the situation that you had with Amazon was
happening against the backdrop of that prose craft mess. Like,
I saw that from beginning to end, and I thought
(30:04):
all those writers rightfully being like, hey, you can't just
take our books to train your AI, Like what are
you doing?
Speaker 2 (30:11):
What do you think that? First of all, what did
you think about that? As a as somebody who knows
the space very well?
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Yeah, so this is where my views tend to diverge
from the average author. I tend to stay pretty calm
and rational and look at is there actual harm occurring here,
and who's behind it? And what are their motivations? And
how far did this reach? And like, because I know
(30:38):
how writers can like jump to fear, anxiety and outrage
very quickly, especially right now with the whole AI situation,
everyone is just like on a knife's edge. So it
took me a little while to catch up with that situation.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Because you were going through your own situation, that's right.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
But when I did, what I saw was a fairly
benign project, like a linguistic analysis, a text and data
mining thing. And yeah, sure, he scooped up a lot
of books that looks like they were from pirate sites.
I don't know if he did that intentionally or if
he kind of like you know, turned the other way
(31:17):
when that when his crawler scooped up these books. But
I don't, like, I just can't ascribe malicious intentions to
this guy. And he's just a guy, Like he's not Amazon, right,
So I think there are like I look at situations
differently depending on who has the power. And so I
saw author. I saw how Authors really acted swiftly got
(31:42):
him to take the site down, and I think the
fact he took it down so quickly indicates he what
his intentions were. He didn't want to upset people, so
when the whole thing came down, Authors got to claim
a huge victory. But what I saw was a distraction
from what the real problems are. This wasn't an AI tool.
(32:03):
I mean, I guess sure he could have somehow profited
off that data set, maybe like who knows if he
would have if he could have, And so maybe it
was right for that to just be nipped in the
bud right away. But I just think they're bigger fish
to fry here. And I'm also not a fan of
(32:23):
like piling on someone like that in a way that
felt just maybe a little mean spirited. And the other
thing is that authors don't have the strongest grasp of
copyright law, what their rights are, what others rights might be.
And as someone who's followed a lot of legal cases
(32:46):
surrounding copyright and fair use, especially, there's a really monumental case,
the Google Books scanning case that was decided some years ago.
It took a long time to be decided, but Google
scanned millions of books in partnership with libraries. The author's
guild brought a lawsuit against this to prevent it, but
(33:06):
Google ended up winning. It was even though it was
ingesting all of these works without compensation to the author,
the use was considered transformative and permissible under the law.
So the books remain scanned. You can still, you know,
you can go to Google Books and get all sorts
of information from that data set. And I think that
(33:27):
was the correct outcome. Not all authors agree with me,
but I think it was the correct outcome. So this,
to me, prosecraft seemed like this text and data mining
project that had pretty low potential harm.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
I was like surprised to see how big the reaction was,
and some of the authors were like you will never
like it was a lot of big reactions.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
I'll just say that, yes, big, very big.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
It seemed to me the point of prosecraft was to
for potential author to be able to glean information about
books to help themselves as authors.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
So if I know that like.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
X novel that I'm trying to write a similar novel
to uses passive voice x percent of the time, I
guess my question is is.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
That useful information for a potential author?
Speaker 3 (34:19):
That part of me is like, is this person taking
the books and minings up totally?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Ask good, good question.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
But in addition to that, is this person trying to
sell potential authors on something that maybe they don't really
need and try to convince them like, oh, this is
going to be the magic bullet that makes your writing
a success. And maybe kind of praying on the need
that potential authors might have for a tool that they're
(34:46):
being told is going to be the thing that makes
them successful.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
I'm not even sure if I'm asking that in a
way that makes sense. No, I think I understand what
you're saying. A lot he got criticized a lot for
the sort of data, the usefulness of the data that
he was presenting got I mean, people were so harsh
about his the passive voice active voice thing.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I have a very personal reaction to that, which is
I was once married to a PhD in computer science,
and he approached the world in a very different way
than I did. And so knowing that this guy, Benji
Smith is a computer scientist and on top of that,
(35:26):
a linguist like interested in linguistic analysis, to me, he
was just nerding out.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
And yeah, it might have only been of interest to him,
and that's okay. I don't necessarily think anything that he
was doing was of real value to the average writer,
but it was interesting to him, Okay.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
I think that a lot of that is easily lost
in our conversations online, especially conversations of communities that don't
always feel heard. Right, if you're someone trying to break
into publishing, I could imagine that that is a dam
where it's easy to feel like your voice is just
lost all the time and that you're constantly pushing up
an uphill struggle. And so I wonder if that played
(36:11):
into some of the big reactions of like, these are
a community.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Of people who feel unheard a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yes, yes, one hundred percent, one hundred percent. Writers feel vulnerable,
like they're getting the short end of the stick, that
they're under attack, that everyone's trying to take away the
value that they offer the world, and so like from
a psychological perspective or from our the social cultural political
(36:37):
moment we're in right now, I totally get it, very
predictable outcome, but I still wish that people could just
take a breath and you know, apply more critical thinking.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
How do you stay so grounded, Like in a space
at a time where it feels like there are technology
enabled threats to the industry, how do you stay so pragmatic,
so clear eyed, so grounded.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Some of it's just probably inherent in my nature, but
also having been in the same industry now for going
on almost three decades, like I do feel like I've
kind of seen it all now. I'm there are surprises,
there's no question, But I've spoken to so many writers
over the years, I've spoken at so many conferences, seeing
(37:27):
every kind of perspective and outrage, and so it's I
I feel like I can step back from it all
and see just the patterning. It's all just patterns and
a lot of things, a lot of the same dynamics
just repeat themselves again and again.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Yeah, I've talked to a lot of like technologists and
AI ethics folks, and they say, most of them have
said some version of what you've just said, that it
actually benefits people who make AI when we sort of
doom and gloom and catastrophe catastropsize that's the right word, catastrophize.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Around things like AI.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
That like, that's what they want us to be saying,
And that there have been hype cycles where different kinds
of technology we're going to change certain industries, decimate certain industries,
and those things didn't always come to fruition. So recognize
that pattern, and rather than following in that pattern again
and again and again, stop and ask, like, am I
actually amplifying a hype cycle that we don't actually know
(38:31):
is going to shift this industry the way it's telling
us the way it's telling us it will.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Absolutely. There's a wonderful project. I think it started as
a podcast and it's now just a website called The
Pessimist's Archive that really I think introduces it really shows
this concept and action over many, many decades, and it
will dig up old articles like from one hundred two
(38:59):
hundred years ago about how this or that technology is
going to destroy everything that's good. And I did a
little bit of the of my own research too, inspired
by what they do, to look up what were writers
saying about word processing, you know, like when it became
possible for basically anyone to start writing and typing and
(39:19):
doing their own thing or with desktop publishing. I went
to the New York Times specifically to see what was
the reaction, and there was one person who felt like
women would no longer have jobs as a result of
word processing, because who you know, if everyone was typing
their own stuff, what would women have left to do?
