Rise of AI-Written Books on Amazon (2023–2024)

Presented by Zia H Shah MD

Generative AI tools like OpenAI’s ChatGPT (launched late 2022) rapidly made inroads into self-publishing. In early 2023, only a tiny fraction of Amazon Kindle titles had any AI involvement. A Reuters Feb 2023 report noted just over 200 e-books in Amazon’s Kindle Store explicitly listing ChatGPT as an author or co-authorreuters.com. These included how-to guides and even a children’s story – many openly marketed as AI-written experiments. However, this likely understates the true count, since “many authors’ failure to disclose they have used [ChatGPT]” makes a full accounting impossiblereuters.com.

By mid-2023, the trickle of AI-generated books turned into a flood. Certain genres were hit especially hard by low-quality, AI-generated titles. For example, categories like travel guides and foraging handbooks saw a glut of suspiciously similar books, as did some fiction genres – the teen/young-adult romance bestseller list was briefly dominated by what one author called “AI nonsense”wired.com. Observers described Amazon being “flooded” with obviously bot-written content, often published under fake author names and filled with errors or incoherent text. One industry analysis even claimed that “at peak times, 80 out of 100 Kindle KDP bestsellers are AI editions.”europeanwriterscouncil.eu This extreme statistic referred to manipulated Kindle Unlimited charts (where click-farmed AI gibberish shot to the top, siphoning page-read revenue from genuine authors). While that 80% figure is an outlier scenario, it underscored the growing scale of AI involvement by late 2023.

Faced with this influx, Amazon took notable steps in September 2023 to improve transparency and quality control. Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) platform instituted new rules, including capping authors to 3 new self-published titles per day and requiring authors to disclose if content is AI-generatedobserver.comwired.com. (Previously, a determined “AI author” could upload dozens of books in days, a tactic now curtailed.) Amazon stated it “allows AI-generated content” but not if it violates content guidelines or “creates a disappointing customer experience.”observer.com In practice, this meant blatantly nonsensical or plagiarized AI books could be removed, though enforcement remains challenging. Notably, Amazon’s policy draws a line between “AI-generated” text (which must be disclosed to KDP) and “AI-assisted” editing or brainstorming (which does not require disclosure)kdp.amazon.com. As of 2025, these disclosures are only visible to Amazon internally – there is no public label on an Amazon listing to tell readers a book was AI-writtenwired.com. The onus is on authors to be transparent, and many are not, so the true scale of AI-written books remains somewhat hidden.

Author Adoption of AI: Surveys and Stats

Beyond the outright AI-authored “spam” books, a growing number of legitimate self-published authors began using AI tools more subtly in their workflow. Surveys from 2024–2025 reveal a community divided on AI’s role:

• Nearly half of indie authors are using AI in some form: A May 2025 survey of 1,200+ authors by BookBub found about 45% of authors currently use generative AI to assist with their work, while 48% do not use it (and have no plans to)insights.bookbub.com. The remaining 7% haven’t used it yet but are open to tryinginsights.bookbub.com. This split – roughly half embracing AI and half avoiding it – shows how controversial the technology is in writing circles. Among those using AI, most report doing so frequently (60% of AI-users) rather than just dabblinginsights.bookbub.com.
• AI is often used for support tasks, not outright writing: Even when authors adopt AI, they typically use it as a tool to enhance (not replace) their writing. According to the same BookBub survey, the top use-cases for AI were research (81% of AI-using authors), creating marketing materials, and outlining/plotting storiesinsights.bookbub.com. Many writers find AI helpful for brainstorming ideas, getting past writer’s block, or generating advertising copy. For instance, an author might have ChatGPT suggest plot twists, refine prose wording, or summarize a chapter for a blurb – but not write the entire novel. In fact, some respondents stressed they “never just blindly ‘generate text’ to use in my novel”, instead treating AI as a “writing partner” whose output is carefully reviewed, edited, or often discardedinsights.bookbub.cominsights.bookbub.com. Common tasks handled by AI include: generating character name ideas, improving grammar, summarizing research, and drafting ad copy or book descriptionsinsights.bookbub.cominsights.bookbub.com.
• Relatively few authors admit to AI writing large portions of the book: Most writers still take pride in crafting the actual narrative themselves. In a late 2024 indie author survey, “most self-published authors surveyed stated they don’t use AI to help them write their books,” though many do use AI for marketing or blurbseabookspublishing.com. Likewise, an Authors Guild survey in 2025 (which included traditionally published writers too) found 87% of authors do not use generative AI as part of their writing processauthorsguild.org. Only 13% were using it in writing, and mostly for minor tasks like brainstorming plots (33% of that 13%), marketing help (26%), or structuring drafts (13%)authorsguild.org. In other words, roughly only 1 in 8 authors was using AI to any extent in writing, and often in a supporting role. This indicates that fully AI-penned chapters or books remain relatively uncommon among serious authors – many view having an AI ghostwrite the prose as ethically problematic or detrimental to quality. In authors’ own words, “It’s unethical to write an entire book [with AI].”insights.bookbub.com Others say using AI for creativity “robs me of the joy of writing” and results in bland, error-prone text that “creates more work” in editinginsights.bookbub.cominsights.bookbub.com.

