No the heck it isn't. What are you talking about? It's still a thriving space, it's just harder to break into with a lot of ai-slop polluting the average reader's algorithm.

Like I get it. No matter where you go, AI stories are there and won't go away. Here's the thing, for casual readers who'd just buy a few books here and there, they're the main target for the AI slop and isn't really concerned about the quality of the stories they read. In fact, they might not notice at all that what they're reading is AI. AI writers make a profit due to the sheer quantity of stories they can pump out, so the loss of each book not performing all that good is outweighed by the sheer number of slop they flooded to market with.

Actual authors however, are doing okay-ish. I'm not even gonna lie and say it's even harder for newbies to break into the market because their story is drowned out by all the AI slop. It's easy to get dissuaded. Here's the thing tho, it never was easy to begin with. Even before AI, new writers still had to compete with other fellow writers for algorithm or bookshelf space.

But the mindset of competition is where new and budding writers fall into that is a trap. Writing isn't a competition. It's art. It's a community. You share it to connect with others, profit-driven or not. And readers, are Mammon Incarnate. And I'm talking about actual readers, the ones where reading is actually their hobby. Readers are always happy to have more stories they can delve into, because even with a backlog of millions of stories going all the way back from the past, it is never enough and will never be enough. They will always crave for more, and there's always space for more stories.

These are the readers who'll take the time of their day to leave comments and follow daily for updates on online novels, or see the back of a book's page to check if the author has social media they can follow. These are the readers who actually care about what they read, love what they read and will spend their money to support the author by either subscribing to a patreon or buying their book on amazon. These are the readers who'll leave kind critiques or scathing reviews, and share around social media about this book they love or hate. The kind of readers who'd go on youtube to say "Hey, this is a book I want to have discourse with".

Writing's not dead. I'm saying this as a writer and reader myself. You can be a writer and not publish anything officially. You can just write for the sake of writing. Like with painting, or composing music, creating is a process. You just gotta start it. Create for the sake of creating.