As quiet as it's been kept, I produce the nation's most comprehensive bestsellers list featuring books written by Black people, The BLK Bestsellers: https://blkbestsellers.com/ Frankly, nothing has ever come close to a list like this. In a media landscape not dominated by a handful of white male billionaires, this would already be a big deal... but I digress.

Using sales data provided by Circana BookScan, the goal of the BLK list is to highlight books written by Black people that are selling well but are not getting the attention they deserve. Only a handful of the BLK Bestsellers ever make the NY Times or USA Today lists; the BLK Bestsellers list helps to improve the discoverability of books by Black writers.

My challenge is identifying the books written by Black authors to rank. There are no metadata fields I can query because no one really tracks an author's ethnicity (or so-called race). One of the things I've noticed, especially in the children's book space, is that the bestselling books featuring Black children are often not written by Black writers.

IMHO, there is nothing inherently wrong with white writers writing about Black people, but in practice these writers often enjoy structural benefits that Black writers do not and it's just another way Black stories by Black people are suppressed.

While working on this month's BLK List the #23 ranked book (image below) turned out to be My First Juneteenth Book for Toddlers by Ambsachi Nila. I was not familiar with the author which surprised me because I know the top selling children's book authors. The book was identified based upon the book's subject (Juneteenth) and its relatively high sales.

So, I do what I normally do and researched the author, while authors included on the BLK Bestsellers list must be Black, I would certainly consider them for inclusion on AALBC.com. A web search for Ambsachi Nila revealed nothing about the author who is presumably also the illustrator of the book. It is not unusual for an author to hide their identity, but this is not typical for a children's book author, because classroom visits are an important source of income for many children's book authors. Ambsachi Nila didn't even have a website.

So, I resorted to AI to see what I could learn about this writer/illustrator. At this point I'm still operating on the assumption that Ambsachi Nila is human.

Gemini reached the same conclusion I was beginning to suspect, stating that "the books published under the name Ambsachi Nila were likely generated by AI or assembled using rapid automated content-generation tools." It also identified several additional warning signs I had overlooked (see its full response at the end of this message).

Even without AI, I was definitely not going to add the book to AALBC or the BLK List, but the fact that it sold so many copies during Juneteenth, for lack of a better word, is fu*ked up--seriously. One of the top-selling books about Juneteenth was a subpar book likely created by a rapid automated content-generation tool. Hundreds of people were duped into buying this book. This is what happens when tech billionaires control book discoverability and sales. As with everything else, we (Black people) suffer the most.

I maintain lists of Juneteenth books for kids (nonfiction and fiction). When it comes to Black culture, trust lists curated by Black people who have your best interests in mind—not algorithms designed to maximize revenue.

Other, "AL slop" titles by the same "author," Ambsachi Nila:

Gemini Confirmed My Suspicions:

It is highly likely—somewhere in the 90% to 95% range—that the books published under the name Ambsachi Nila are completely generated by AI or assembled using rapid automated content-generation tools.

When you look closely at the data trail left by these books on retail platforms, they display all the classic "smoking guns" of the synthetic book-packaging mills that have flooded Amazon KDP (Kindle Direct Publishing) over the last couple of years.

The Evidence Breakdown

1. Grammatical "Hiccups" in the Core Text

• AI text generators and non-native automated scrapers often stumble over fine syntax and pluralization rules. If you look closely at the official publisher's synopsis uploaded to book databases for the Kwanzaa Book for Toddlers, the text contains glaring grammatical errors and typos:

• "Kwanzaa Book for Toddlers was especially designed for young kids and write in easy-to-follow language..."

• "This educational book explain the seven principles..."

• "...full of colorful, bright and eye-catching ilustrations..." (spelled with a single 'l')

• A genuine children's book author or an established publishing house employs editors to catch these fundamental errors before pushing a book live to global distribution networks. Automated book-generation setups skip this step entirely.