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Jade, I have to tell you, like, this is not
at all the perspective I thought you were going to have.
It is so refreshing, it like, it is just really
refreshing to hear someone be like, let's not all like
lose it over this just yet. You know, let's take
a step back and really do some comparison about how
we talked about things before. There's so many insights from
(40:02):
history that we can that we can find the way
that we've talked about emerging technology. And I'm just happy
that someone who is such a voice in the space
is doing that as opposed to sort of jumping on
the bandwagon of like completely catastrophizing online.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Right right, thank you. I I this situation that happened
this week was very unusual because prior to this, I've
always been fairly artificial intelligence neutral or generative AI neutral,
and I've gotten taken to task for that by people
(40:40):
in my community. They think that I am promoting harm
or a dangerous technology, and I respect their feelings, like,
I'm not going to say nothing bad is going to
happen as a result. Obviously bad things are going to happen.
And I had someone actually get in touch with me
a second time after taking me to task when she
saw the news cycle. She said, now, have you changed
(41:03):
your mind? And I said, no, no, I haven't. I'm
still on the same page as before.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Well, are there guardrails that you would like to see
platforms like Amazon and goodreaths take to make to try
to keep the harm to a minimum when it comes
to AI and creative.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yes, they can do so much better, and that's really
why I raise the flag. They can do better, they
must do better, and why they haven't is beyond me.
I really I'm not so cynical to say, oh, it's
just about profits. I think this harms them in the
long run too, So yes, and I would like for
them to be respect and transparency from all of the
(41:49):
companies that are putting forth this technology, whether it's open
AI or Microsoft or Google. I think authors deserve to
know if their works have been used in the training
of these moms. I think they should have the right
to opt out. Like, I believe in moral rights for authors,
and I understand why they're upset because they're not getting
really access to those moral rights in this situation. So
(42:11):
I hope to see that come to pass. I believe
in more legislation around AI. I hope it doesn't take
too much longer. But I don't think we should just
be shutting the whole thing down.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
What do you think is next for the publishing industry.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Well, what's so fascinating, at least from my industry perch,
is watching publishers navigate this in a way that doesn't
upset the author core. So they're definitely looking at these
tools as ways to be better marketers and promoters. Because
publishing companies marketing departments are desperately understaffed, they have so
(42:51):
little money and resource to promote the books they publish,
So I think they're looking at AI as a way
to immediately address that situation. And Penguin Random House, the
biggest of the publishers, already has an AI person on staff,
someone who's like a computer scientist type who's looking at
how to use this in a responsible way. And Penguin
(43:12):
Random House is also setting up their own internal models,
you know, so they're not feeding the general models. But
you know, authors are starting to ask for contractual protections.
You know, they're asking publishers, I want you to promise
you're not going to train my work on AI. I
want you to make these other promises too. Some publishers
have been very willing to put that kind of language
(43:33):
in the contract, and others aren't. So I am a
little bit worried that. You know, the biggest five publishers
in the United States have kind of worked authors into
a corner on other issues, like it's really hard to
sell a book today without also selling the ebook rights
and the audiobook rights. It's kind of it's it's an
(43:55):
all or nothing sort of situation. Same with ebook royalties.
You can't really go shape those even with a great
literary agent. So I'm really concerned that if all of
these big publishers kind of they're not supposed to collude,
of course, but if they somehow or to unilaterally come
to the same conclusion, I would feel bad. I don't
(44:17):
think it would be right for authors to feel like
they have to give up certain rights in order to
have a decent publisher if that's what they want.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Well, that's a great segue to my one of my
last questions, which is that you've been giving advice to
like generations of writers. Where can folks find your advice?
Where can folks connect with you? What's next for Jane?
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Yeah, the best place is my author website, that's Janefriedman
dot com. I do have a range of newsletters, both
free and paid, that people can subscribe to, and then
a blog which can be delivered via email as well.
So those are the best places to start.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Is there anything that I did not ask that you
want to make sure it gets included in this conversation?
Speaker 1 (45:01):
I don't think. So. That was really thorough and great
questions to thank.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
You, except for the first one I got you confused
with another Jane Freed, Well, what's it like? Having like
another another like prominent person in the space with your
same name, and then be trying to fight with Amazon
about having I know, like it's just a head fuck
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
It is, it is.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
I get the other Jane's emails frequently. Actually, when I
was interviewed by the BBC a few days ago, they
introduced me as the CEO of HarperCollins, and I have
to wonder, like, on her end, I've actually met her
and I've interviewed her and it was delightful. I have
to wonder on her end if if she finds it
(45:42):
as humorous as I do, or if if she's just
supremely annoyed.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Well, I'll have to get her on and then give
her your bio. Yes, got a story about an interesting
thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You
can reach us at Hello at tangody dot com. You
can also find transcripts for today's episode at tenggody dot com.
(46:07):
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me Bridget tod It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed
creative Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is
our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer.
I'm your host, bridget Tood. If you want to help
us grow, rate and review.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
They are not prepared for what's about to happen, or
what is already happening, which is this flood of AI
generated material being uploaded.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
There are no girls on the Internet.
