AI-generated books become Kindle Unlimited’s real problem

Let’s talk about how artificial intelligence may affect the publishing industry, and especially self-publishing.

Currently, there are already almost 1,000 ebooks in the Kindle Store that are co-authored by AI. These books were created by authors responsible enough to admit they use ChatGPT.

It’s not the major problem Kindle Unlimited is facing right now. The biggest problem is with books generated by AI, and you don’t even know about it because their publishers don’t disclose this fact.

Many of these AI-generated books made it to the top 100 Kindle bestseller lists. It was first revealed by an indie author Caitlyn Lynch:

💬 Take a look at the Best Sellers in Teen & Young Adult Contemporary Romance eBooks top 100 chart. I can see 19 actual legit books. The rest are AI nonsense clearly there to click farm.

How is that possible? It’s directly connected with how digital subscriptions work. As you can download any book at no extra cost, you do it instantly without checking out its content. 

And when you open the book on your e-reader or in a book reading app, you just need to read (or swipe) roughly the length of the free sample to make this book considered as read – and let its publisher earn the fee.

The story about nonsense AI Kindle Unlimited books broke at the end of June 2023, and most of these titles are not on the main Kindle bestseller lists anymore. However, they are still on the top 100 lists for subcategories.

A few days ago, I wrote a post about how to spot AI-generated books that are included in Kindle Unlimited. Their common features were titles written in capital letters, Asian names of the authors, template cover art, and print length below 100 pages.

Now the titles in capital letters are gone not only on the Kindle bestseller lists, but also in the main catalog of Kindle Unlimited eligible books (already changed?). I expect the Asian names of the authors to be replaced by English ones very soon.

Here is an example of a book that, I believe, was written solely by an AI tool – Unfading Snow Flower by Tong Quan Luu (shown at the top of this post). Just read the sample and ask yourself whether it makes sense at all.

Ironically, a short intro to this book relates to artificial intelligence.

This is the real problem – the AI authors will do their best to adapt in order to further hide the fact they generate nonsense content.