Facing challenges in publishing? ChatGPT independently published a book and was recommended by social media

ChatGPT’s popularity continues to this day, with conversation and code writing available. Nowadays, using ChatGPT to write books has attracted widespread attention and practice.

Books for which ChatGPT is a co-author.

#Until recently, Brett Schickler never thought he would be a published author, even though he had dreamed of it. But after learning about ChatGPT, Schickler thought there was an opportunity. He said, "The idea of ​​writing a book finally became possible and I could do it."

Schickler used ChatGPT to generate text blocks based on simple prompts in a matter of hours. A 30-page illustrated children's e-book was produced and sold on Amazon's self-operated website in January.

In the book, Sammy, a roughly AI-rendered squirrel, accidentally gets a gold coin and learns how to save money from his forest friends. He made an acorn-shaped piggy bank and invested in an acorn trading company, hoping to one day purchase an acorn whetstone. In the end, Sammy became the richest squirrel in the forest, making his friends envious, and "the forest began to prosper."

Schickler said that the book "The Wise Little Squirrel: A Tale of Saving and Investing" he wrote using ChatGPT is available on Amazon Kindle e-book. The bookstore sold it for $2.99 ​​and the paper version for $9.99, netting less than $100 in the end. While it may not sound like much, it was enough to inspire him to write other books using the software. For example, he entered other prompts on ChatGPT, such as "Write a story about a father teaching his son about money management."

book cover. Source: goodreads

There are many examples of using ChatGPT to write books. As of mid-February, more than 200 e-books in the Amazon Kindle e-book store list ChatGPT as the author or co-author, with topics including "How to Use ChatGPT to Write and Create Content", "The Power of Homework" and "The Echoes of the Universe Poetry Collection" . This number is rising every day. There's even a new subcategory on Amazon: books using ChatGPT and written entirely by ChatGPT.

However, due to the properties of ChatGPT and the fact that many authors do not disclose that they use it, it is almost impossible to get a complete picture of how many e-books have been written by AI.

Will it pose a threat to human authors?

Now, ChatGPT seems ready to disrupt the traditional book industry! Would-be novelists and self-help gurus who want to make money quickly are gearing up to use ChatGPT to help create bot-generated ebooks and publish them through Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing.

Illustrated children's books are a favorite among novice authors of this genre. Hundreds of tutorials have popped up on YouTube, TikTok and Reddit demonstrating how to create a book in just a few hours on topics ranging from get-rich-quick schemes to weight-loss advice, software coding tips and recipes.

Mary Rasenberger, executive director of the Writers Group of the Writers Guild of America, said, "This is something we really need to worry about. These books will flood the market and a lot of human authors will lose their jobs." Human ghostwriting has a long tradition, but the ability to automate it through AI will cause book writing to transform from a craft to a commodity.

She also said, "Relevant authors and platforms need to be transparent about how these books are created, otherwise readers will end up with a lot of low-quality books."

An author named Frank White shows in a YouTube video how he created a 119-page novella - "Galactic Pimp: Vol. 1" - in less than a day. A story about an alien faction. The book is only $1 on Amazon’s Kindle e-book store. In the video, White says anyone with the money and time could produce 300 of these books a year, all using AI.

As for whether they are obliged to explain in the Amazon Kindle e-book store that their novels are batch-generated by computers, many authors, including White, have a negative attitude, partly because Amazon has no policy requirements in this area.

When Reuters asked Amazon for comment, the book-selling giant did not indicate whether it had plans to change or review its Kindle e-book store regarding the use of AI or other automated writing by authors. Tool policy. ChatGPT developer OpenAI also declined to comment.

Publish a book in a few hours

Amazon is currently the world’s largest seller of physical books and e-books, accounting for more than half of sales in the United States. It is also estimated to hold over 80% of the e-book market. Its Amazon Kindle Direct Publishing service has spawned a cottage industry of self-published novelists, creating a unique market for amateur and self-help book lovers.

Amazon created Kindle Direct Publishing in 2007 to allow people to write and market their work from home without having to find an agent or publisher and pay extra fees.

This has attracted a new group of AI-assisted authors, one of whom is Kamil Banc, whose main job is selling perfume online. Banc made a bet with his wife that he could take a book from idea to publication in less than a day. Using the recently popular “general” artificial intelligence ChatGPT and prompts such as “Write a bedtime story about a pink dolphin to teach children how to be honest,” Banc published a 27-page illustrated book in December. "Here's a bedtime story: short and sweet to get you a good night's sleep," is sold online on Amazon and took Banc about four hours to create.

Perhaps because writers are not familiar enough with AI assistance, reader interest in ChatGPT-signed works has so far been low: Banc said only a dozen copies have been sold in total. But readers thought it deserved five stars, including one for "wonderful and memorable characters."

Since then, Banc has published two more AI-generated books, including a coloring book, with more on the way. “It was actually very simple, and I was initially surprised at how quickly it went from concept to publication,” Banc said.

Not everyone can be shocked by AI. Mark Dawson, who has reportedly sold millions of books he wrote through Kindle Direct Publishing, described ChatGPT-assisted generated novels as "boring" in an email to Reuters.

"It can play an important role in recommending the book to other readers. But if a book gets bad reviews because the writing is boring, it seems like it is not worth the gain."

Some people say that online writing is an important force in domestic cultural output. Now the writers circle is also discussing the use of AI technology to assist writing.

#Zhihu account "Wandering Toad". Answer address: https://www.zhihu.com/question/582276511/answer/2882278664

Although many people try to directly use ChatGPT to generate novels, but let It seems to be a better choice to do the "original job" and help people. If used as an auxiliary tool, ChatGPT can help with research, dialogue design, and rich scene description. When you are stuck in writing, AI can help you skip the tedious search process and directly generate content, allowing the author to spend more time on plot setting, writing polish, etc., saving a lot of time.

So, will future Internet writers also transform into architects?

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