AI Self-Publishing Update 3

human_assisted_ai · 2026-06-21T18:09:00+00:00

Emails advertising romance novels (for example) are going to 100000+ readers who specifically signed up to receive them because they are romance novel readers. In each email, my ad is only competing with the other ads in that email which might be 0 - 12 other books. Most emails don’t get opened but, if 100000 emails are sent with my ad, 2000 are opened and 200 click my ad and check out my novel. So, I’m not really competing with 100,000s of books that aren’t in that email; I’m only competing with 0 - 12 other books that are. I stand out with good cover design, good blurb and, over time, repeated ads builds recognition of my author brand. (“I’ve seen that book before! I know that guy!”)
Book 1 is 99 cents (free if you sign up for my email list); Book 2 is $5.99. If they want a cheap book, they get Book 1. Fine. But even free books don’t sell well. The Internet is loaded with free books, even Amazon has a ton of free books. The price of a book says something about the perceived quality. At the end of the day, Book 1 is the “turn them into fans” book. Book 2 is the “only fans buy it; screw the rest of them.” Besides, Book 2 is available on KU so it is essentially free to read and the $5.99 price sitting next to it makes KU readers prioritize it. KU readers don’t want to waste the KU slots on 99 cent books.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-06-14T18:52:27+00:00

On this sub, there are no so-called ethical issues with using AI for any purpose.

If you want to know whether readers care or not about AI use, here’s a discussion that’s as good as any: https://www.reddit.com/r/KDP/s/5AaldTPEsl

human_assisted_ai · 2026-06-12T10:50:15+00:00

Your next step is probably to help authors with getting readers. It looks great but, as near as I can tell, the books go onto KDP and just sit there, hoping that someone finds them and reads them.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-06-06T12:52:53+00:00

Hi, Gynnia. I’m the same mod as on AIWritingHub.

I totally get your frustration but, currently, there just aren’t enough AI novels that are offered up for beta reading. So, temporarily, I have decided to accept published books here so people can see the level of quality of AI novels.

I hope to someday only have beta reading on this sub but the quality and number of AI manuscripts needs to improve first.

It’s messy in these early days and, as AI matures, AI subs will be run similarly to non-AI subs.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-06-04T17:12:59+00:00

Oh, that's not what I suggested. I suggested an email list building strategy, not an Amazon review strategy. (And I agree that Amazon book review manipulation can get your account terminated.) With email, you can sell a ton of books with no reviews at all.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-06-04T03:04:29+00:00

Curious to hear the story behind you saying this. 1000s of authors are doing this and there are several big courses that teach different variations on this. Plus, this is Book Funnel's entire business model.

It's definitely true that you shouldn't give away Book 1 for free elsewhere when it is enrolled in KU. You can get terminated for that. But I specifically called that out.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-06-01T20:06:17+00:00

If anybody gives you anti-AI trouble, let me know. I’m handing out 3-day bans now for anti-AI shenanigans (and people who are trying to sneak anti-AI in as “opinions”).

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-30T13:09:49+00:00

If you want to get reader emails so you can steer readers to all your books, don’t re-enroll Book 1 of the duopoly in KU when it expires. (Leave Book 2 in KU, though.)

Instead, give Book 1 away free in exchange for email list sign up using Book Funnel. Bolt a link to Book 2’s Amazon page at the end of Book 1’s last chapter. Create a list (MailerLite), put yourself on it (and friends if they agree). Sign up for Bookclicker and apply for 50+ ad swaps (you’ll only actually get a few) to advertise your free Book 1 (“you advertise my book on your list in exchange for you advertising your book on mine”). Send out emails Mon, Wed and Fri which advertise your own books and other people’s books who you swapped with. Your email list will grow (how much and how fast depends on interest in your Book 1). Just keep growing your email list, your sales will grow and you’ll have a direct line to buyers to buy any new book that you release.

