I’ve recently been working on something called BookHive. Most days, it takes up the vast majority of my time. I’ve been an avid reader, writer, and movie-watcher all my life, mostly of sci-fi/fantasy, but I dabble in other genres too. But for a while now, I’ve been faced with an odd dichotomy. The availability of YouTube videos is infinite, as is the content on TikTok, Twitter, or even Substack. But when I want to find something good to read or watch, I’m limited to just a handful of options. I don’t think it’s because they’re not out there. 8% of people in the U.S. claim they’ve finished writing a novel. So where are all the books?

I think the reason we don’t see too many great stories out there is because the current storytelling industry is one defined by bottlenecks. You need an agent to act or write, a movie studio budget to direct, and copy editors and publicists and marketing campaigns and illustrators... the list goes on and on. I became quite familiar with the inefficiencies of the industry when I got into writing and eventually publishing.

There are demand side bottlenecks too. You need $25 dollars and five hours to go watch a movie or buy a good book. You need all of five seconds to start watching something on the internet.

There are companies that have tried to solve the story problem. The internet is littered with fan fiction sites and amateur writing sites, but none of them seem to have captured the bulk of attention. I think it’s because they misunderstand the bottlenecks of the current industry. YouTube, Substack, Twitter, and TikTok all captured entire genres of old media because they created mediums with almost no barrier to entry on either side. It allowed for rapid iteration by writers and rapid selection by users, leading to an infinite well of high quality content.

This is a hard problem for stories to solve. How can you build an expansive world, when you need users to pick and choose rapidly? How can you test quickly and efficiently when a single typo can ruin immersion? The internet has been widely adopted for more than 20 years, and no one has been able to solve it.

I think AI might be able to change that. AI can do the busywork that no one wants to do. It copyedits, formats, and organizes, and at current rate of improvement, it might be able to do much more in a few years. Even more importantly, it can transcend mediums. It can generate images at will and convert writing into audiobooks if coaxed in the right way. That last thing removes yet another barrier for readers. Audiobook listening is rapidly expanding at current, while physical book reading is on the decline. It’s obvious why. You can listen to an audiobook while driving, while running, while cooking food. It seems trivial, but lowering the investment cost to readers in any way it can be encourages widespread proliferation.

So, with all that said, I decided to start BookHive with a friend. It’s an audiobook site populated with human words and voices, powered by AI. Our hope is that one day in the future, BookHive unearths an infinite well of content, doing to the culture of stories what the internet did for content. Click the BookHive logo to check it out.