Speaker 3 (00:16):
As a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed Creative, I'm Bridget
Todd and this is there are no girls on the Internet.
Our names hold so much power. When Anna made Bullock
left her abusive husband Ike, she famously said that she
didn't want any assets, only the stage name that he
(00:38):
had given her, Tina Turner. So much of our reputation
and who we are to the outside world it's wrapped
up in our names. So what if someone was using
AI to scam people using your name? This is exactly
what writer Jane Friedman woke up to find last week.
Someone was selling bad AI versions of books with her
(00:59):
name listed at the office and selling them on Amazon.
Speaker 2 (01:02):
When we sat down.
Speaker 3 (01:03):
To talk about it, I quickly realized that I had
Jane mixed up with another woman who is also a
big name in publishing, who was also named Jane Friedman.
Speaker 1 (01:12):
Well, you may want to back up and reconsider that question,
because there's another Jane Friedman in publishing who is the
former suit you of HarperCollins and the founder of Open Road.
So you fight want her instead for this podcast?
Speaker 3 (01:28):
Out embarrassing, right, I know, not an ideal way to
start an interview, and I wouldn't ordinarily include my mistakes
in the show, but I felt like it highlighted the
importance of and complexities around names, especially in a field
like publishing. Jane says that she gets confused for the
other Jane all the time, and I was struck by
what a headspinner this all was. Jane having to differentiate
(01:51):
her name from another Jane in publishing, while also going
up against Amazon to differentiate her name from an AI
enabled scammer. Well, I hate that I am starting off
this interview with a big mistake, but it does kind.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
Of feel relevant to the conversation.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
No, it's totally all right, I completely understand. So I
started in publishing right out of college. Actually, while I
was still in college, I had an internship at a
traditional publishing house in the Midwest in Cincinnati. I stayed
there for twelve years, which was pretty unusual. Most people
hop around in publishing jobs, but I stayed put. I
(02:30):
took a dtour as a writing professor for a couple
of years went back into publishing, working for a literary journal,
the Virginia Quarterly Review, and then around let's see, this
was twenty fourteen, I went full time freelance entrepreneur, and
so as of today, I write I published mainly for
an audience of writers and publishers. So it's a very
(02:52):
meta career that I've developed.
Speaker 3 (02:55):
Something that I read about you in my research for this,
which hopefully is the right Jane Friedman, is that you
have this reputation of being like an honest broker of
information about the publishing space, and it's a space that
can sometimes be kind of opaque, kind of murky. Do
you think that's one of the reasons why whoever was
trying to use your name to publish these fraudulent books
(03:17):
targeted you as someone who is known for giving honest information.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
It's a fascinating question because I would really love to
know what motivated them to target me and my name.
Was it actual knowledge of what I do, or was
it some spreadsheet that told them my name ranks well
for the topic of e books and publishing and they're
just like that, you know, and I was just picked
out of a hat. I'm not sure, but certainly there's
(03:43):
demand surrounding what I do because I'm seen as trustworthy
and i' I mean, and that's very intentional. I try
to be to give people a three hundred and sixty
degree view of the publishing industry. I don't consider myself
necessarily by a for any publishing path. It's really what
(04:04):
suits this author at this time, what's going to best
further their career goals.
Speaker 3 (04:09):
I do feel like it is a space where there's
a lot of people selling a lot of things, whether
it's their course or whether it's you know, oh, you
should be doing xyz on Amazon, You're going to make
so much money. And I think the space can be tough,
and I think someone giving people like the honest rundown
of what's happening is really really valuable.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
Yeah, I think so too, because there are a lot
of promises made. Writers are also susceptible to flattery, and
there are a lot of people services companies that pray
on writers' dreams for their work, and I find it
pretty shameful because I think what's not really understood is
(04:53):
that sometimes there's more money to be made from the
writers themselves than from actually selling their writers work.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
That's pretty disappointing to hear.
Speaker 1 (05:05):
Yes, yes it is, and I don't candy coat things,
so yeah, I think that's why people trust me to
tell it like it is.
Speaker 3 (05:14):
Last week, Jane Friedman was alerted to the fact that
someone who wasn't her was publishing books under her name.
Those titles were added to her Goodreads author page and
Amazon page, so a casual observer would probably think they
were written by Jane. Jane tweeted, as of today, there
are about half a dozen books being sold on Amazon
with my name on them that I did not write
(05:35):
or publish. Some huckster generated them using AI. This promise
is to be a serious problem for the book publishing world.
So you wake up one day and you see a
bunch of books on your Goodreads profile. For folks who
don't know Goodreads is owned by Amazon, is it. What's
your first reaction when you see this?
Speaker 1 (05:56):
A panic? Panic, because I know how hard it's going
to be to correct, being very familiar with Amazon's procedures
and policies, which I've dealt with in the past. I
know countless authors who have to deal with this, and
it's like banging your head against the wall. And I
was notified by someone who was aware of my name
(06:17):
and my work. Not super like fan, but someone who
you know, was just curious enough to go looking for
what I've written and published in book form, and you know,
it's these fraudulent books that they stumbled on first. And
thank god they had the critical thinking skills to alert me,
rather than assuming I was trying some new, weird experiment.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Like Jane's writing has really gone down of you not
just right exactly. Okay, So, I, like a lot of
people listening a thousand percent assumed that the way that
you that a writer controls what shows up under their
name on their good Reads page.
Speaker 2 (06:56):
But that is actually not the case.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
And so what did it actually look like to get
a book removed from your good week page?
Speaker 1 (07:03):
Yeah, it's kind of insane. You know, most social media
sites or community sites, you do have one hundred percent
control over your profile. But that's not the case that
good Reads, nor do they notify you when something has
changed on your profile as sub like as substantial as
a new book has been added. You have no idea
unless you're monitoring it yourself. So if you want to
(07:26):
get a book removed from your profile, which just to
be clear, it's automatically added by Amazon. Also, individuals can
manually add books to an author's profile. So like any
any like Rando can go and just look for the
fine print. You can find it. If you really want
to screw with someone, I don't suggest you do that,
(07:48):
but if you really had you know, an enemy out
there anyway, So if you want to get the book
removed or books removed in my case, there's a Librarians group.
