I've been sitting on this for a bit, chewing on it, and my takeaway is Hatchette is full of assholes.
I was already annoyed by the innovative new tradpub acquisition process wherein the indie author does all the work (gets the idea for the book, writes the book, edits the book, gets a cover for the book, publishes the book, does the marketing for the book, builds the platform, attracts readers, gains momentum, starting selling lots of books) and Hachette swoops in to offer a deal and take the lion's share of the profits, because Traditional Publishers Don't Actually Know How to Sell Books They Just Sorta Get Lucky Sometimes (United States v. Penguin Random House and Simon & Schuster), and letting the author do literally everything and establish the book has legs saves them the trouble.
The only thing worse is the audio pubs hoovering up every audio book right they can find by low-balling clueless indies with pocket change offers. (Do your research and counter-offer Podium. I'm begging you.)
Hatchette knew what they bought. They knew the beef with the stolen cover, they knew the rumors the book was written with AI. They thought they could make a buck off Mia Ballard with frankly minimal effort on their part, and they didn't care about the AI stuff until they started to get heat. Then, instead of supporting the author THEY APPROACHED, they threw her to the curb like trash.
When faced with accusations of stolen cover art, Hatchette actually commissioned A DIFFERENT artist to do a similar cover instead of working with the og artist. (?WTF?)
Now, Hatchette has the gall to say they are "committed to protecting creative expression." Eat my whole ass.
Wanna sign with trad? Better be sure, because once these people get their hooks into your book anything goes.
Anyway, my official stance on is it ok to use AI in your self-published book is: Fuck Hachette.
Free for All Saturday, Week 15 [DW Edition]
Apr. 11th, 2026 12:25 am↑↑↑ Available dates:
April 21 & 23
April 28 & 30
May 5 & 7
Hi, everyone, and welcome to our weekly Free for All! :D There are no themes to follow for prompts or fills. Btw, if you perhaps missed a prompt theme that you liked, or you've had any ideas that didn't really work with Tuesday's or Thursday's posts, then today's your chance to prompt 'em. Be free, and have fun! ✎
Just a few rules:
1. No more than five prompts in a row.
2. No more than three prompts in the same fandom.
3. Use the character's full name and the fandom's full name for ease in adding to the Lonely Prompts spreadsheet.
4. No spoilers in prompts for a month after airing, or use the spoiler cut option found here. Unfortunately, DW doesn’t have a cut tag, so use your best judgment when it comes to spoilers.
5. If your fill contains spoilers, warn and leave plenty of space, or use the spoiler cut.
6. If your story has possible triggers, please warn for them in the subject line!
Prompts should be formatted as follows: [Use the character's full names and fandom's full name]
Fandom, Character +/ Character, Prompt
Are today's prompts not catching your eye? No worries, because we have plenty of older prompts that just might do the trick! You can browse through the comm's calendar archive (here on LJ or here on DW) for themed and Free For All posts, or perhaps check out Sunday posts for Lonely Prompt requests. (Or, you can be like me, and try to save interesting prompts as you see 'em... and then end up with multiple text doc files full of [themes + links + prompts] that you can easily look through and search for keywords.) Multiple fills for one prompt are welcome, by the way! Oh, and you are very likely to find some awesome fills to read as well, and wouldn't it be nice to leave a comment on those lovely little writing distractions? ~_^
We are on AO3! If you fill a prompt and post it to AO3, please add it to the Bite Sized Bits of Fic from 2026 collection.
If you are viewing this post on our Dreamwidth site: please know that fills posted here will not show up as comments on our LiveJournal site, but you are still more than welcome to participate. =)
If you have a Dreamwidth account and would feel more comfortable participating there, please feel free to do so… and spread the word!
A friendly reminder about our posting schedule: Themed posts for new prompts go up on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Saturdays are a Free for All day for new prompts of any flavor. Sundays are for showing Lonely Prompts some love, whether by requesting for someone to adopt them or by sharing any fills that you've recently completed.