Douglas Preston has a new novel: Extinction. It’s his 41st book, if you can believe it. But true to the author’s activism on behalf of the Authors Guild — and of all writers in the U.S. — the Santa Fe author would rather talk about another book he worked on and a few other things on his mind.
That other book is Fourteen Days, a collective novel Preston co-edited with Margret Atwood and co-wrote with 35 writers. The novel, published in February by HarperCollins, is supported by the Authors Guild, of which Preston served as president until 2023. He declined compensation for his work on Fourteen Days (other writers received an honorarium), and all proceeds from the sales of the novel benefit the Authors Guild Foundation.
Preston and two of his Fourteen Days co-authors — Roxana Robinson, former president of the Authors Guild, whose new novel, Leaving (W. W. Norton & Company), came out in late February; and Diana Gabaldon, author of the Outlander novels — will share the stage this weekend at the Santa Fe International Literary Festival to talk about the novel and the work of the Authors Guild.
Fourteen Days takes place on a building rooftop in New York City in April 2020. The many characters are the building’s residents who call themselves the “left-behinds” — people who couldn’t leave New York during the pandemic. To pass the time, the left-behinds tell each other stories.
The idea for the book was Preston’s, but the project was nothing if not collaborative. Atwood, his co-editor, convinced big-name writers from a multitude of genres and backgrounds to participate in the collaboration, with Preston also bringing in some writers. “He reached out to me with a very warm and personal letter,” says Robinson. “He also had a note that said something like, ‘I know you all have that story at the back of your mind that you haven’t gotten around to. This is your moment.’”
Preston worked out the novel’s frame, then tried to fit in the stories the other 35 writers sent him. It didn’t work.
“Writing is a form of thinking,” he says. “You write to think through something. And of course, sometimes you go off the rails.”
Discouraged, he dismantled his original frame and built a new one. “I finally arranged the stories into a good sequence, so each story suggested the next one and the character telling it,” he says. Millicent Bennett at HarperCollins then edited the novel, line by line.
For many of the 36 writers, Fourteen Days was an experiment in style. For example, Hampton Sides, who writes narrative nonfiction, wrote a fiction story for Fourteen Days; Gabaldon, who writes fiction novels, wrote more of a nonfiction tale.
Good luck figuring out who wrote which part, however. None of the stories in the novel are signed, and their mention in the bios at the end of the book is intentionally obscure. Here’s one clue, though: Robinson based her story in part on her work for Sotheby’s in the American Painting Department.
While Preston is eager to share the stories behind Fourteen Days, he recently spoke with Pasatiempo from his Santa Fe home office (which is adorned with a gigantic dinosaur head) on another topic that’s near and dear to his heart: how the Authors Guild is tackling issues resulting from the rise of artificial intelligence.
Founded in 1912, the Authors Guild, which now has more than 14,000 members, is the country’s oldest and largest professional organization for published writers of any genre, including journalists. The organization supports “working writers and their ability to earn a living from authorship.” It protects free speech and copyright, works for fair compensation practices, and fights book bans.
So, if you write for a living, both Preston and Robinson suggest you become a member.
It’s not only a supportive community, Robinson says via Zoom from her book-filled office on the East Coast. It also offers writers much-needed resources.
“The Authors Guild offers free legal support to its members,” she says. “So many writers have had an argument with a publisher but they can’t afford hiring a lawyer. The Authors Guild will help with that. They will also read any contract for free. And we go after publishers.”
“It’s a very powerful organization,” Preston adds. “When we go to Washington, [D.C.], they listen.”
Preston notes a copyright infringement class action lawsuit that he and 16 other plaintiffs, including the Authors Guild (representing the estates of several authors), launched against OpenAI and Microsoft in 2023. Plaintiffs include Robinson and Santa Fe’s George R.R. Martin.
Soon after OpenAI launched ChatGPT, Preston set up an account to see what it could do. Turns out, ChatGPT-3 could do some curious things, including, to Preston’s surprise, describe in minute detail one of his novels — but in a way that only someone who read the book would have been able to. This led Preston to think that OpenAI might have trained ChatGPT-3 on his book, or books, without his knowledge.
Preston says that not long after, Martin learned that someone had used AI to write the final book in his A Song of Ice and Fire (Game of Thrones) series, using his voice and his characters. The same thing happened to Robinson’s 2013 novel Sparta — someone had used AI to write a sequel.
“Here was this story with my characters and a world that I had created,” Robinson says. She pauses for a moment, and adds, “They were using our texts as value.”
By “they,” Robinson and the other plaintiffs mean OpenAI, in which Microsoft has invested more than $10 billion. In a nutshell, OpenAI had almost certainly trained ChatGPT-3 on some 200,000 copyrighted books, without asking permission from or compensating any of the authors.
“It is believed they obtained the actual texts of these books from book piracy websites, such as LibGen, based in Russia,” says Preston. “It’s theft.” He adds that the authors of these 200,000 books must be remunerated.
The copyright infringement class action lawsuit has 17 named plaintiffs but is not limited to only them. The plaintiffs have asked the courts to certify two classes: all published fiction writers and all published nonfiction writers in America.
Roxana Robinson (from left), Diana Gabaldon, and George R.R. Martin, along with Douglas Prseton and the Authors Guild, are among the plaintiffs in a class action lawsuit against OpenAI.
Beowulf Sheehan — James Christie —Kate Russell/Business Wire
“Santa Fe writers are playing a major role in this watershed lawsuit,” Preston says. “I say watershed because if we win, it will be a huge advance for writers’ ability to control their creative work against Big Tech. If we lose, it will be a catastrophe for the entire creative community of America — not just writers.”
That’s not to say that Preston or the Authors Guild are against AI. It can be a useful and powerful tool, and Preston acknowledges that AI is here to stay. However, “the law has not caught up with AI,” he says.
To help the law catch up, the Authors Guild is also undertaking significant legislative efforts. “If authors don’t get ahead of the curve, Big Tech and AI companies will,” Preston says. “And if that happens, we’re toast.”
He adds that the guild is “helping sponsor legislations that are going to make a huge difference to the relationship of the creative community with AI.” That includes conversations with politicians, including U.S. Representative Teresa Leger Fernández and U.S. Senator Martin Heinrich. “This isn’t just a legal issue of suing for copyright infringement,” Preston says. “It’s also a legislative issue.”
Legislation the Authors Guild is pushing for includes a law that would require AI-generated content to be labelled as such, he says.
He adds that they’re also seeking a law that says that AI cannot use anyone’s voice, image, name, or life story without permission, and, he says, “that protects writers from having AI write fake books in their name and put their fake face on the cover and all the rest of it. … We need laws that protect people’s privacy from deep fakes of their voices and likenesses. The burden would be put on the AI companies to conform to the law. It’s going to be their issue.”
The Authors Guild is also working on a licensing system that would function much like a BMI music licensing model, but for writing. It is funded by a grant from author James Patterson, a Santa Fe International Literary Festival alum, as well as other concerned authors.
“Our goal is control, compensation, and credit,” Preston says. “An author should be able to control their writing and its use in AI.”
Protecting intellectual property isn’t a new concept, Preston says. “Copyright was written into the first article of the Constitution by our founders, because they thought that someday, maybe, we would become the creative engine of the world,” he says. “And we became that. And if the courts can’t protect our current and future creative work, then we’re doomed as a creative nation.”
Ania Hull is a Canadian and European journalist and writer based in New Mexico. She writes about book culture, the arts, immigration, and environmental justice.
