tl;dr: A veteran self-published novelist argues that the ~10-20 year window where writing was hard but publishing was easy has closed, citing a recent case where a $2.4M debut book deal collapsed over AI authorship suspicions. He predicts a messy future where AI and human-written books coexist on shelves, most readers won't care about the distinction, all authors will use AI tools, and a niche of "meat-book" purists will demand provenance verification (livestreamed writing, blockchain, etc.). His advice: write for love, not clicks, because everything else is now out of your control.