Josh Sutphin

@joshsutphin

(SUT-fin) Author of horror and hopepunk at . Co-founder @shirakipress.com. Veteran video game developer. Most active on Mastodon: josh.sutphin@wandering.shop

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Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· 13d

They ran almost 15,000 authors' published, copyrighted books through an AI checker—itself an AI system—exposing their work to genAI without consent, then turned around and accused *the authors* of using AI. Cool study! Very ethical! 🤡 arxiv.org/abs/2607.203...

$Generative AI floods and dilutes the market for books Tuhin Chakrabarty, Xinyue Liu, Jane C. Ginsburg, Paramveer Dhillon Generative AI can produce book-length works of fiction at near-zero cost. These books are often dismissed as low-quality ``slop'' that buyers will ignore, and are assumed to carry little commercial weight. We test that assumption with full-text AI detection across 14,419 self-published genre-fiction books sold on Amazon from 2023 to 2026, matched to daily sales records through June 2026. None of these books disclose whether or not they contain AI-produced content. We find that books for which we detected substantial AI text (> 25\%) make up a large share of the catalog but a smaller share of sales. Even so, they reach commercial scale, winning a growing share of sales over time and taking more of the scarce top-rank positions once held by books with no detected AI text. Over this period, the number of books with observed sales in a quarter grew 19.2-fold, while quarterly revenue grew only 8.9-fold. The market therefore added selling books faster than it added revenue, and revenue per selling book fell across most genres. Books with no AI text lose the most ground in genres with high AI diffusion, and most of all where Kindle Unlimited availability is high. Among top-selling books, those with substantial AI text draw on more distinctive language from existing books than do books with no AI text; for these books overlap rises with revenue, a gradient we do not detect for books with no AI text. Generative AI can thus reshape a creative market through scale rather than quality. Our results bear directly on the market-effect question at the center of the fair use defense to copyright infringement.$

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· 18d

Our last two titles for 2026, feminist speculative drama FRUITS OF OUR LABOR by Ian Patterson and cozy folk horror LIGHT & EARTH & MARROW by Jeannie Marschall, are coming up in August and September. I designed a couple of ads for them for Locus Magazine, which I’m quite proud of!

If the world can change this much by listening to one woman, imagine what would happen if it listened to all of them.

In a near-future America where women have just achieved asexual reproduction, three converging perspectives tell the story of a profound societal transformation.

“Patterson writes the future with the weight of history behind every page.” –S.J. Lee, author of the Altered Earth series and All That Holds Between

10% off with code: LOCUS26

Pre-order Now!
August 25, 2026

shirakipress.com/fol

Neighbors help each other. If they can.

In this cozy horror novella, hedge witch Tilly Reinicke tries to guide her new neighbors, the Bells, to respect the paranormal world around them as they build their new home. But the Bells’ unbelief in—and contempt for—the supernatural threatens everyone, for the Others do not suffer disrespect lightly… and soon they will walk the Paths again.

“My jaw DROPPED at that climax.” –NetGalley review

10% off with code LOCUS26

Pre-order Now!
SEPTEMBER 22, 2026

shirakipress.com/lem

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Jun 27

It is absolutely wild to me that we've managed to keep this thing going for this long. 👀 #writing #publishing

Screenshot from my LinkedIn employment history showing that we've been running Shiraki Press for 1 year and 5 months already

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Jun 16

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Jun 6

#astrology folks: "June 19 Venus and Jupiter meet in Cancer, this only happens once every 12 years and it's gonna be 🌟lit🌟" Me: *does the math* So uhhh 2014 was Gamergate and 2002 was war in Iraq and 1990 was also war in Iraq and that's every "Venus+Jupiter in Cancer" in my generation's lifetime 🫠

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· May 19

Sapphic science fantasy adventure with political intrigue and a building revolution... and you don't realize it until later, but the whole thing is fundamentally about care. It's our third publication, and I love it a lot. shirakipress.com/cot #booksky #sapphic #sciencefiction #fantasy #smallpress

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 24

My question for our #ai overlords is: what are all these replaced white-collar workers supposed to... do? Because, you see, you have stopped paying them. When your AI disappears my mortgage debt and makes groceries free, then we can talk. www.theguardian.com/technology/2...

Meta and Microsoft are cutting thousands of employees as they bet big on AI and executives claim that the technology is meeting productivity needs.

Meta told staff on Thursday that on 20 May it would cut 10% of its personnel – just under 8,000 employees – to boost efficiency, part of a layoff plan made months ago. The company is also closing about 6,000 open roles. Microsoft announced to employees, for the first time, that it would offer voluntary retirement to about 7% of its US workforce of roughly 125,000.

What have they said about AI? Mark Zuckerberg said in January that AI was making some hiring unnecessary. Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft's AI chief, said in February that he believed AI would be able to replace most white-collar work within the next 12 to 18 months.

