I Tried Some Book Writing AI Tools. Here’s What I Learned
Book writing AI tools are popular right now and seem to be popping up everywhere. Scroll through your social media feed and you’re bound to see ads from various companies claiming that with their AI tool, you can write a 150+ page book in one hour or less. Sounds too good to be true, right? Curious about how these things worked and whether they were really any good, I dove into the world of AI book writing to test them out. Here’s what I learned.
First, the memberships aren’t cheap. Some offered yearly subscription rates of approximately $2000, which allowed you to generate up to 10 books per month. Now, if any author is cranking out 10 books in a month, you know they’re using AI. No amount of coffee can help you churn out words at that rate. Other companies made you purchase pricey credits that can be used towards book generation (notice I’m saying book “generation” versus book “writing”—more on that coming). Regardless of the pricing structure, you’re paying a hefty fee for this service.
Now let’s move onto the quality question. For my experiment, I used three different approaches: a simple two-sentence prompt, a prompt plus a book outline (my own outline, not a client’s!), and a prompt with both an outline and additional paragraph details for each subtopic. Here are the results.
Two sentence prompt: Unsurprisingly, this produced the worst results. The AI program did generate about a hundred or so pages of text, but it was mostly gibberish. It felt like reading a mad scientist’s notebook; there were a lot of words but they talked in circles and didn’t delve into any topic in detail. Whatever you do, please don’t use this approach for your book.
Two sentence prompt plus outline: This was slightly better than the previous approach, but not by much. The AI program generated even more pages thanks to the outline, but the results were more like a wordy Wikipedia page. Any stories the bot tried to include were mere fluff and didn’t directly relate to the topic. Again, I don’t recommend this approach.
Two sentence prompt plus outline and additional paragraph notes for each subtopic: The more details I gave the AI (in other words, the more I actually wrote myself), the better the results were. No, the end product was never going to win any awards, but it at least made sense and had some usable content. It was more like a first draft than an end product thought. In fact, I could envision someone using the AI tool to get this rough first draft and then edit the heck out of it to make it into a useful book.
Interestingly, one thing the AI did very well was organize ideas. In fact, this part impressed me the most. No matter how disjointed I made my initial text, the AI was able to reorganize the ideas adequately. So, while the AI didn’t generate high quality books, it was good at organization and putting my idea puzzles together.
Here’s my bottom line: The book writing AI tools can generate words at lightning speed, but to truly connect with your readers and audience, you need to do more than just generate words. You need to write in a human way that speaks to your audience and touches their hearts. Knowing this, my best advice is to use these tools as precisely that: tools. Let them assist you, but don’t rely on them to do the entire job. Because when it comes to telling your story, you need to roll up your sleeves and do the hard work yourself. No AI program can replicate YOU.
So, if you have a book idea in your head, don’t let the ads fool you. Open your word processing program and start writing. Embrace the writing journey and let your authentic voice shine. Remember, the best stories come from the heart and soul of the writer, not from a computer program.
If you’re struggling to write your book and have your own unique voice shine through, I can help. Contact me today or check out my writing coaching services.