It's a group of volunteers who try to keep the
good Reads data appropriate, in line, clean, useful. And if
you go into this group, you'll see that there's like
(08:10):
thousands upon thousands of requests from authors to have their
profiles corrected. And so I just had to join the
line please correct my profile.
Speaker 3 (08:21):
So the Librarians group, these are like unpaid volunteers.
Speaker 1 (08:25):
That's correct.
Speaker 2 (08:25):
Yes, it's what's.
Speaker 3 (08:27):
Wild to me about this is that both the way
that it works, this Librarians group, and the way that
you had to really raise hell on social media to
get Amazon to do anything. Yeah, Amazon is this billion
dollar global company. They don't have people internally who could
be paid to keep their platforms reliable, safe, accurate, etc.
Speaker 2 (08:47):
Etc.
Speaker 3 (08:47):
It's curious to me that they would not be invested
in that and instead are relying on the labor of
volunteers and people who have no business doing this, like
it's not your job to do this as a writer.
Speaker 1 (08:59):
Yeah, I could and agree more, and that there are
two sets of problems here. Unfortunately, there's the Goodreads problem,
which that's a company that they bought. It's been maybe
ten years ago, and they basically bought it and abandoned it.
And I've been told by people behind the scenes that
the coding of that side and just the whole like
structure and ability to change it is not straightforward. So
(09:22):
rather than do the right thing and improve it, they're
just kind of letting it decay. Is that the right word.
It's like, you know, duct tape. That's how it's surviving
at this point. So like I could understand, maybe like
they don't want to get into that mess. However, the
other side of this is Amazon itself and how books
(09:43):
get uploaded to their site, and there are more formal
processes with what I assume are paid employees looking at
these infringement claims, which is what I had to submit.
But there are different tiers and you know, you're our
initial request is going to go to the lowest level tier,
and it's like corresponding with AI. Ironically, you don't get
(10:08):
any sense of if it's a human being. On the
other side, you feel like they're going through this really
rigid rule book of you know, did they provide X,
did they provide Y? And if not, close the case.
So they're trying to get rid of you, in my opinion,
as quickly as possible. And I have a tiny bit
of sympathy just because I've been around writers for so long.
(10:29):
A lot of them are going to be upset annoyed
by all sorts of things that happen on Amazon site
that really don't constitute infringement or what I would call
more of an annoyance. And so Amazon must have to
filter through thousands of these things a day, so I
get it, but they are not prepared for what's about
(10:49):
to happen, or what is already happening, which is this
flood of AI generated material being uploaded.
Speaker 3 (10:55):
So when you first alerted Amazon to what was going on,
how did they initially react that The person that you
reached out to first was what was the vibe?
Speaker 1 (11:04):
So the first response I got was it felt very automated,
which was it wanted me to itemize the offending products
or books and then also linked to what work was
being infringed upon. So it wanted to know you're the
copyright owner of what book and what are the books
that are infringing on it? And of course if it's
(11:25):
AI generated, well, A, it's not copyright protected in the
first place, and B it's not necessarily infringing on existing work.
It's it's it's creating new work in the style of
So when I said, when I tried to explain this,
I was asked for my trademark registration numbers instead. But
(11:46):
most authors do not trademark their name. It's a pretty
expensive process and also would only pertain very narrowly to
your work. And so I couldn't satisfy that request either.
But I tried to, you know, explain and look, this
is false advertising. Nay, my name is being abused here.
It's trying to pass off work as mine when it's not.
(12:09):
But you know, I couldn't check any of the boxes
for them, so they closed the case without removing the books.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
Let's take a quick break.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
At our back.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
Amazon made Jane jump through a lot of hoops to
deal with this issue. After she couldn't produce a trademark
for her own name, who could or the copyright for
the sham books on Amazon. Amazon closed the case and
said they would not be removing the books, but Jane
kept at it. She tweeted, and she published a piece
on her own website called I would rather see my
(12:54):
books get pirated than this or why Goodreads and Amazon
are becoming dumpster fires? And eventually, after lots and lots
of back and forth and raising hell on social media,
Amazon did remove the books. But still Amazon is creating
a system that forces individuals to have to do an
incredible amount of labor just to protect their names and
reputations online. And it shouldn't be the job of writers
(13:17):
like Jane to keep Amazon's platforms authentic and accurate. And
it seems like the only reason that it worked out
in Jane's case is because she already has a well
respected platform. But what about authors who don't, As she
writes in her piece, I'm sure that's in no small
part due to my visibility and reputation in the writing
and publishing community. What will authors, what smaller profiles do
(13:38):
when this happens to them. So first of all, it
just seems like so much work on your behalf to
have to do to like prove that this is going on.
And then also just the idea, like you said, not
many people out there trademark their name, and so it's
just an incredible burden on the harmed impacted party. Meanwhile,
(13:59):
Amazon is just like, Okay, well, can you prove your
case to us? It doesn't seem like the right dynamic
to me.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Yeah, I mean, at minimum, I think they have to
implement probably a new process or procedure for this sort
of complaint because it just doesn't fall along the same
lines as a traditional copywriter infringement claim.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
So I know that eventually, luckily, probably because of your
platform on social media and like being a loud, respected
voice in the space, Amazon did do. I was gonna
say the right thing, but I guess really more the
reasonable thing and remove these titles from your Goodreads page.
But I guess my question is what about writers who
(14:42):
maybe don't have the time, the resources, the platform, the
energy to go through this incredibly laborious process just to
have your Amazon Goodreads page be accurate. Is it creating
the system where it's this incredible burden on them, and
they maybe wouldn't be able to have success at doing this.
