Can You Use AI to Help Create or Publish a Book?
AI writing and editing tools have become a significant part of the conversation around publishing. Authors ask about them constantly — and understandably so. The tools are genuinely useful in some contexts and genuinely problematic in others.
Here's an honest look at where AI can help, where it falls short, and what Making Sense Press's position is on AI-assisted work.
What AI Tools Can Do
AI tools — including large language models, grammar checkers, and editing assistants — can be useful for a range of tasks.
Writing and brainstorming. AI can help an author work through a structural problem, generate alternative phrasings, or break through a block. Many authors find it useful as a thinking partner, even if they don't use the output directly.
Grammar and style checking. AI-powered grammar tools have become significantly more capable than traditional spell-checkers. They can catch errors, flag awkward constructions, and suggest improvements.
Research assistance. AI can help authors gather background information, summarize sources, and identify gaps in their knowledge — though any factual claims still need to be verified independently.
Formatting and production tasks. AI tools can assist with some aspects of manuscript preparation, though professional formatting still requires human judgment.
Where AI Falls Short
AI tools have real limitations that authors should understand before relying on them.
AI doesn't know your book. A language model generates text based on patterns in its training data. It doesn't understand your specific argument, your characters, your voice, or your intentions. AI-generated text often sounds plausible but lacks the specificity and authenticity that makes a book worth reading.
AI makes things up. Language models are prone to generating confident-sounding information that is simply wrong. Any factual content generated or suggested by AI needs to be independently verified.
AI can flatten your voice. One of the most common complaints from authors who use AI heavily is that their writing starts to sound like everyone else's. The distinctive voice that makes a book worth reading is one of the things AI is worst at preserving.
AI-generated content is not original in the traditional sense. The legal and ethical landscape around AI-generated content is still evolving. Authors should be aware of the questions around originality, attribution, and disclosure that come with AI-assisted work.
Making Sense Press's Position
Making Sense Press accepts books that are the original work of the submitting author. We evaluate every submission for originality, voice, and quality.
Authors may use AI tools as part of their writing and editing process — as a writing aid, a grammar checker, or a brainstorming tool — provided the final work is genuinely the author's own. A book that is substantially generated by AI, or that reads as though it was, is not a book we will publish.
We're not in a position to audit every manuscript for AI involvement, and we're not trying to. What we're looking for is a book that has a real author behind it — someone who has something to say and has done the work of saying it.
A Practical Note for Authors
If you're using AI tools as part of your writing process, the most important question to ask yourself is: Is this still my book?
If the answer is yes — if the ideas, the voice, the structure, and the substance are yours, and you've used AI as a tool rather than a ghostwriter — then you're probably on solid ground.
If the answer is uncertain, that uncertainty is worth taking seriously.
The Human Work Still Matters
Whatever role AI plays in the writing process, the human work of writing a good book hasn't changed. A book still needs a clear purpose, a coherent structure, a distinctive voice, and something worth saying. AI can assist with some of the mechanics. It can't do the thinking for you.
If you have a book that meets those standards, we'd like to hear from you.