AI, assistance, how much is too much

[Bob Parker]

I was going to try the hybrid woute to publishing my latest book, having used KDP for my first two.
THe first book i published was 50 ,000 words, with a cover made by myself from a photo, and fully wrote and edited myself. It was a small book, a memoir of stories. and I wrote it with the intention of donating to a charity. it did ok for a first time author.
It sold a few copies, had a few reviews.
THe second took me 2 years.
I am mildly dyslexix, i transpose letters in words, especially at the time that words are flowing. I have toruble with placement of commas. etc.. and my second book, a scifi based book, has bombed. with one review, complaining about the spelling and grammer. which to be honnest is a fair comment.
I can not afford Proffesional editing.
So i researched, and use Gramerly, and run each whole chapter through Prowriter aid. every chapter. after 70, 000 words I started to use AI.
Not to write, to check. to check on pace, and grammer. to pick up those times when i have mis used character names, or ever explained a concept. where i have transposed letters in words.
And i used AI to create a cover. this was my mistake aparently.
THe use of the AI cover has caused rejections, the fact that i use AI as the tool it is , to asist, not create. has been the primery rejection.
so , are you not allowed to use AI at all now?

 

[pmmg]

No one will stop you from using AI. There is no rule.

But some will not like it, like me.

IMO, any AI is AI use. You say, but i only used it for X, but I am dubious.

If one reaches into the abyss, the abyss reaches back.

 

[ThinkerX]

Aging eyes and stiff fingers contribute to many grammar bugs on my part.

With the first books, I foolishly thought that MS Word would catch most of the bugs. It flopped miserably.

I pulled those books and redid them with the free version of Grammarly. It did way better, but still missed a lot of issues.

Finally, I took advantage of a holiday sale and sprang for the paid version of Grammarly. That catches the overwhelming majority of problems.

That said, I do not use the Grammarly AI for anything creative, going so far as to turn off as many of those functions as I can. To me, Grammarly is a grammar/spell checker.

Covers? I have an artist for that who plays creative mix and match with fonts and purchased images.

Reviews? Reviews are tough for newbie indie authors. I have two suggestions, both of which I have made extensive use of:

First, sign up for one of the Goodreads Reading Rounds. Ten Authors. Round-robin format. You read and review four assigned books, while four of them read and review your book. I picked up about two dozen reviews with this.

Second: Authentic, a point-based review pool with a minor monthly fee to participate. You might also look into Bookroar, though it is clunkier. You select books, read and review them, get points, and put your books up for review. Between the two, I think I have around eighty reviews. There is a thread for Authentic on this site.

Marketing:

I tried all kinds of things: ads with Facebook and Amazon, supposedly reputable promoters, and a LOT of email newsletter promo sites. What I finally settled uponafter watching a pile of cash go up in smoke, was the 'Cheap Lunch Strategy.' This comes down to getting at least 5-10 reviews for a book, and then taking out spots with reputable low-dollar promo sites. Usually, I get 5-15 sales each time for $7-15. If they flop - which does happen on occasion - then I am out the cost of a cheap lunch. I have a long thread dedicated to my marketing misadventures on this site.

Current list:

Bookspry via Cravebooks. Sign up with Cravebooks first and put your book's info on the site. For promos, select Bookspry. The other options are mostly not worth it. ($7)

Booksy Tales. I just started using this one. ($15)

EReaderIQ. You need at least five reviews. My last promo with them flopped, but before that, they would move up to fifteen books. ($10)

Reign of Reads. They used to be good for 5-10 sales, but I now have doubts. Issue with their intake form. ($8 or $10, coupon depending.)

MyBookCave. Ten reviews minimum. I get 15-30 sales. ($33 for $0.99 books.)

Additional: Unsolicited offers for book clubs, Amazon experts, and the like are almost always scams.