Speaker 1 (15:00):
Yeah, I think this is the big, big, big problem
that we're now facing because anyone with a name that
carries value, if it's a name that can be profited on,
which describes a lot of authors who depend on their
writing for a living, You're now in this position of
having to police use of that name on two sites
that do a terrible job of policing or verifying author
(15:22):
identities and pretty much have a policy if anything goes
as long as it's not blatantly illegal. So I don't
know how that system can stand moving forward, which is
why I made such a big stink. That said, I
do think authors have remedies that are maybe less laborious
when they find infringement. So, for example, if you have
(15:45):
a traditional publisher, I would certainly be calling them if
you have, if you still have a relationship with them,
if you have a point of contact, they need to know.
If that's not possible, then hopefully you belong to a
writer's organization. The Author's Guild here is particularly helpful, and
they did see what was happening with my case and
(16:07):
we're assisting in the background, so they're very effective at
getting really clear problem material taken down. You know, it
might not happen overnight, but I would say it would
happen in a few days if it's a clear case.
So those are some remedies. But as far as having
to police your profiles and all of that, I don't
(16:30):
know what to say other than I think there are
some tools out there that like will alert you maybe
via email, that oh, this page has seen an update
or a change, so at least you get some sort
of automated notification. But at least on Amazon dot Com.
You know, you can't set up an alert that way,
but maybe a Google alert or other things that would help, yeah,
(16:54):
so that you don't have to be visiting these sites
every day.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
I mean, I do think we're in this weird space
now where technology is really progress at this fast speed,
faster than folks can like make new rules for or
like anticipate, and now we're all just stuck with this
Internet where the bottom line default assumption is that it's
(17:19):
going to be full of scams and fraud and people
misusing your name for their own profit. I just feel
like we deserve better writers deserve better, like we deserve
an Internet landscape that is not trying to screw you
at every turn.
Speaker 1 (17:35):
Yeah, I agree, and some of there are certain companies
that I think have the ability and the resources to
be helpful. So Amazon being a case in point, they
sit at a very important waypoint for all sorts of
activity that's both good and bad, and they could do
so much better. They could take more responsibility. I think
(17:56):
they have a duty of care. Why they don't know
wake up to that. It's hard for me to say
other than capitalism, but I think they're one of quite
a number of companies that I hope that can be
pressured to do better.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, and something about Amazon is because they're such a
big player in the space. You know, so goes Amazon,
so goes the rest, and so they really a big
platform takes a step to make their platform safer better.
A lot of other smaller platforms get in line because
they really set the tone. And so if Amazon is
not setting that tone, they really have this opportunity to
(18:35):
be a leader and a good actor and a you know,
a force for good of the Internet.
Speaker 2 (18:41):
But they're just not doing it. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (18:43):
I couldn't agree more, and I really wish I understood
the motivations or lack of motivation, as the case might be,
because it certainly doesn't lead to a good customer experience
with which they're supposedly concerned about. You know, if people
can't trust what they find there, what.
Speaker 3 (19:01):
Made you suspect that those books were written by AI?
Speaker 1 (19:04):
I think, like many writers, I've done my own little
experiments with chat GPT in particular, and I've used all
sorts of vanity prompts because I'm curious what it's capable of.
And I know for sure that these models have scraped
years of my writing off of my blog, and so,
you know, all inputs something like how do I get
a book published? Or what does Jane Friedman say about
(19:25):
how to get a book club published? Or who is
Jane Friedman? And so I've seen the sorts of material
it's capable of generating, especially in my category. And you know,
it's very surface level, It's not it has some substance,
but if you try to push it, it starts to
repeat itself. Forget, it gets more and more generic. So
(19:47):
when I saw the opening pages of these fraudulent books,
and I read the bio, especially reading the bio. I
could tell I'm pretty sure this has been AI generated.
You know, it's just kind of like bloviating student padded
essay material. It's not you know, it's not someone writing
down and actually trying to present a cogent, you know,
(20:11):
instruction guide.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
Yeah, it's so.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I mean, I've certainly done what you've just described of,
like what can you tell me about Bridget padd as
a podcaster? And it's exactly that. It's exactly that I mean,
and everybody's done it. But it's one of those things where, like,
you know, when something was written by a human, even
written badly by a human, like yeah, and when something
was written by AI, you can.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
Just tell yeah, yeah. It may not always be that way,
but at least today it's painfully obvious.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
More after a.
Speaker 3 (20:43):
Quick break, let's get right back into it. Jane's situation
is just another example of the let's say, complicated relationship
(21:04):
that Amazon has with the publishing industry. Back in twenty
twenty one, three of the biggest names in publishing, the
Association of American Publishers, the Author's Guild, and the American
Booksellers Association, sent a joint letter to US lawmakers to
crying Amazon's dominance over publishing and warning that it's threatening
the entire industry.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Amazon no longer.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Competes on a level playing field when it comes to
book distribution, but rather owns and manipulates the playing field,
leveraging practices across its platform that appear to be well
outside of fair and transparent competition. The letter reads, and now,
in light of Jane situation, it seems like Amazon could
be doing a lot to make it easier for authors
to resolve issues that arise from technology like AI, but
(21:48):
they're not. In response to Jane situation, an Amazon spokesperson said,
we invest heavily to provide a trustworthy shopping experience and
protect customers and authors from misuse of our services, But
currently Amazon doesn't really have any kind of plan to
prevent scam books from proliferating on their platform, which is
a real problem. How can Amazon say that they're interested
(22:10):
in providing a trustworthy experience if they aren't doing anything
to ensure that and instead are just moving that burden
onto authors like Jane. What's the relationship between Amazon and
the publishing industry right now?
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Oh, that's a big question. So it's always been a
frenemy situation. Publishers have generally not been that thrilled with
Amazon's dominance, and I would say, unfortunately, it's about I
want to say, around sixty percent of books now, regardless
(22:45):
of format, are now sold through Amazon. So despite them
not always you know, being on the same side of
Amazon in terms of their practices, they also can't necessarily
afford to piss off Amazon either, So it's just a
it's a very tortured relationship with the self published author community.
