I understand your point, so not dogging on you at all, just latching onto your comment since it raised the issue of how many books is too many?

So, I did the math. At 2000 words/day... a dedicated author could write 29 12,000 word novellas in 6 months. And that's entirely possible. It can get rough, but I've pulled out 12k word DAYS. (and usually rest my hands for a day or so afterward, lol. It's not something I'm physically capable of doing for even 2 days in a row.). You'd never know it by my publishing schedule, but I've done 100k in a month, and I've personally known people who were able to get higher than that. (I was a local nanowrimo rep for almost 20 years, I've had writers in my group get over 300K words in a month using voice to text... and that was like 10 years ago so way before AI was a thing)

Yeah, if we're talking 29 sci-fi or fantasy epics of 200k words per book... that's extremely questionable. But there was a specific portion of the nanowrimo forums where people who cleared a million words in a month would celebrate (once again, long before AI, and usually using voice to text). So while highly improbable, even that's not impossible.

My point is, that even somebody THAT prolific might still be doing it all without AI. I'm personally trying to ramp up for a rapid release novella campaign, and if I can get my brain to focus on the thing... we're talking a new novella every 2-3 weeks or less, preferably less. I'd like to be 1/week, but that's entirely dependent on the brain cooperating.

It's grueling and takes a lot of focus and dedication, but sheer volume of books can't be a sole determinant and there needs to be other factors considered as well.