It’s worth noting that some authors may be using AI but not openly “admitting” it. There is a stigma in some communities around AI-written fiction, so a portion of that 87% “non-users” might include quiet users. (One 2025 poll wryly suggested “74% of those [authors] that do [use AI] aren’t honest about it” publiclyselfpublishingadvice.org.) Still, surveys consistently indicate human creativity is still front-and-center in the vast majority of self-published books, with AI mostly playing an assistive role rather than replacing the author.

How Many Books Have Significant AI Content?

Determining what percentage of self-published books actually contain substantial AI-written content is difficult – partly due to poor disclosure. However, industry experts and available data suggest the share has grown markedly from 2023 to 2025, though it remains a minority of all titles. Below is a timeline of estimates and trends:

1. Early 2023 – Emergence (<<1%): AI-written books were a novelty. Only a few hundred self-published Kindle titles, out of hundreds of thousands published annually, were clearly AI-generated. Example: as of Feb 2023 about 200 titles openly credited ChatGPTreuters.com. Many more may have had unacknowledged AI help, but overall the impact was tiny.
2. Late 2023 – Spike in AI Books (rising toward a few %): The volume of AI-generated content on Amazon shot up. Scammers and opportunists churned out thousands of AI-crafted ebooks (from formulaic romance to auto-generated “summaries”), aiming to make a quick profit. One self-publishing distributor (Draft2Digital) reported in 2024 that their incoming submission volume was running ~50% higher than normal, attributing the surge largely to AI-generated manuscripts from bad actorsjanefriedman.com. Amazon and other retailers began purging blatant AI spam, but not before some genres were overrun (temporarily). By end of 2023, some publishing analysts guessed that a few percent of new self-published titles on Amazon had significant AI content – still a small minority, but a rapidly growing one.
3. 2024 – Rapid Growth & Integration (~5–10% range): Generative AI became more accessible (with newer models like GPT-4), leading more everyday authors to experiment with it. Veteran publishing commentator Jane Friedman noted in early 2024 a “rising tide of AI-generated books appearing at major online retailers.”janefriedman.com This included both the low-quality flood and earnest authors using AI to speed up production. Estimates of the portion of books with “significant AI contribution” (meaning AI wrote large chunks) ranged widely. Some in the industry still put it in the single digits percentage-wise – perhaps on the order of 5% of self-pub books by mid-2024 – especially if one excludes pure copy-paste AI spam that was quickly removed. Important: The impact was uneven across genres. In non-fiction, a lot of AI-driven content farming appeared (e.g. instant travel guides, recipe books, self-help compilations). In fiction, AI was used to clone popular styles (e.g. endless paranormal romance volumes), though discerning exact numbers is tough. Amazon’s new AI disclosure requirement gave a hint of prevalence: many authors began self-reporting AI content to KDP in late 2023 (to avoid potential penalties), implying that a notable chunk of submissions did contain AI text. Amazon hasn’t released those statistics, unfortunately.
4. 2025 – Mainstream Presence (possibly 10%+ of new titles): By 2025, AI assistance is near-mainstream among self-publishers, even if full AI-authorship isn’t. Roughly half of indie authors are now using AI in some capacityinsights.bookbub.com, which likely translates to an increasing flow of AI-influenced books. We see concrete evidence in certain niches. For example, an investigation in mid-2025 found 517 children’s non-fiction books on Amazon that appeared to be AI-generated (many riddled with errors), produced by dozens of sketchy “authors”indicator.media. Amazon did remove nearly 200 of those after reviewindicator.media, but hundreds remained on sale. This is one niche, suggesting thousands of AI-heavy books exist platform-wide. Conservative estimates from industry observers suggest that by late 2025, perhaps one in ten new self-published books has “significant AI contribution” – meaning AI wrote a substantial portion of the content. The range could be higher in some genres (e.g. tech manuals, genre fiction series) and lower in others. The lack of universal disclosure makes it hard to pin down an exact percentage. What’s clear is the trend: from essentially 0% in 2022, up to a single-digit percentage by 2023–24, and potentially into low double-digits by 2025. If AI tools continue to improve and if ethical concerns are addressed, this percentage could climb further in coming years.