(23:09):
That's yet another side of the story where initially self
published authors kind of saw Amazon as a savior figure
might be going a little far, but finally opening up
paths to a sustainable career without having to rely on
the gatekeepers of traditional publishing. And so many fabulous author
(23:29):
careers have been launched because of Amazon services, and they
do provide something that's super valuable. However, as time has
gone on, I think everyone's realizing the devil's bargain that's
been struck here and how Amazon at any time can
change the rules to press earnings make it so you
(23:51):
have to advertise in order to get your books noticed
at all. So it's I think everyone at this point
today is looking to not have all of their eggs
in the Amazon basket and try to strengthen their careers
so that if Amazon does change something in a dramatic
way that makes people unhappy, they still have a career.
Speaker 3 (24:12):
That is something I always tell folks about navigating this
weird tech time of ours, is like, do not put
all of your eggs in one digital basket, because you
never know what might change. You know, Bezos can make
up tomorrow and be like, no, it's this, It's been that,
but now it's this, and your whole thing could be
could be threatened.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
So really sad. Spread things around.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
Have your own platforms that you own that you can say,
you know, you'll be able to invest in if something changes.
But it just I think that's good advice, But it
makes me sad that that's advice that folks like you
have to give creatives.
Speaker 1 (24:49):
Yes, yes, it's become more and more essential over time,
and you know, if anyone doesn't grasp it. Just looking
at what's happened with Twitter, it is like, you know,
exhibit A for what happens if you rely too much
on a single platform. So yeah, I've I want to
say that from the beginning I've always been about diversifying,
(25:11):
but I think today people are really listening to that message.
Speaker 2 (25:15):
What do you think I.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
Think is at stake if Amazon just continues to kind
of not hold up their end of the of the
bargain on responsibility, If we're keeping platforms accurate, you know,
with accurate information and accurate titles and stuff on there, like,
what's at stake for the industry?
Speaker 1 (25:34):
Well, fortunately, I think there are chinks in Amazon's armor.
I do think I've noticed a definite tide change in
how people think about Amazon and shopping at Amazon. I'm
looking at this from the consumer side first, but I
have seen so many people shift their purchasing habits to
places like Bookshop, which is what people call the virtuous
(25:54):
alternative divine from Amazon, at least on the book side.
And so you know, when and when I went through
this myself on social media, a lot of people said, well,
that's it, I'm never buying from Amazon again. You know,
these were authors, so just people, I think, you know,
the final straw has occurred for a lot of people
over the last few years, and that has to hurt.
(26:17):
I would expect Amazon, the negative publicity they get from
things happening and publishing or from their marketplace where there's
a lot of knockoffs, counterfeits. I think it has an effect.
Publishing is in a fortunate position at this moment in
(26:37):
time because they're starting to see the potential for reaching
people that's more organic, that's more community driven, that's not
reliant on Amazon. And here I'm thinking of book talk,
so you know that, of course, there are some problems
associated with that as well. I would aid to see
publishers now just lean on TikTok to solve all their problems.
(26:59):
But I think certainly over the last five years, in particular,
the biggest publishers have been more serious about establishing direct
to consumer relationships, whether that's through email, newsletters, social media,
or other efforts. And certainly small and independent publishers they
actually had some of their best performance during the pandemic
(27:19):
when people were more conscious of why don't we buy
direct from the publisher? They probably need our help. Let's
support the things that we believe in. Let's support the
companies that share our values.
Speaker 2 (27:29):
That's really good to see.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
And I have to say, like I am right there
with you with the problems around book talk, but I
genuinely do feel like I have never felt like I
was more part of an engaged community of like minded
readers than with book Talk. Like I know, it definitely
has its problems, which maybe we'll do another episode on that,
but you know, I like to read thriller books, and
(27:54):
you know, I have gotten connected with so many different
authors and titles that I would have never found otherwise.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
And I don't know, I think that.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Something about what you're saying, it feels like a double
edged sword when it comes to tech right now, that
there are all these threats and scams and liabilities, but
also all of these really exciting ways to use technology
for readers and authors and publishers to find each other
and connect in these new ways that are also kind
of exciting.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (28:20):
I mean, despite everything that's happened to me and the
last week or so, I still remain fairly optimistic. I
think that despite some of these scary things that are happening,
I think things the ship will right itself. I don't
think we're I don't think we're headed towards total dystopia yet.
(28:40):
And there's the so called creator economy too, has opened
up a lot of options for writers and all types
of creative people to figure out the business model that
fits them, so no one has to be reliant on
Amazon or a publishing company or a TikTok. I think
there are lots of ways to go about this. There's
a lot of freedom.
Speaker 3 (29:00):
As all of this was happening to Jane, another AI
firestorm was brewing. A computer scientist and computational linguist named
Benji Smith was taking a lot of heat from writers
on Twitter for his platform prose Craft, a platform that
he built quote dedicated to the linguistic analysis of literature
where basically twenty five thousand books were mined, maybe from
(29:23):
pirated sources online to train machine learning algorithms to recognize
which kinds of words can be used and which kinds
of contexts. And authors were pissed. They were pissed that
Benji used their books without permission or consent. Benji apologized
and took the entire platform down. Jane says that it
makes sense that authors were upset, especially out of time
(29:44):
and being in the creative fields feels so fraud and threatened.
But Jane wonders if this was a distraction from some
of the bigger issues in the space. I have to
ask because the situation that you had with Amazon was
happening against the backdrop of that prose craft mess. Like,
I saw that from beginning to end, and I thought
(30:04):
all those writers rightfully being like, hey, you can't just
take our books to train your AI, Like what are
you doing?
Speaker 2 (30:11):
What do you think that? First of all, what did
you think about that? As a as somebody who knows
the space very well?
Speaker 1 (30:17):
Yeah, so this is where my views tend to diverge
from the average author. I tend to stay pretty calm
and rational and look at is there actual harm occurring here,
and who's behind it? And what are their motivations? And
how far did this reach? And like, because I know
(30:38):
how writers can like jump to fear, anxiety and outrage
very quickly, especially right now with the whole AI situation,
everyone is just like on a knife's edge. So it
took me a little while to catch up with that situation.
Speaker 3 (30:53):
Because you were going through your own situation, that's right.
Speaker 1 (30:56):
But when I did, what I saw was a fairly
benign project, like a linguistic analysis, a text and data
mining thing. And yeah, sure, he scooped up a lot
of books that looks like they were from pirate sites.
