In our previous blogs we have looked at use cases of AI in publishing and how educational publishing is impacted by AI. In our latest blog, we look at the impact of AI on self-publishing. Is the increasing use of AI a boon for the self-publishing industry and authors and how does this impact self-publishing service providers and eBook services like Kindle Direct Publishing.
Before the advent of tech-enabled self-publishing, an aspiring author had to submit manuscripts to traditional publishing houses, and the commissioning editors would take a call if the manuscript was fit to be published or not. Then we saw the advent of vanity publishing houses that allowed people to publish their writing at a fixed price.
As technology evolved and we saw the growth of digital devices like smartphones, eReaders, and tablet devices, a new ecosystem for digital books or eBooks arrived. We had .mobi files, PDFs, ePub files, .crz files for comic books that began gaining acceptance. When Amazon launched its first Kindle device in 2007 it was a great moment for publishing. Leading tech companies of the time decided to launch similar products but Amazon clearly had first-mover advantage and continues to hold its grasp over the eReader market.
The product was the platform to launch Kindle Direct Publishing or KDP, which enabled authors to format content and images, add a cover, fix a price, and sell their eBooks to a global audience on Amazon. There was also an option to publish hard-cover editions of books. With a fixed revenue going to Amazon for each book sold, authors could also track their earnings. Truly a game-changing moment for people who aspired to be authors.
Now that the context of KDP and self-publishing of eBooks is set. Let us look at how AI is impacting the process of creating eBooks and printed books.
Speed of Design and Content
One of the vagaries of the growth of AI is the ability of the tool to churn out content based on a specific prompt. Several eBook authors on Amazon have successfully used AI to publish fantasy and science fiction books and sell them with a fair deal of success. As AI evolves further and makes image and content generation easier, it will become a demand vs supply conundrum that will never end. With everyone attempting to put out a book in the eBook ecosystem, finding the right book that is of value to the reader/buyer will become the challenge that would need addressal.
Editing, Layout, Designing Covers, and Marketing Books
AI-powered tools now take care of all these elements involved in book design. At the touch of a button content is proofread and checked for plagiarism. With some prompts one receives an AI-generated image that can be customized further with a tool like Canva or Adobe Firefly, and one can create an attractive book cover image. These tools can also be used to create posters that can be used for social media marketing campaigns to promote the book.
Modern marketing automation software integrates AI within it to help create email content, target relevant users in a database, design and format emails, and dispatch them as part of a targeted email campaign to promote the book. Thus, it is evident that AI is simplifying tasks that traditionally a book marketing agency would do. This gives more power to independent authors who do not have a big budget with them to promote their books.
What’s Next?
Since we have already examined in detail the benefits of AI for the publishing sector in our earlier posts, let us pause to reflect now on how the growth of AI will impact the publishing industry. With each new iteration of generative AI-powered solutions, we are seeing better and faster output from tools. As content creation becomes easier, publishers of translated works have a big opportunity here to use AI to translate content and then edit the output to refine it and commission translated books.
This is a key area of interest for publishing houses. With copyrights lapsing for books over a century old, there is a rush among smaller publishing firms to re-issue classics by removing controversial/racist content in them and presenting them for a modern audience. Thus, AI is a huge boon for the self-publishing industry.
NINJA – A Solution for Self-Publishing Firms
NINJA is a suite of AI-powered solutions that offer great value for self-publishing firms. They can use it to generate summaries of longer texts, build interactive content libraries, and generate meta data information that enables easy categorization of books within their publishing ecosystem, retail catalog of books or content library. Additional details are given below.
Interactive Content Library: Transform the library experience into an interactive journey. NINJA allows you to interact with your content repository, asking questions, seeking explanations, and getting personalized and contextual responses.
Metadata Extraction: Enhances the discoverability of books. Our no code AI Ecosystem, NINJA, automatically extracts keywords, taxonomy, authors, titles, and genre in real time from multiple sources.
Summarization: Instantly generate abstractive summaries from chunked text. NINJA helps cleanse, enrich, and add contextual meaning to your content, delivering the right information at the right time for the right operation.
Are you keen to learn more about how NINJA can help your self-publishing firm create eBooks and regular printed books faster? Write to us at sales@s4carlisle.com to learn more.
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