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A few people are upset that I indicated I can identify AI and I actually don't believe I can identify AI text. But I can identify weird obsequious and incompetent pitches that have 5+ paragraphs of words that say nothing and somehow get the details wrong about a book they swear they loved.

The reason I said we can recognize THESE pitches is because we all got roughly zero of these a few years ago and now we get dozens a day and they all sound identical and most are word vomit and are describing our books to us with incorrect details.

The reason I'm begging humans not to use AI is not because we are rejecting these pitches because we think they are AI. Whether they are AI is a secondary problem to whether or not we want to do business with someone who sounds this incompetent. We don't! AI makes you sound incompetent!

in fairness, if I were ever to cold-email an author and was saying I'd loved their work, I'd want to include some kind of proof that I had, in fact, read their work. However I suspect I'd be able to do better than "an LLM read the title and maybe the goodreads summary" levels

There is never a need to prove you read the work when emailing someone to simply say you enjoyed their work. It isn't necessary, nor does it ever happen. That said, we can tell the difference. It's obvious. Painfully obvious.

I have emailed multiple authors whose work I enjoy. Some of them welcome fan letters, and some never write back. But if they say, “Get in touch!” or something in one of their books, I figure it’s fair to try. Some have been delightful to speak with, and I’ve never tried any weird, creepy pitches! 😬🤷