 

[Karlin]

Using whatever technical tools that are available for spelling, grammar and punctuation seems OK to me. when you talk about pacing, however, or concepts that weren't explained, I would be very very careful in using such aids. The best you'd ever get out of such a thing is an averaged smoothed out text. You should decide the pacing. You decide what the reader needs to know. Not what a machine "figured out" by averaging how a bunch of online texts look.

 

[Penpilot]

I've never done any of the following with any of my stories, but here's where I think the line is.

I think asking AI to explain a specific grammar rule and give examples, so I can apply that knowledge as I write is fine.

I think asking AI if a sentence is grammatically correct, so I can make the corrections myself by applying the rules of grammar is fine.

Asking AI to correct and rewrite a sentences in my story is not fine. Once you put it through the machinery, the words that come out are not yours.

You have my sympathies. I can't even imagine some of the things you struggle with. Its hard enough writing a book under normal circumstances, but there are authors out there who have worked incredibly hard to overcome similar conditions to write and publish. So I don't think dyslexia can be used as a reason to use AI to do the work for you.

You are free to use whatever you want in your writing, but people are free to choose to not support that, too.

 

[Mad Swede]

I am very severely dyslexic, but I have never used any form of AI to edit or improve my writing. Using AI in the way that you have done will result in rejection from the publishers, as you have found. They do not accept it.

What I do use is some specialised grammar and spell checking tools designed for dyslexic people, namely SpellRight, StavaRex and ClaroRead. These are not AI based. They are also not cheap, but they are well worth buying if you are going to do a lot of writing.

 

[Fyri]

I'm curious why no one is mentioning beta readers or editors.

AI is basically a bad version of those. Editors you do have to pay for, but many beta readers are just readers looking to help writers out for free. I upgraded my services to a paid platform because I realized the intensity of my voluntary labor was starting to take a toll, but even paid betas can be free if they have a project they want you to read in return (iron sharpens iron, my friend)!

AI is not human, but you are writing for humans. Get humans to proofread your stuff for you! Readers looove talking about good and bad things in books and, though they may not be perfect and have many of their own flaws and biases, they are still better than bland AI that will spit out advice for a weird factory product rather than art that touches the soul. Go here: Beta Reader Group or even here Critique Requests and find someone willing to swap with you! Don't write into a void before publishing! Get feedback from people!

 

[Fyri]

Finding a writing group will also benefit you beyond helping with spelling and grammar. Aside from beta readers, a critique partner is someone who stays by your side through multiple phases of the writing journey and can help with all sorts of things along the way, so long as you offer your feedback to them as well (emphasis on "partner!")

As for "is using AI a sin in the writing world?" ...yeah, kind of. And even using it as a tool to assist you with just the basics can indeed add a layer of distrust and uncertainty in your potential readers. However, there are also people here that do not share this view. It's just something I've noticed in agents and publishers these days—AI is a toxin to the art world. Just because you are self-publishing, doesn't mean you should allow your work to have lower standards in creation!

It can be nerve-wracking to show your WIP to another human, and I understand the ease and appeal of using AI to do it instead. But the value is not there! Be brave; none of us are perfect!

 

[Miles Lacey]

I'm reminded of what a certain famous American writer wrote about the reality of writing:

"Don’t get discouraged because there’s a lot of mechanical work to writing. There is, and you can’t get out of it. I rewrote A Farewell to Arms at least fifty times. You’ve got to work it over. The first draft of anything is shit. When you first start to write you get all the kick and the reader gets none, but after you learn to work it’s your object to convey everything to the reader so that he remembers it not as a story he had read but something that happened to himself. That’s the true test of writing. When you can do that, the reader gets the kick and you don’t get any. You just get hard work and the better you write the harder it is because every story has to be better than the last one. It’s the hardest work there is. I like to do and can do many things better than I can write, but when I don’t write I feel like shit. I’ve got the talent and I feel that I’m wasting it.

The only thing I can advise you is to keep on writing but it’s a damned tough racket. The only reason I make any money at it is I’m a sort of literary pirate. Out of every ten stories I write, only one is any good and I throw the other nine away."