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 12

What the fuck are we *doing* here?

Philosopher Derek Shiller develops this perspective in arguing that

...our resources are finite, and the same resources that might allow human beings to live ... could be more effectively spent on creating and sustaining artificial creatures. When that becomes the case, the beneficent thing to do is to choose that our children be artificial, rather than natural.

He concludes that we should then "engineer our extinction so that our planet's resources can be devoted to making artificial creatures with better lives."

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 12

if you see this post an image you saved because it made you laugh.

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 12

Woke up to this absolute banger from Rebecca Solnit. Quick, someone inform the rest of journalism! www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

But trying to understand motives is something of a hobby when the focus needs to be on consequences. We do not need to understand these criminals in order to try to contain and ultimately remove them. They will not last for ever, and we need to think about what happens when they're gone - to talk about the kind of reconstruction the US will face for the first time since the civil war, the reconstruction a ravaged and corrupted country has to go through to return to functionality. But not to return to the way things were.

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 10

Saw this at #norwescon and thought it was clever!

ECOLOGY is part of TECHNOLOGY. Let's try to understand both!

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 10

#resistance

SOME ARE POSTING ON SOCIAL MEDIA SOME ARE PROTESTING IN THE STREETS SOME ARE DONATING SILENTLY SOME ARE EDUCATING THEMSELVES SOME ARE HAVING TOUGH CONVERSATIONS WITH FRIENDS AND FAMILY

A REVOLUTION HAS MANY LAYERS BE KIND TO YOURSELVES AND TO OTHERS WHO ARE TRAVELING IN THE SAME DIRECTION

JUST KEEP YOUR FOOT ON THE GAS.

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 9

Me, always 😭 #writingcommunity

Three panels. First: distractions being kicked out of the pub. Second: back to writing. Third: more distractions creeping up behind.

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 9

This cursed thing was visited upon me and now I'm making it everybody's problem

Shrimp chocolate cups with a cocktail sauce center

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 8

Fire Emblem: Heroes is extremely serious business.

Palla, dressed as a rabbit, saying she is pleased to greet me dressed as a rabbit. 😂

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 7

Time to tap the sign

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 3

Our ad placement for Shiraki Press in the #norwescon program book is 🤩 (we're lower left) I had no idea when I submitted the ad that this is where it would land, but I am 👏not👏mad👏about👏it ♥️♥️♥️

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 3

My induction stove is probably my favorite appliance in the house. I'm shocked their market penetration is this low. All the best parts of cooking with gas, without the risk of blowing your house up! What's not to love?

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 2

I keep a work log of everything I did each day. Since getting into #publishing, nearly every day's log looks just like this post. 💀

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 1

I love these interactive articles. Great visualization of the amount of junk we’re filling our orbit with. The tech bros are gonna undo their own fantasy of moving humanity off-world. www.theguardian.com/science/ng-i...

The surge in orbital activity has created a significant collision risk. There have already been crashes, including a 2009 event where a US satellite hit a defunct Russia military satellite.
Tens of thousands of tiny fragments of metal are now spinning at high velocities.
The big fear is that future collisions will cause a domino effect where Earth's orbit becomes cluttered with tiny, high-speed bits of metal.
That could create a near-impenetrable layer of debris that would make space launches so dangerous it would essentially trap humans on
Earth.

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Apr 1

Uhhhh is Google Maps okay? This is a mess. 😬

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Mar 28

Very good bansai at the Pacific Bansai Museum!

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Mar 28

Earlier this week, we took a short little break to Kauai to decompress and shake off the SAD. I know everyone’s all “the beach!” but I’m really quite fond of their mountains. 😍

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Mar 27

As someone who currently depends in large part on investments to survive—thanks in part to the tech industry’s AI- and greed-driven implosion—I really cannot overstate how pissed I am at this trash president and his trash minions trashing everything in sight.

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Mar 26

Book mail! Brianne spotted and insta-ordered this gorgeous Folio Society edition of one of my favorite fantasy stories: THE LAST UNICORN. The animated film is a classic, but the book is so much richer and deeper, and this presentation is a stunner.

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Mar 25

Book Mail! I actually got this lovely edition from Winter Texts a few weeks ago. It’s a companion book to the Oregon Contemporary exhibit “A Larger Reality: Ursula K. Le Guin” featuring some of her texts, and essays by various additional contributors.

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Mar 24

“We’re laying off a thousand people so we can build a ton of new shit!” 🤡 This industry defies logic. www.epicgames.com/site/en-US/n...

Josh Sutphin@joshsutphin· Mar 24

Three Shiraki Press proofs side by side. Making our logo line up consistently on the spine was my personal design indulgence. ☺️ shirakipress.com