I don't know if he did that intentionally or if
he kind of like you know, turned the other way
(31:17):
when that when his crawler scooped up these books. But
I don't, like, I just can't ascribe malicious intentions to
this guy. And he's just a guy, Like he's not Amazon, right,
So I think there are like I look at situations
differently depending on who has the power. And so I
saw author. I saw how Authors really acted swiftly got
(31:42):
him to take the site down, and I think the
fact he took it down so quickly indicates he what
his intentions were. He didn't want to upset people, so
when the whole thing came down, Authors got to claim
a huge victory. But what I saw was a distraction
from what the real problems are. This wasn't an AI tool.
(32:03):
I mean, I guess sure he could have somehow profited
off that data set, maybe like who knows if he
would have if he could have, And so maybe it
was right for that to just be nipped in the
bud right away. But I just think they're bigger fish
to fry here. And I'm also not a fan of
(32:23):
like piling on someone like that in a way that
felt just maybe a little mean spirited. And the other
thing is that authors don't have the strongest grasp of
copyright law, what their rights are, what others rights might be.
And as someone who's followed a lot of legal cases
(32:46):
surrounding copyright and fair use, especially, there's a really monumental case,
the Google Books scanning case that was decided some years ago.
It took a long time to be decided, but Google
scanned millions of books in partnership with libraries. The author's
guild brought a lawsuit against this to prevent it, but
(33:06):
Google ended up winning. It was even though it was
ingesting all of these works without compensation to the author,
the use was considered transformative and permissible under the law.
So the books remain scanned. You can still, you know,
you can go to Google Books and get all sorts
of information from that data set. And I think that
(33:27):
was the correct outcome. Not all authors agree with me,
but I think it was the correct outcome. So this,
to me, prosecraft seemed like this text and data mining
project that had pretty low potential harm.
Speaker 3 (33:41):
I was like surprised to see how big the reaction was,
and some of the authors were like you will never
like it was a lot of big reactions.
Speaker 1 (33:52):
I'll just say that, yes, big, very big.
Speaker 3 (33:55):
It seemed to me the point of prosecraft was to
for potential author to be able to glean information about
books to help themselves as authors.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
So if I know that like.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
X novel that I'm trying to write a similar novel
to uses passive voice x percent of the time, I
guess my question is is.
Speaker 2 (34:17):
That useful information for a potential author?
Speaker 3 (34:19):
That part of me is like, is this person taking
the books and minings up totally?
Speaker 2 (34:24):
Ask good, good question.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
But in addition to that, is this person trying to
sell potential authors on something that maybe they don't really
need and try to convince them like, oh, this is
going to be the magic bullet that makes your writing
a success. And maybe kind of praying on the need
that potential authors might have for a tool that they're
(34:46):
being told is going to be the thing that makes
them successful.
Speaker 1 (34:48):
I'm not even sure if I'm asking that in a
way that makes sense. No, I think I understand what
you're saying. A lot he got criticized a lot for
the sort of data, the usefulness of the data that
he was presenting got I mean, people were so harsh
about his the passive voice active voice thing.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:05):
I have a very personal reaction to that, which is
I was once married to a PhD in computer science,
and he approached the world in a very different way
than I did. And so knowing that this guy, Benji
Smith is a computer scientist and on top of that,
(35:26):
a linguist like interested in linguistic analysis, to me, he
was just nerding out.
Speaker 4 (35:33):
You know.
Speaker 1 (35:33):
And yeah, it might have only been of interest to him,
and that's okay. I don't necessarily think anything that he
was doing was of real value to the average writer,
but it was interesting to him, Okay.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
I think that a lot of that is easily lost
in our conversations online, especially conversations of communities that don't
always feel heard. Right, if you're someone trying to break
into publishing, I could imagine that that is a dam
where it's easy to feel like your voice is just
lost all the time and that you're constantly pushing up
an uphill struggle. And so I wonder if that played
(36:11):
into some of the big reactions of like, these are
a community.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Of people who feel unheard a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
Yes, yes, one hundred percent, one hundred percent. Writers feel vulnerable,
like they're getting the short end of the stick, that
they're under attack, that everyone's trying to take away the
value that they offer the world, and so like from
a psychological perspective or from our the social cultural political
(36:37):
moment we're in right now, I totally get it, very
predictable outcome, but I still wish that people could just
take a breath and you know, apply more critical thinking.
Speaker 3 (36:50):
How do you stay so grounded, Like in a space
at a time where it feels like there are technology
enabled threats to the industry, how do you stay so pragmatic,
so clear eyed, so grounded.
Speaker 1 (37:04):
Some of it's just probably inherent in my nature, but
also having been in the same industry now for going
on almost three decades, like I do feel like I've
kind of seen it all now. I'm there are surprises,
there's no question, But I've spoken to so many writers
over the years, I've spoken at so many conferences, seeing
(37:27):
every kind of perspective and outrage, and so it's I
I feel like I can step back from it all
and see just the patterning. It's all just patterns and
a lot of things, a lot of the same dynamics
just repeat themselves again and again.
Speaker 3 (37:48):
Yeah, I've talked to a lot of like technologists and
AI ethics folks, and they say, most of them have
said some version of what you've just said, that it
actually benefits people who make AI when we sort of
doom and gloom and catastrophe catastropsize that's the right word, catastrophize.
Speaker 2 (38:07):
Around things like AI.
Speaker 3 (38:08):
That like, that's what they want us to be saying,
And that there have been hype cycles where different kinds
of technology we're going to change certain industries, decimate certain industries,
and those things didn't always come to fruition. So recognize
that pattern, and rather than following in that pattern again
and again and again, stop and ask, like, am I
actually amplifying a hype cycle that we don't actually know
(38:31):
is going to shift this industry the way it's telling
us the way it's telling us it will.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Absolutely. There's a wonderful project. I think it started as
a podcast and it's now just a website called The
Pessimist's Archive that really I think introduces it really shows
this concept and action over many, many decades, and it
will dig up old articles like from one hundred two
(38:59):
hundred years ago about how this or that technology is
going to destroy everything that's good. And I did a
little bit of the of my own research too, inspired
by what they do, to look up what were writers
saying about word processing, you know, like when it became
possible for basically anyone to start writing and typing and
(39:19):
doing their own thing or with desktop publishing. I went
to the New York Times specifically to see what was
the reaction, and there was one person who felt like
women would no longer have jobs as a result of
word processing, because who you know, if everyone was typing
their own stuff, what would women have left to do?