- Ernest Hemingway (1899 - 1961)

Writing is bloody hard work but we now have tools at our disposal that makes the job easier but be careful with those tools. It doesn't help when you're dyslexic but there's even tools to assist with that which the Mad Swede has mentioned in his post. AI is a double edged sword where the line between your voice and the compilation of numerous voices within a certain genre is blurred. For now it's best to avoid AI at all costs, not least because writers and publishers are a very sensitive lot who get really upset about it.

 

[Naruzeldamaster]

I've only ever used AI Ironically and for adding some chaos to my pokemon playthroughs.

Ai is how I wound up with a farfetched named Spiritomb. (I asked it to name the pokemon after the 'opposite' of it both thematically and design wise) It's reasoning made me wheeze so I kept it. I Also have a Ratatta named Milotic.

Beyond that, I would never use it in any creative process.
There are services, like Gramarly who offer a human service, but I don't know if that's in your budget.
If it is, I suggest using that over the AI. Especially because in my experience AI and Grammar checkers don't check the entire sentence for context.

You don't know how many times MS Word and Open Office yell at me for simple things that, if it bothered to look at the rest of the sentence, would be identified as correct grammar.

 

[Prince of Spires]

so , are you not allowed to use AI at all now?

This differs from person to person, so there is no one answer to it all. Only you can determine how much you want to use AI in your process. There are no fixed rules about it. Don't let anyone tell you any different. Only you can decide what you use it for, and where your ethical ideas about its use fall.

A couple of points:
- If you're using it to write, publishers can (and should) have an opinion about your use of AI. That's only if you want to traditionally publish though.
- If you're using it to point out where you should edit your manuscript, then I simply don't believe editors can tell the difference. They of course can tell if the writing is good or not, but there is no way they can tell if AI has helped when editing it.
Side note, it becomes harder each day to tell if a short snippet of text has been AI written or not. An author ran a short experiment a while ago, where he had a couple of big name authors and a couple of AI's write a short piece of text. And it was impossible to tell which was which. It just can't be done.
- If you're getting called out for your covers being AI, then your covers simply aren't good enough. That again has nothing to do with AI, but all with their quality. We've already had AI covers win cover competitions, and people only found out by going over every single section with a magnifying glass (figuratively speaking). And AI has only gotten better. What's more, plenty of big traditional publishers are now using AI to create their covers.

All in all, personal opinion, if you can't afford a professional editor, and this is a way to get your book out there, then give it a shot and see how you fare. However, know that AI in general tends to amplify what's already there. So the best thing you can do is to learn how to write better.

 

[Demesnedenoir]

If it works as a traditional grammar/spelling checker, which most of these really are, then no issue to me. I allow nothing beyond hard corrections in Prowriting Aid, which I bought a lifetime membership way back when it was $50. If it's making editor-like suggestions, rewriting sentences, etc., you risk running afoul of—most importantly to me—fudging your own voice, not mention AI checkers.

 

[Fyri]

To note: I was once lectured that AI and grammar/spelling checkers are not the same things. Granted, that may have changed since that conversation. If you're just using a spelling checker, then you shouldn't even need to mention it. It's just a streamlined look into a dictionary for help. Be careful with automated grammar checkers; they can be wrong more often than desired. When it comes to more developmental editing (pacing, structure, whether a concept is over explained or not), that's not something I think a computer should be helping you with, unless you are writing to entertain a computer.

 

[pmmg]

The thing is, I am sure a lot of AI I would not really balk at, but the tools that do this stuff are trying to use their AI features as their selling point, so I know, that if you are using grammarly (for example), the button is there to let the AI suggest a little bit more. And so, when a user comes on and says, I use grammarly, but not that feature, I am dubious. The temptation is great, the reward is high, and the risk is small. I don't think mere mortals can resist it. It would take a lot of character to do that and maintain it.

So, I just kind of, don't really believe when people say that.

I may be one of the last hold outs, but I want my fiction to be my creation. I don't wish to be a prompter, I wish to be a writer.