Even at the age of nearly 72, I am still fascinated by technology, especially in how it affects my business – that is, assisting authors to self-publish. I had been reading and hearing quite a lot about AI, but had not paid it too much attention. However, as it seemed to be encroaching more and more into the world of self-publishing, I decided to see what all the fuss was about, especially my services would be at risk due to the number of AI-assisted grammar and spell-checkers.
As happens when when you start searching on Google, more and more ads kept popping up about creating eBooks with AI and selling them on Amazon and making an absolute fortune. I am naturally sceptical of such ads, but I thought that if there were anything behind this hype, then you would suddenly see a proliferation of AI “authors” flooding the market with computer-generated “books”.
“People worry that computers will get too smart and take over the world, but the real problem is that they’re too stupid and they’ve already taken over the world.”
PEDRO DOMINGOS
Anyway, one particular ad for an eBook creating platform with an AI component offered a fairly reasonable “lifetime” subscription, and I put my scepticism in my pocket and subscribed. Once in, I immediately went to the AI section and said to myself, let’s see what this thing can do.
Following the simple prompts, I told it to write a book about my industry – self-publishing. It requested some parameters, and once I hit go, much to my amazement, out came highly credible 15 000 word booklet on Self-Publishing – in about three minutes flat!
I did some extensive editing, added my own bits and pieces, and Voila!
Okay, I thought, this is great! Let’s do it again! This time I got the “Wiz” to create a book about eBooks! The same procedure, a few prompts, some parameters, and out she came! Once more, some edits and inputs from me and we have:
So now what? There was no way, without sounding too pompous, that my sense of ethics and my conscience would allow me to sell these books, so I decided to give them away as incentives to join the new, free eBookClub I have established as part of my new Write-On eBookstore!
I have since had the system produce a number of additional books on a variety of subjects, which I will get around to editing and producing in the near future, and will offer them as free giveaways to members of the eBookClub.
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