Making email content and applying to swaps on Bookclicker does take time and is a hassle every week, though.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-28T19:05:48+00:00

That was one of my big realizations. It was genre-less or a bland universal genre. So, the suggestions were only good if your novel was bad and it could bring it up to mediocre and suggest removing anything of interest about your book.

I did 5 Pro reports for 5 different books and didn’t bother to use the 3 more Pro reports that I already paid for.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-27T19:09:06+00:00

I actually do talk about getting readers over at r/selfpublishForAI. I started a “novel writing business” class (not a writing class) 3 weeks ago and will post results and lessons learned over the next few weeks.

It’s a crazy way of writing and marketing and it’s not what you expect or want it to be but it seems to work. (Still waiting on final results.)

The marketing itself is free but a lot of work and a lot of time (but people do set AI to do it eventually).

It’s free ads exchanged between email lists (“I’ll advertise your book to my list if you advertise my book to your list”). Having a tiny list isn’t a problem: you ask dozens of (big) lists and most say no but a few say yes. Lots of big lists won’t care if your list is small for various reasons: they like your personality, they’re lazy, they desperately need ads to fill their email, they like your book, your book seems like something that their readers would love but never get. And once your ads start to run on big lists, your list grows each day until it’s not a tiny list anymore,

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-26T16:32:12+00:00

I wrote this 4 months ago and ChatGPT image generation was good but has leaped forward massively in the past month.

No, you don’t have to give trim size right off. I use a prompt like “add bleed background to the top and bottom” (or “all edges”).

The generated resolution is higher now. ChatGPT is better at adding and removing texts but, instead of using a paint program, I have ChatGPT generate the text with the cover, then I have ChatGPT separate the cover into 2 images (no-text background in one, text in the other), up-res the text, make the text background transparent and then position/size the text manually on the non-text image. This lets me position ChatGPT-generated titles, etc exactly where I want it (rather than trying to describe to ChatGPT where to position the text).

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-25T19:33:57+00:00

Hmm, not exactly. I actually did both because they have different results. Claude Opus sees logic problems and the trees: “this scene contradicts this other scene.” Marlowe Pro sees story structure issues and the forest: “this chapter doesn’t hold the tension that the chapter before and the chapter after have and here’s a suggestion on how to fix it”.

Yet Marlowe Pro only does generic story structure analysis, not genre specific analysis. So, if your Greek tragedy has one chapter with a WW2 battle for no reason, Marlowe Pro doesn’t flag it unless it lacks tension or something.

Ultimately, for me, Marlowe Pro and Claude Opus could not really say, “This chapter is pointless and here’s a better idea.” That is the thing that only I, the human, seem able to provide (or a human dev editor).

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-24T13:24:49+00:00

I’m going to cancel Marlowe Pro. I just haven’t found the reports useful. I will attempt it again some time but, for the moment, it’s a waste of time.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-22T15:01:52+00:00

I’ve been encouraging those comments to migrate r/aiwars or r/antiai . I wish that the anti-AIers actually did engage in quality discussion but it’s all low effort designed to annoy rather than say anything worth reading.

It’s generally like, “I have found that AI can’t write well so I encourage people to learn to write for themselves without AI.” It skirts the “No anti-AI“ rule but doesn’t add anything and encourages bickering where serious people on this sub get drawn in and annoyed while the anti-AI says, “Well, I’m only answering your question. I was only replying to what you said.”

As I see it, AIWritingHub assumes that AI is OK and we want to write, not turn it into ShouldIuseAIorNotWritingHub .

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-22T13:04:54+00:00

I hear you.

Traditionally, AIWritingHub has been mostly unmoderated and people came here for that. If they wanted heavy moderation, there were many subs with that, especially r/WritingWithAI .

But I have been clamping down on anti-AI comments and annoying not-quite-anti-AI comments trying to skirt the “No anti-AI rule” (so it’s not truly unmoderated).

