The true cost of using AI to write your book

Writing books to build your influence is time-consuming. AI can make it more efficient. If your time is money, you could save a lot of money this way.

But it’s a foolish way to economize.

What it really costs to write your book with AI

Let’s game this out. For the purposes of this exercise, assume you are writing a nonfiction book about your original ideas with a goal of boosting your influence, which is a typical model for the authors I work with.

Using AI, you can brainstorm ideas, decide on a table of contents, research content, and write drafts. Those drafts will be grammatically flawless and well organized. But what will people think of what you wrote?

Don’t fool yourself: People will be able to tell that a human didn’t write the text. AI-generated text tends to be extremely calm without emotional highs and lows, what I call “the AI accent.” There are also tells, like excessive use of em-dashes and repetition of certain textual formulations like “It’s not this, it’s that.” There’s no personality behind the writing and very little narrative drama. It writes like an average of every other business book you’ve ever read, and average is boring.

Let’s ignore for now whether people will judge your or become angry because they know you used AI. Even if they don’t recognize the AI authorship, you have missed an opportunity to connect in a human way with the reader. Since the purpose of this book is to generate influence, you want people to get a sense of you. But there is no you in an AI-generated book.

You will not be able to get a traditional publishing contract, because traditional publishers will not accept an AI-generated manuscript.

While you’ll save money on writing time or paying a ghostwriter, you still have to pay for all the other costs associated with the book. According to the 2024 Business Book ROI Study, the median hybrid published book author spent $23,000 on their book, typically including investments in publicity, graphic design, developmental editing, and copy editing. AI won’t save you money on any of those costs.

Can a developmental editor fix an AI-generated book?

No.

I’ve now done developmental editing on several books with text substantially generated by AI. A developmental editor can improve an AI-generated book. But there are three things you need to know.

• An editor can’t insert your personality into the book. Developmental editing is about fixing problems and enabling the author to better connect with the reader. But developmental editors don’t insert things that aren’t there, like personal anecdotes, writing style, and the author’s voice. So the biggest problem with AI-generated text is not a problem that an editor can fix.
• An editor can undo AI-generated quirks. We can remove the em-dashes and the AI tells (although we’ll probably miss a few). We can identify and suggest fixes for repeated ideas. We can note and find ways to improve narrative weaknesses. By removing the worst bits that AI generates, we can make the manuscript less awful. But turd-polishing only goes so far. Subtracting problems doesn’t make what’s left truly effective.
• It’s going to cost you. I charge a 50% premium to edit manuscripts that are at-least one-fourth AI generated. It’s not out of vindictiveness. It’s because such text is far more tedious to read and fix than text generated by an author, regardless of the problems that author might have. Other editors I know are creating similar premiums for the same reason. What will this cost you? A 50,000-word manuscript that would otherwise cost $12,500 to edit on a project basis is now going to cost you $18,750, an increase of $6,250. Editors that charge by the hour are finding that editing AI-generated text is more time-consuming, generating similar fee increases.

Bottom line: a developmental editor will take your AI-generated manuscript from awful to sort-of average at a premium price, and when they’re done the book still won’t be all that effective.

Is it really worth it?

AI generated books damage your reputation, fail to fulfill your objectives, and are more costly to edit and no less costly to publish than author-written books.

You’re going to save a lot of time having AI write your book. But what will you lose along the way?