Transparency and Industry Response

The rapid rise of AI-generated books has raised concerns about transparency for readers and fairness for authors. Disclosure of AI involvement is a hot topic. Amazon’s current policy (since Sept 2023) requires authors to inform KDP if a book’s text or images are fully AI-generatedwired.com. However, Amazon does not publicly label these books on the storefront. This means a customer browsing Amazon can’t easily tell if a title was written by a human, by AI, or a mix. Industry advocates argue this needs to change. “Amazon is ethically obligated to disclose this information… if [authors] don’t [do so], then Amazon needs to,” says author Jane Friedman, warning that hiding AI ghostwriting will breed reader distrustwired.com. The Authors Guild has similarly called for retailers to flag AI-generated material at the point of salewired.com. So far, Amazon has been cautious – likely because reliably detecting AI text is difficult and mislabeling a human author’s work as AI would be a PR disaster.

Other publishers have responded by tightening quality control. For example, Barnes & Noble and IngramSpark (a print-on-demand service) started barring obviously AI-produced dross in 2024janefriedman.comjanefriedman.com. Draft2Digital now monitors accounts that suddenly upload book after book (a telltale sign of AI or other mass-production) and shuts down “bad actors” pumping out low-quality AI booksjanefriedman.com. These measures are aimed at the worst offenders – the “sham books” that copy or summarize real books without permission, or the incoherent filler content that clogs search resultsauthorsguild.orgauthorsguild.org. Legitimate authors who simply use AI as a co-writer face a more gray-area situation. There’s no rule against selling an AI-written novel, as long as it’s original and not misleading consumers. Indeed, Amazon has made it clear they will not ban AI-generated books outrightjanefriedman.com. The responsibility lies with authors to ensure quality and with readers to be discerning.

In summary, from 2023 to 2025 the share of self-published books with significant AI contributions has risen from virtually zero to a noticeable minority. Estimates vary, but on the order of 5–20% of new indie books likely had AI heavily involved in the writing by 2025 (higher in some niches, lower in others). Most of these are shorter-format or quickly produced works; fully AI-written full-length novels are still relatively uncommon in mainstream genres. Crucially, human authorship remains the norm for the majority of self-published content – AI hasn’t taken over, but it is now firmly part of the writer’s toolkit. The trend is clearly upward, and the publishing world is watching closely. Both authors and readers are navigating this new landscape, balancing the efficiency of AI with the authenticity and creativity of human writing. The period from 2023 to 2025 may be remembered as the dawn of AI in publishing – a time when the industry had to establish norms around crediting AI, maintaining quality, and being transparent with the book-loving public about who (or what) actually wrote the words on the page.

Sources: Recent publishing surveys and news reports have been used to compile these insights, including data from BookBub’s 2025 author surveyinsights.bookbub.cominsights.bookbub.com, the Authors Guildauthorsguild.org, investigative journalism on Amazon’s AI contentwired.comindicator.media, and Amazon’s own policy statementsobserver.com. These illustrate the growing (but still limited) role of AI in self-published books and the ongoing efforts to manage its impact on the industry.