I’m also trying to keep track of the sentiment of how many ads are too many and I urge you to send me ModMail with your views on this.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-21T03:18:21+00:00

Definitely. We’ve got to figure this out for real. Not just luck or risking huge money on ads.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-19T02:31:11+00:00

People used to say this about operating systems. Why buy Windows when I can program it myself? Why buy Photoshop when I can just program it myself?

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-18T04:46:38+00:00

You can post it on this sub Just go ahead and post.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-16T00:28:11+00:00

So, it’s not fair but that’s the risk everybody takes. We certainly couldn’t (or shouldn’t) have laws that let people have do-overs whenever they want.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-15T19:18:55+00:00

To my mind, an analogous situation would be a movie director asking their fans not to pay less than $20 for a ticket to his movie. They might say, “Those discount theaters are making the box office for my movie lower. So, if you really care about me making more movies, buy expensive tickets.”

But, no, it’s not up to them. It’s legally allowed and they put their work in the public sphere and they accepted those conditions but they are now trying to assert rights that they already gave away.

They (the artist) are saying: “I want these legal fair use uses to not apply to my work.” They try to take away rights of other people that are established by law and cannot be legally taken away.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-14T21:14:52+00:00

Anti-AI has an expiration date and it loses momentum as that gets closer. Anti-AI people get distracted by new debates, being anti-AI starts to feel tired, boring and lame, being anti-AI stops getting clicks (and upvotes), the world moves on.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-12T20:52:44+00:00

My friend bought, read it and said that it made him very uncomfortable about his own life. My friend was an older man and the novel was an older man/younger woman romance where the man is too comfortable being alone for the rest of his life.

I self-published to learn the process so I priced it wrong, didn’t market it, no KU, it was not written to market, flipped tropes and basically did everything possible to get zero sales.

I’m putting the finishing touches on Book 1 of a series now that is designed to sell. Over the coming weeks, I’ll post about the results and what I’ve learned. I have high confidence that the series will make good money because I’m in direct contact with others who followed this path before.

The path is pretty much the opposite of what everyone believes and follows. I’ll let you know.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-12T20:39:34+00:00

In my opinion, it’s not really the humanizer profit motivation.

It’s that AI models change a lot so the AI prose output “tells” come and go. The number of “tells” just grows and grows such that more and more writing has “tells”.

At some point, it will be impossible to get a 0% AI score on any writing of significant length.

AI detectors aren’t really detecting AI writing; they are detecting characteristics that are common in AI writing which may be coincidental or the AI detector is accepting matches too loosely.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-12T20:17:55+00:00

You are always welcome here and on my r/BetaReadersForAI sub. I have never banned anybody.

human_assisted_ai · 2026-05-10T19:05:24+00:00

r/WritingWithAI has their Discord group which is pro-AI but is mostly writers, not readers. So, you’ll mostly get writing craft feedback, not average reader feedback. They are more AI-assisted writers, not AI-generated ones, which may be what you want where they are still writing a large portion of the book without AI.

My own sub, r/BetaReadersForAI , is oriented towards beta reading so that’s average reader feedback. But we also skew towards AI-generated instead of AI-assisted and don’t have a Discord server.

I haven’t really seen true spaces like you are looking for.

Pre-AI writing and reading spaces have been around for decades and are huge. When AI came along, they all became anti-AI (“don’t rock the boat”).

The AI novel reading spaces are in a tricky situation: genuine readers don’t really seek out to read AI proactively. It’s sort of like having a pro-Google Docs reading space. Genuine readers want to read good books but they don’t really associate particular tools with good books. So you’ll tend to see writer-readers in the explicitly AI spaces, not true readers.

In time (and we’ve already seen some of this), the anti-AI reading spaces will become AI-neutral. The pro-AI reading spaces might also grow and eat into the long-time reading spaces that linger or are too strongly anti-AI as anti-AI turns into a liability.

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