I’m back on my book soapbox. Listen up.
“If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?”
This is a quote from a New York Times interview with author Coral Hart, who self-published over 200 books through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing in 2025 under various pseudonyms.
This sounds like an impressive feat until you realize that every single one of her books was generated by artificial intelligence.
What’s more mind-boggling is that she’s made six figures from selling over 50,000 copies of her books — books that, again, she herself did NOT write. Not only that, she’s selling kits and courses that teach aspiring authors how to use AI to aid in writing romance novels.
This should infuriate every author who has published or is in the process of publishing a book because it undermines the creativity and hard work we put into our books. Phrasing the process of creating a book as a “race” sucks the human element and joy right out of it.
Luckily, the internet has been quick to call out Hart and other authors who have been using AI to help write their books.
I blame the rise in AI writing on the “fast fashion-ification” of the book industry, where self-published indie authors and large publishing houses prioritize selling books with trendy tropes as quickly as possible, usually at the expense of quality — the popular tropes for one of Hart’s books are literally plastered into the item title on Amazon.
Generative AI has only fueled this issue. Instead of a writer putting effort and time into writing, they can throw their book idea into a chatbot and have a full-length, trope-infested novel pop out in less than an hour. Why waste time and effort being creative when AI can write over 200 books for you and make you rich?
Many of my fellow creative writers and I can tell you that most of us are not in it for the money; we’re in it for the love of the game. There’s something special about crafting plot lines, developing characters and storytelling that drew us into writing in the first place. Using AI cheapens the experience for the writer and the reader.
I’ve been watching this conflict unfold for the last year and a half as I’ve been taking steps to publish my own novel. For me, the process has been nothing short of difficult, but the challenges I faced have made me a better writer. The late nights I spent writing after long days at school or work were hard, but the heart and energy I put into my book give it meaning — meaning that no algorithm or chatbot will ever be able to match.
The tedious exhaustion of the writing process is how truly great stories are created. I’d argue that the time spent revising is the most fulfilling part because that’s when you finally see the idea you’ve created come to life in its strongest and most polished form.
For the readers, the AI usage boils down to this: why would a reader take the time to read a book that an author didn’t take the time to write? There’s no soul to the characters or the story — AI, the so-called “writer,” doesn’t even have a soul.
This is why we can’t outsource the work of human creation to something that literally has the word “artificial” in its name. It reduces words to nothing more than a product to consume, when they should be a story to touch hearts.
