No, it's not when tiny glittering particles form inside your eyes. (re: asteroid hyalosis)

According to Merriam-Webster, the prefix "hyl-" or "hylo-" means "wood" or "matter." Also from Merriam-Webster, the suffix "-osis" means a "process" or "increase".

Therefore, hylosis could be interpreted as the process of turning the thoughts from your mind into physical matter with material made of wood. Such as: a book! Or, taking a little more creative license with it, it could mean something which increasingly matters, such as preserving the human voice in the coming tsunami of AI-generated media.

Our favorite, however, is the philosophical line of thinking that all matter is connected, and that all of existence effectively has a single shared consciousness (in the same way one might say all the cells and bacteria in your body culminate in the single shared consciousness of "you").

No. We only publish books under agreements designed to align our motivations toward books' potential long-term success. We never ask for payments from our authors.

While generative AI is an incredibly useful advancement for some applications, we do not believe it capable of producing the insightful or creative books a human mind can. It's a fantastic tool for organization or analysis that can help someone actualize their vision quicker, but it cannot replace that vision.

We require all our authors to sign legal documents stating they have avoided both plagiarism and AI. We have a strict no-AI policy for a book's content. This keeps all our books the product of an actual human mind. Note that editing tools like grammar or spelling checkers are not generative AI.

In short, and like most things, it's impossible to know with absolute certainty. AI detection tools are far from perfect, and will likely always remain so without metadata to analyze.

However, generative AI is currently not very difficult to spot, especially as we get to know our authors through our trial rounds or the rest of the publishing process. In general, AI written books feel "soulless" and incoherent, with little to no subtext.

If not acquiring an already-created manuscript, our production process requires sending us drafts, notes, and edits as the book is being written.

We still test for AI-generated writing through both common and uncommon methods. All of these factors combined can paint a high-confidence picture of how an author's book was written.

Parts of the Bible, the U.S. Constitution, and even Lord of the Rings come back as AI-generated with popular detectors.

Keep in mind, AI is trained on human content. Therefore, it will often align with someone's style of writing, and that style will be "detected AI" as such. It's important to realize that AI detectors are often inaccurate, and likely always will be without any metadata to analyze.

Absolutely. Many authors choose to use a pen name (or a few) for their books. Some link them to their personal pages freely, while others maintain complete separation from their personal lives. Privacy is a concern we fully respect, and we would never reveal the individual behind a book against their wishes.

Amazon is the largest book market in the world by far, controlling approximately 80% of eBook sales and 65% of online print book sales. Because of this, we may partner with them for some of our books for a balance between the widest reach, highest royalties, and logistical ease as we continue to build.

We use market research as well as our own goals to determine if an exclusivity agreement would be in each specific book's best interests. As eBook exclusivity agreements with Amazon are short 90-day terms (as well as with Audible according to ACX's Audiobook License and Distribution Agreement section 2.3), we have the flexibility to frequently reassess and decide whether or not to continue after a term has ended.