August 2026

This free blast has been an ongoing project since December 2014, and it’s a grassroots community event organized by one author (Zoe York), so this isn’t super formal, and this policy will evolve over time, but I want to be transparent with readers about the standards we ask participating authors to accept, and what they say, basically, when they sign up.

The short version is: this is a project built on a decade of human labour, and I don’t want to share this platform with anyone who sees AI as an easy button to create what I will bluntly call slop.

At the same time, I don’t want to be put in the impossible position of being asked to police my peers (not to mention, that is literally impossible, as there are more than 1000 books listed every time we do one of these Stuff Your Kindle Days).

So if you click on a book and you worry it might have an AI cover, or if you download one and you read it and you are slapped in the face with an idiolectic voice that reminds you eerily of ChatGPT voice, please know that is not content that is endorsed in any way by organizer or other participating authors.

In fact, if that is a book made with AI, then the author lied to me when they signed up.

A four part question that authors need to answer as part of signing up with a free book for a Stuff Your Kindle Day:

These are the four statements I ask every author to affirmatively make when they sign up to be a part of a Stuff Your Kindle Day here on romancebookworms.com: my book is a complete, satisfying read, my book cover does not contain any AI art, my book contents do not contain any AI writing, and new for August 2026 (because I’m learning along side you all), my book does not have a virtual voice audio attached to it.

That last point came up after the December 2025 event, and I want to say two things about that:

  1. As a Canadian, I can’t see virtual voice, so even if I could check that, I wouldn’t see it on the book listings. Have some grace for international authors who don’t know what that looks like on Amazon.com.

  2. I’m not interested in “punishing” anyone for trying something, or changing their mind if they tried virtual voice and realized it wasn’t helpful to readers.

My goal with this evolving AI policy is to establish boundaries that protect the original Stuff Your Kindle Day as a celebration of human-made indie romance, and continue to find ways to connect readers with new authors, in an increasingly swampy marketplace. I ask authors to respect those boundaries.

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Personal statement on generative AI: Just to be clear on my own stance, I believe that we have significant corporate pressure to normalize an easy button, with a clear goal of reducing a labour cost to zero. In the hands of the current companies driving generative AI usage, the goal is to replace all workers. Which is, objectively, all of us.

Generative AI is anti-labour.

Getting to write for readers is a gift.

For twelve years, I’ve been running SYKD as a passion project. RomanceBookworms.com is an extension of me, and I do not support the anti-labour forces behind this push to integrate generative AI into everything.

~ Zoe York