Both PDD and Timothy have good points.

I was reacting specifically to the claim in the article that "Cora Hart" was making money from her AI products. That suggests that at least some of them must be visible. But it also makes me think she must be spending at least some time editing the AI output. Even in a somewhat formulaic genre like romance, surely stories that meet the requirements of the genre but are better written and show some originality within that framework do better than those that don't.

Also, having to do multiple pen names (presumably to camouflage just how many novels one is churning out) loses part of the benefit of having a large catalog.

To go back to the number of titles for a moment, yeah, the ones who fall below 500,000 won't be visible in search results. But if an author has even one book above that threshold, someone who likes that book can easily find others by that author. I've had books drop below that but still make sales, presumably from people who are looking for me specifically. Also, from a strictly statistical standpoint, the more books that are vying for attention, the less likelihood any one self published book has of being stumbled upon enough to get into that top range.

And books below the 500,000 threshold can also clog mechanisms like AMS ads. One of the reasons that getting a positive ROI from them has become steadily harder is that the volume of people using the system (and therefore the volume of books being advertised) has steadily increased. Not everybody churning out AI books is going to use AMS ads, but some will. And they can be taking up space in the ad system even if they aren't selling at all. For those purposes, Amazon cares about your ad budget, not about your book's viability. The more people competing for space, the higher the cost per click becomes. Other discoverability mechanisms (also not affected by a book's visibility in Amazon searches) tend to become similarly clogged.

I'm generally an optimistic person. So I'd like to believe that AI drek isn't going to have any effect. But I do think that there are causes for worry.



 

I can't help but think that the more novels there are, the less one will be able to charge for one. A big determining factor in pricing is the relationship between supply and demand. Flooding the market with AI-written novels creates a much bigger supply but does not increase demand. Short of some artificial intervention, The increased supply will tend to drive prices down.

Only if you look at novels in general rather than specifically.

That is, as a reader, do I want to read a space exploration novel or do I want to read a Star Trek novel?  If the former, than any space exploration novel may do, in which case, cheaper options may win out.  If the latter, I have no choice but to pay whatever the Star Trek rights holder(s) asks for the novel.  Also, in that case, I may only want to read novels by specific writers that write Star Trek novels.

Same for science fiction.  Do I want to read any science fiction novel or do I want to read something by a specific author?  If the former, cheaper options will win out.  If the latter, again, I have to pay what the author/publisher asks or not buy that book.

Things depend on what kind of reader we want.  Do we want readers who read the genres our books are in or do we want readers who want to read our books?  If we are chasing after the former, those are probably the more price sensitive.  Someone who reads a book a day is more likely to want less expensive books than someone who reads a book a month.  We hope for more sales from the former, but that's also a race to the bottom price wise.  Someone who reads fewer books may be less price sensitive, but they may also be more likely to remember and tell others about your novel if they enjoyed it.  For the more prolific readers, our books are more likely to be lost and forgotten in the flood of books they've read.

I'd pick the novel written by a person in six months over the one written by AI in a day every single time.

I can't help but think that the more novels there are, the less one will be able to charge for one. A big determining factor in pricing is the relationship between supply and demand. Flooding the market with AI-written novels creates a much bigger supply but does not increase demand. Short of some artificial intervention, The increased supply will tend to drive prices down.

The best way to control the process is to make your own EPUB and PDF files. Those you will have already checked and therefore know that they work properly. That does require additional software, though. It also prevents you from being able to update back matter on all your books simultaneously, which is a nice feature. But if you upload your own files, you have total control.

It's certainly possible that D2D is too conservative in some cases, and the example Lynn gives truly makes no sense. But D2D has had actual problems with retailers in the past. Remember when Amazon went through a phase where it wouldn't work with D2D? I think the issue in that case was people who had been banned by Amazon publishing through D2D. Of course, Amazon is one a lot of people do direct, but a lot of people went through D2D. Remember when Google dumped all the aggregators and demanded that all authors go through them directly? Of course, Google also sometimes closed itself to indies for months at a time. Meanwhile, a number of stores have gotten to be more sensitive about erotica and similar.

So yeah, it's a mess. But the retailers are as much responsible for that as D2D is.
 

I agree with him.

Here's the latest AI-replaces-writing outrage: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/08/business/ai-claude-romance-books.html

What I find baffling is this woman's attitude. Since when is this a race? A contest? She supposedly sold at least a few books to Harlequin / Mills & Boon; theoretically, she has real writing chops. (It has been many decades since that publisher was desperate enough to accept incompetently written manuscripts just to get the latest trend books on the shelves.) So why does she spew out mere product now? And not very successful product, if I have done the math right. A lot of steps are missing from her self-publishing story, too.