Ash Kingery

So, the Bona Books thing. I’m not here to talk about the AI aspect, but about one thing that stuck out to me in particular: how both “authors” had a lack of online presence as one of the red flags–or at least a yellow flag. To quote from the article:

• “Once we’d picked our hearts off the floor, we started digging: Bella had minimal online presence, first appearing in May 2025.”

• “That proved nothing, of course. Writers can be prolific. They can be private.”

• “Again, an author with little online presence.”

Does this mean an author has to have an online presence in order to succeed in this day and age? I hope it doesn’t. All I have is this silly website that I rarely post on–under my real name, at least. I have social media, but I don’t want to link that to my real name. I want to use social media to make dumb posts about professional wrestling and post my unexceptional art. I want my writing to be judged on its own merits, not my online presence or lack thereof. I don’t want to spend my time promoting myself when I could spend that time writing, or working, or eating pizza, or playing Tomodachi Life, or literally anything else. I want to be the reclusive weirdo in the tower whose only contact with the outside world comes when someone on the ground floor opens the metaphorical dumbwaiter and finds a new story inside.

There is no moral to this post. I just want to hide in my tower behind my Kuchipatchi mask and not have my chances at acceptance ruined because of it. So, uh, I hope this website is enough.