I want to start by saying something clearly, because this conversation is often framed in extremes.
I’m not anti-AI.
I use AI tools. I test them. I’m curious about them. Like many authors, I’ve experimented with AI for brainstorming, research prompts, and even to help me think through structure when I’m stuck. AI has become a part of daily life.
But there is a fundamental difference between using AI as a tool and letting AI write your book — and that difference matters more now than ever, especially for nonfiction authors.
Over the past year or two, I’ve watched the publishing landscape change at a pace I’ve never seen before. Thousands of books are being uploaded every day, many of them generated largely — or, let’s be honest, entirely — by AI. Some are harmless. Many are not. And the line between “assisted by AI” and “written by AI” has become increasingly blurred.
As a reader, I’ve stopped purchasing books by self-published authors, which have been published since ChatGPT came about, as I simply don’t trust them to have any human input. As a self-published author, that’s a pretty sad reality. But more on that in a future post.
Why this distinction matters for nonfiction
Nonfiction carries an implicit promise.
When readers pick up a nonfiction book, they are trusting that:
- the information is accurate
- the perspective is informed
- the author has done the thinking, research, and synthesis themselves
That trust is fragile. And once it’s broken — not just for one author, but across a category — it’s incredibly hard to rebuild.
AI has complicated this trust in a way we haven’t fully reckoned with yet.
Using AI as a tool: what this actually looks like
When authors say, “I use AI to help me write,” they can mean very different things.
Using AI as a tool typically looks like this:
- Brainstorming ideas or angles
- Asking questions to explore a topic more broadly
- Creating rough outlines that the author then rewrites
- Getting feedback on clarity or structure
- Summarising notes the author has already written
- Helping rephrase sentences for flow or conciseness
In these cases, the author remains the author.
You are:
- making the decisions
- doing the thinking
- shaping the argument
- checking facts
- choosing what stays and what goes
AI is functioning like a very fast, very basic assistant — not a ghostwriter.
Crucially, the final voice, structure, and responsibility still belong to you.
Letting AI write your book: where things change
Letting AI write your book looks very different.
This is when:
- chapters are generated from prompts and pasted with minimal editing
- entire sections are written without the author deeply understanding the material
- factual claims are accepted without verification
- the author cannot confidently explain or defend what’s written
- the book exists primarily because it can be produced quickly
In these cases, the author becomes more of a publisher than a writer.
And while that might feel efficient in the short term, it comes with real risks.
The illusion of speed and productivity
One of the strongest arguments for AI-written books is speed.
“Yes, but I can publish faster.”
“Yes, but everyone else is doing it.”
“Yes, but readers don’t know the difference.”
Maybe — for now.
But speed has always been a trap in publishing.
I’ve been publishing books since 2012, and full-time since 2017. Over that time, I’ve seen countless shortcuts rise and fall:
- keyword-stuffed books
- outsourced low-quality content mills
- template-driven “done-for-you” publishing services
They work briefly. Then they collapse — often leaving authors with damaged reputations and backlists they no longer stand behind. The only benefit to these eventual “crashes” are that they weed out the opportunists from the
AI-generated nonfiction risks following the same path.
Voice is not a cosmetic detail
One of the biggest tells in AI-written books isn’t grammar or structure — it’s voice.
Human writing is uneven. It hesitates. It emphasises strange things. It reflects lived experience, preferences, and judgement.
AI writing, especially when simply copy and pasted, tends to be:
- overly balanced
- vague
- repetitive in structure
- strangely confident without being specific
Readers may not articulate this consciously, but they can feel it.
And once readers begin to associate a genre with this kind of voice, they stop trusting it altogether.
Responsibility doesn’t disappear because AI was involved
This is the part many authors underestimate.
If your nonfiction book contains:
- inaccuracies
- outdated information
- misleading claims
- hallucinated sources
It doesn’t matter how those errors got there.
Your name is on the cover.
AI does not take responsibility. Platforms do not take responsibility. Readers come to you.
For nonfiction authors — especially those writing about health, parenting, education, finance, or science — this responsibility is not optional.
“But I edit everything” — editing isn’t authorship
I hear this a lot:
“I generate the draft with AI, but I edit it heavily.”
Editing matters. But editing is not the same as authorship. An editor of a book has never been the author, and has never claimed to be—that shouldn’t change with AI.
There’s a difference between:
- shaping your own ideas into clearer language
and - correcting and polishing ideas that were never fully yours to begin with
The second can look fine on the surface while remaining hollow underneath.
A good test is this:
Could you confidently explain and defend every section of your book, without referring back to the text?
If the answer is no, that’s a signal worth paying attention to.
The long-term cost to reader trust
Right now, many readers can’t easily tell which nonfiction books are human-written and which are not.
But that won’t last forever.
As AI-generated content increases, readers will become more sceptical — not just of individual books, but of entire categories. We’re already seeing this happen in some niches.
When trust erodes, everyone pays the price:
- thoughtful authors
- careful researchers
- long-term publishers
This is why the distinction between assisted and generated writing matters beyond individual success.
A more sustainable way forward
I don’t believe the solution is banning AI or pretending it doesn’t exist. It’s already far too ingrained in our day-to-day life, whether we like it or not.
The more realistic, ethical approach is:
- transparency
- restraint
- clear standards
AI can support the writing process without replacing it.
Nonfiction can evolve without abandoning its core promise.
But that requires authors to be honest with themselves first — about why they’re writing, who they’re writing for, and what they want their work to stand for in five or ten years.
How I personally approach AI in my work
After a couple of years of trial and error to test its capabilities and best use cases, I now use AI sparingly and deliberately.
I don’t ask it to write chapters for me. I don’t publish text I don’t fully understand or couldn’t have written myself. And I take responsibility for every word that ends up in a finished book.
That approach is slower.
But it’s also the reason I can stand behind my catalogue years later — and why readers continue to trust my work.
Where AuthorWing fits into this conversation
As I’ve spent more time thinking about these issues, it naturally led to the idea behind AuthorWing’s certification. My initial instinct was to create an “AI-free” badge — a clear signal that a book had been written entirely without AI. But the more I explored it, the more I realised that simply isn’t realistic anymore, nor does it reflect how many thoughtful authors actually work today. Instead, we created a Human-Approved certification. It focuses on what truly matters: that a book shows clear evidence of human authorship, original thinking, responsible use of tools, and a level of care that readers can trust. For nonfiction in particular — where credibility is everything — this badge is a way to help restore confidence for readers who are increasingly cautious about new books, without pretending that technology doesn’t exist.
If you’d like to learn more about our certification, feel free to get in touch or simply order your appraisal via our website.