Historically, being a writer has never been a very lucrative endeavor. If you didn't meet your end by the hand of tuberculosis like John Keats, you weren't a millionaire either. Modern writers aren't very rich either: according to Indeed, an author, on average, makes around $43,603 a year.
But one guy recently shared his one-of-a-kind success that allegedly made him $3M. By generating books with AI and selling them on Amazon, this 27-year-old claimed to have cracked the code of the world of publishing.
However, people didn't exactly respond as he expected. While some did congratulate him, others tore him to shreds, raising continuing worries about the impact of AI on our society.
A 27-year-old "writer" recently claimed to have made $3M by selling AI-generated books
He detailed his success story on X, sharing how exactly he "wrote" 1,500 books that made him a fortune
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"There is no point in publishing a book that nobody wants to read," Tommi said, sharing his business philosophy
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People online are questioning the validity of Tommi's "get rich quick" scheme
$3M from selling AI-generated e-books on Amazon at 27 years old: sounds too good to be true? Perhaps it is. Some people in the comments raised concerns that Tommi's claims may not be as true as he presents them to be.
First, netizens pointed out, there aren't any results on Amazon when you search "Tommi Pedruzzi" as an author on Amazon. Second, he didn't provide any evidence for his fortune or that he made it through selling self-published books. Others suggested that Tommi's thread is just a "guru marketing pitch" and he only made this post to advertise his e-book publishing course.
Just a few days ago, his thread also got some traction on the r/AntiAI subreddit with folks raising those same concerns. The general consensus was that the money Tommi has made is probably from the courses and coaching where he teaches people to get rich like he supposedly did.
"[These] people don't make money through their low effort slop-books, or if they do they make little money, their true source of profit is selling people courses on how to get on to the [grift]," one Redditor wrote. "If their methods [were] truly profitable they wouldn't advertise how much money it makes them on social media because that would invite [competition] and cut on their profit margins."
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Scam books on Amazon have been a problem for several years now, exacerbated even more by the advent of AI
In reality, it's hard to say whether authors who mass spam books on Amazon like this can make this kind of money. However, it's still true that the state of AI-generated book content on Amazon is getting worse almost by the day.
A big problem is copycat books, biographies, and summaries. A good example of how bad things can get is the story of Kara Swisher's Burn Book. Just after it was published last year, Amazon was flooded with Swisher-related books, including biographies and summaries.
Constance Grady of Vox points out how many of the titles seemed "SEO-streamlined" and the "books" themselves were of poor quality, likely generated by AI or "crimes-against-humanity-level cheap ghostwriters."
Swisher was able to get the slop off of Amazon by contacting the CEO Andy Jassy directly. But that wouldn't exactly work for authors whose books get buried under AI-generated content or even stolen by scam book publishers.
The harsh truth is that AI-generated books just regurgitate information that one could find online or steal from other authors. CEO of the Authors Guild Mary Rasenberg explained to NPR this March that scam books on Amazon have been an issue for some years now. "Every new book seems to have some kind of companion book, some book that's trying to steal sales," she claims.
'Books' by the Mikkelsen twins are a good example of the AI book grift. They've published guides about things like keto and crystals, most likely with the help of underpaid ghostwriters. They ran them through Google Translate to sell them in other languages, and after Amazon blocked their publishing account, they pivoted to YouTube to teach others how to do what they did. Now, they're doing the same with AI: a ghostwriter only needs to edit the AI-generated outline and, voila: a book is born!
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Amazon claims to have a lid on the AI book slop problem, but they still fall through the cracks
While generating books with AI and spam selling them on Amazon is not illegal, it's still considered highly unethical. In a video documentarian Dan Olson made in 2022 about the Mikkelsen brothers, he lists these concerns:
- These types of books are not written or fact-checked by experts;
- These 'authors' pay their ghostwriters poverty-level wages;
- Most of them buy fake positive reviews.
To combat this, Amazon says they're taking steps to control AI-generated content. Their spokesperson Lindsay Hamilton sent NPR a statement: "We both proactively prevent books from being listed as well as remove books that do not adhere to those guidelines, including content that creates a poor customer experience."
"We have more recently begun limiting the publication of summaries and workbooks based on existing titles in our store. When patterns of abuse warrant it, we also suspend publisher accounts to prevent repeated abuse."
Still, experts urge Amazon to take more drastic actions. "By the time Amazon finds out about them, they've already made some money and they move on to something else," Rasenberger told NPR. It may be easier to flag AI-written content now, but the Authors Guild and writers are worried about what the future may look like when it won't be as easy.
People in the comments didn't mask their AI pessimism: "I don't think I've ever come across a more soul-crushing thread"
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However, some agreed with Tommi's hard truths and congratulated him on the success
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