Speaker 3 (39:40):
Jade, I have to tell you, like, this is not
at all the perspective I thought you were going to have.
It is so refreshing, it like, it is just really
refreshing to hear someone be like, let's not all like
lose it over this just yet. You know, let's take
a step back and really do some comparison about how
we talked about things before. There's so many insights from
(40:02):
history that we can that we can find the way
that we've talked about emerging technology. And I'm just happy
that someone who is such a voice in the space
is doing that as opposed to sort of jumping on
the bandwagon of like completely catastrophizing online.
Speaker 1 (40:19):
Right right, thank you. I I this situation that happened
this week was very unusual because prior to this, I've
always been fairly artificial intelligence neutral or generative AI neutral,
and I've gotten taken to task for that by people
(40:40):
in my community. They think that I am promoting harm
or a dangerous technology, and I respect their feelings, like,
I'm not going to say nothing bad is going to
happen as a result. Obviously bad things are going to happen.
And I had someone actually get in touch with me
a second time after taking me to task when she
saw the news cycle. She said, now, have you changed
(41:03):
your mind? And I said, no, no, I haven't. I'm
still on the same page as before.
Speaker 3 (41:12):
Well, are there guardrails that you would like to see
platforms like Amazon and goodreaths take to make to try
to keep the harm to a minimum when it comes
to AI and creative.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
Yes, they can do so much better, and that's really
why I raise the flag. They can do better, they
must do better, and why they haven't is beyond me.
I really I'm not so cynical to say, oh, it's
just about profits. I think this harms them in the
long run too, So yes, and I would like for
them to be respect and transparency from all of the
(41:49):
companies that are putting forth this technology, whether it's open
AI or Microsoft or Google. I think authors deserve to
know if their works have been used in the training
of these moms. I think they should have the right
to opt out. Like, I believe in moral rights for authors,
and I understand why they're upset because they're not getting
really access to those moral rights in this situation. So
(42:11):
I hope to see that come to pass. I believe
in more legislation around AI. I hope it doesn't take
too much longer. But I don't think we should just
be shutting the whole thing down.
Speaker 3 (42:21):
What do you think is next for the publishing industry.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
Well, what's so fascinating, at least from my industry perch,
is watching publishers navigate this in a way that doesn't
upset the author core. So they're definitely looking at these
tools as ways to be better marketers and promoters. Because
publishing companies marketing departments are desperately understaffed, they have so
(42:51):
little money and resource to promote the books they publish,
So I think they're looking at AI as a way
to immediately address that situation. And Penguin Random House, the
biggest of the publishers, already has an AI person on staff,
someone who's like a computer scientist type who's looking at
how to use this in a responsible way. And Penguin
(43:12):
Random House is also setting up their own internal models,
you know, so they're not feeding the general models. But
you know, authors are starting to ask for contractual protections.
You know, they're asking publishers, I want you to promise
you're not going to train my work on AI. I
want you to make these other promises too. Some publishers
have been very willing to put that kind of language
(43:33):
in the contract, and others aren't. So I am a
little bit worried that. You know, the biggest five publishers
in the United States have kind of worked authors into
a corner on other issues, like it's really hard to
sell a book today without also selling the ebook rights
and the audiobook rights. It's kind of it's it's an
(43:55):
all or nothing sort of situation. Same with ebook royalties.
You can't really go shape those even with a great
literary agent. So I'm really concerned that if all of
these big publishers kind of they're not supposed to collude,
of course, but if they somehow or to unilaterally come
to the same conclusion, I would feel bad. I don't
(44:17):
think it would be right for authors to feel like
they have to give up certain rights in order to
have a decent publisher if that's what they want.
Speaker 3 (44:25):
Well, that's a great segue to my one of my
last questions, which is that you've been giving advice to
like generations of writers. Where can folks find your advice?
Where can folks connect with you? What's next for Jane?
Speaker 1 (44:39):
Yeah, the best place is my author website, that's Janefriedman
dot com. I do have a range of newsletters, both
free and paid, that people can subscribe to, and then
a blog which can be delivered via email as well.
So those are the best places to start.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Is there anything that I did not ask that you
want to make sure it gets included in this conversation?
Speaker 1 (45:01):
I don't think. So. That was really thorough and great
questions to thank.
Speaker 3 (45:04):
You, except for the first one I got you confused
with another Jane Freed, Well, what's it like? Having like
another another like prominent person in the space with your
same name, and then be trying to fight with Amazon
about having I know, like it's just a head fuck
a little bit.
Speaker 2 (45:19):
It is, it is.
Speaker 1 (45:20):
I get the other Jane's emails frequently. Actually, when I
was interviewed by the BBC a few days ago, they
introduced me as the CEO of HarperCollins, and I have
to wonder, like, on her end, I've actually met her
and I've interviewed her and it was delightful. I have
to wonder on her end if if she finds it
(45:42):
as humorous as I do, or if if she's just
supremely annoyed.
Speaker 3 (45:47):
Well, I'll have to get her on and then give
her your bio. Yes, got a story about an interesting
thing in tech, or just want to say hi? You
can reach us at Hello at tangody dot com. You
can also find transcripts for today's episode at tenggody dot com.
(46:07):
There Are No Girls on the Internet was created by
me Bridget tod It's a production of iHeartRadio and Unbossed
creative Jonathan Strickland is our executive producer. Tari Harrison is
our producer and sound engineer. Michael Almado is our contributing producer.
I'm your host, bridget Tood. If you want to help
us grow, rate and review.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Us on Apple Podcasts.
Speaker 3 (46:25):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, check out the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts
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