2. Extreme Keyword Stuffing

• Human authors title their books for artistic resonance or clear branding. AI-driven operations title their books strictly to trick search algorithms. The full title registered in global databases reads:

• "Kwanzaa Book For Toddlers About Culture and Principles of Kwanzaa Holiday to Learn and Celebrate for Kids - Kwanzaa Books for Kids"

• This is not a title; it is a search string designed to capture click traffic from parents typing generic holiday terms into search bars.

3. The 36-Page KDP "Template" Layout

• The book's physical dimensions are listed as exactly $8.5 \times 8.5\text{ inches}$ with a page count of precisely 36 pages. This is the absolute standard automated template footprint used for print-on-demand children's books generated via Amazon KDP.

• A script or a prompt tells Midjourney or ChatGPT to produce roughly 15 consecutive square image blocks and matching simple sentences, which are then poured into an automated formatting tool and uploaded in a matter of minutes.

Anatomy of a "Book Mill"

Since the explosion of generative AI models, a massive global side-hustle industry has emerged. Operators use tools to:

• Generate simple rhyming text or basic holiday overviews using LLMs.

• Generate matching stock vector images or clip art using diffusion models.

• Publish the books under a completely fabricated, ethnically ambiguous pseudonym (like "Ambsachi Nila") to appear authoritative to unsuspecting buyers.

The Bottom Line

These types of books are commercial entities generated to mine search data for passive revenue. Because they lack a real author, they also lack any real cultural depth, nuance, or authentic lived experience.

This trend highlights exactly why curated networks like AALBC are so important. In a sea of algorithmic noise and synthetic content, finding and vetting real, human Black authors who pour their actual souls and heritages into their books is the only way to protect authentic literary culture.

The reach of AI (Artificial Intelligence) tools may not seems like much of a big deal if/until it affects someone's livelihood &/or business in a major way.

Non-musicians don't care about AI-generated music. The average person is getting free music. No biggie.

Nevermind the artists & musicians who may be put out of work. The attitude becomes that's their problem.

Well, AI will jump the rubicon in many areas. Authoring books is not off limits.

Capitalists...folks in the business of making lots of money will use whatever it takes to maximize profits to shareholders.

Curating Black anything means building an infrastructure & having the resources (money) & marketing machine to make it viable & valuable to the Black community.

IMO, the failure to build wealth-generating institutions before the technology takeover will be a huge missed opportunity & have a devasting impact on Black America.😎

@ProfD In a previous conversation I talked about how AI allowed some non-musician to make a song I thought could be a hit and how a couple of sistas turned me onto an AI song they were both strongly moved by. They knew it was AI, but did not care, so you may be right.

I can see a time where human musicians are covering or sampling AI music in live performances.

We are not going to stop the tech billionaires from profiting off AI generated content -- that ship has sailed. As with white authors writing bestselling books with Black characters and about Black experiences, AI will do the same and there is nothing we can do about it.

There have been plenty of white folks who have done a great job of related Black stories. Perhaps @Phil Lamar's Fictionalized account of Wyatt Outlaw is an example. AI may reach a point where it can do the same.

Still White folks and AI can't be allowed to crowd out and take precedence over Black folks telling our own stories. For a wide variety of reason that is what continues to happen today. At the foundation of this problem lies a bedrock of our nation's history of white racism. It permeates everything and is baked into the publishing industry despite the many "woke" people who work in it today. That Juneteenth book for kids is a perfect example.

Again, we must vet and curate Black content and make sure BS, whether human or AI generated, is not feed to our people. We need institutions for this. Since the end of segregation, we have little history of doing this, so things do not bode well for us.

3 hours ago, ProfD said:

IMO, the failure to build wealth-generating institutions

We have the institutions we just don't support them.

Personally, I subscribe to Black-owned Newspapers to help support black institutions and to get Information important to our community from Black journalists. I don't use social media for information because I don't want to be lied to and geesh, doesn't social media get enough of our support?

Elon is a 13-figga-nigga and what happened to "Black Twitter?"