A person named ‘Jordan Reyes’ may — or may not — have sent me an email on Friday morning, with this subject line:
That book is still trapped in your head.
I have no idea if ‘Jordan Reyes’ exists in reality. I definitely know, however, that my book does not yet exist in reality.
Not yet… But reality is a funny thing.
I have never told anyone about the book trapped inside my head, so it’s a bit weird to get an email from a complete stranger offering to help me get it published.
It happens to be a novel, 200 pages long, more or less. A paperback, probably, but I wouldn’t be opposed to having it published as a hardback. It’s a science fiction novel, if you really want to know.
Or maybe you would classify it as ‘magical realism’? I don’t want to get into an argument about which genre, at this point, but I suppose the book critics on social media will eventually have to classify it. Or they might say, “This fascinating debut novel by Louis Cannon defies classification…”
Actually, the story will have romantic elements, too, but you would never call it a ‘romance novel’ because of the way things turn out in the end.
Did I mention that it’s set in the not-too-distant future? I’m hopeful that humanity actually has a future.
You would likely buy my novel at a book sale at the local library, where they sell the books that aren’t quite popular enough to keep on the shelf. You would pick it because the cover art made it look interesting, and it was priced, slightly used, at $1. After the first few pages, you would say to yourself, “Wow. I’m glad I bought this novel. It was definitely worth $1.”
At the moment, however, this book is still trapped in my head.
The email that might be from someone named ‘Jordan Reyes’, which began like this:
Hey,
I’ve been thinking about why people don’t write the book.
Not you specifically, I don’t know your situation. But every conversation I’ve had about this sounds the same.
They already have the idea.
Usually they’ve had it for years. They can describe it in thirty seconds, and you can hear how excited they are. Then they smile and say, “Yeah, one day.”
As you may have guessed, it would take me a lot longer than 30 seconds to describe the novel trapped in my head. I haven’t even begun to tell you the storyline. Just the romantic parts would take me 15 or 20 minutes.
But of course, I’m not going to share the details online, because someone could steal my ideas. Someone… or some thing.
In fact, today’s column is basically about the problem of ‘idea theft’.
That person named Jordan Reyes — if such a person exists — seemed to know quite a bit about why I’ve never gotten around to publishing my novel. Or even writing it, for that matter.
He or she — or it — pointed out the obstacles that we face when considering such a daunting task. Outlining the basic structure. Months of writing. Formatting that makes no sense, Designing the cover art. Finding a publisher…
It isn’t one obstacle. It’s four, stacked on top of each other.
That’s why MakeNovelAI stood out to me.
You give it your idea, the genre, who it’s for, and roughly how long you want it.
It writes your manuscript chapter by chapter while keeping characters, timelines, and details consistent from beginning to end.
Then it creates an original cover, exports your book as PDF, DOCX, and Kindle-ready EPUB, and even generates the description and keywords Amazon asks for.
Evidently, I could hire a computer algorithm called ‘MakeNovelAI’ to ghost-write my novel for me and get it ready for the world’s premiere bookseller. Amazon.
How much would I pay for this ghost-writing service? That’s always a key question.
It’s $17, once. No subscription. If you don’t think it’s worth it, you’ve got seven days to get your money back.
‘Jordan Reyes’ was honest about the fact that a novel is not a ‘money machine’. Most published books never turn a profit.
But did I want to leave my novel trapped in my head? That’s not a pleasant thought.
The email included a link to a website where I could find out more information.
For obvious reasons, I don’t click links in emails from strangers, even if they seem to know an awful lot about me and my unwritten novel. So I did a Google search for the company that ‘Jordan Reyes’ purportedly represented.
I was unable to locate the company website through Google, which is sort of a red flag for me. Maybe the email link was dangerous, or maybe not. I will never know. Call me overly cautious if you want, but as my mother used to say, better safe than sorry.
I did find out something else, however. My Google search revealed literally dozens of other companies offering to have their AI algorithms write my novel for me. In a variety of possible languages.
Some of the AI services charged a fee, but a lot of them claimed to be “free”.
Okay, I know nothing is free, in this day and age. We’re gonna pay, one way or another.
Anyway, I mentioned that this column is actually about stealing ideas. Because that’s exactly what AI does. It reads other people’s novels and steals their ideas, and then offers to write your novel for you, for $17, using other people’s ideas, slightly rearranged.
The novels that AI steals ideas from are usually best-sellers, of course, so the ideas are worth stealing.
But what if I am paying $17 so that some strange algorithm, whom I’ve never met, can steal my ideas?
You can see my dilemma.
I’m just a naturally suspicious person. I suspect things, without needing much evidence.
And I suspect that ‘Jordan Reyes’ is actually an algorithm that writes emails and sends them to poor, innocent, law-abiding novelists who have books trapped in their heads.
On the other hand, I can totally imagine how the book cover looks.
Underrated writer Louis Cannon grew up in the vast American West, although his ex-wife, given the slightest opportunity, will deny that he ever grew up at all. You can read more stories on his Substack account.