South African author Coral Hart says AI helped her write nearly 400 books in 20 months

Publishing with AI

Coral Hart, a South African author who writes under a pseudonym for protection, says she has published close to 400 books since February 2025 with the help of artificial intelligence. Reports from several outlets put the count at 371 books in 20 months, and the figures are her own estimates. She has 14 years of publishing experience and had written several dozen books without AI before she started.

She says she spent three months learning AI models and building a template capable of producing a book. Her work is split across tools: ChatGPT for dialogue, Claude for prose, and Grok, which she recommends for erotic scenes. She says a bare request to write a book produces something catastrophic, so she first defines a concept, a style, detailed characters and a chapter list with summaries.

How a book is made

According to Hart, the first draft is usually poor. It goes through one AI pass that harmonises the text and checks continuity and factual consistency, then a second pass focused on style and flow. A human proofreader reviews the content, checks details and rewrites some passages before publication. She describes the quality as much better than before, saying the syntax and sentence structure have improved.

When I started, you could only write one paragraph at a time, and I needed two or three prompts. Today I can get a first draft in one go.

Sales and business

Hart says her books have reached more than one million sales across digital, print and audio formats, according to her own estimates. Some titles have entered the Amazon top 100, although most of her 371 titles target niches identified through market analysis. Sales are described as mixed. She has founded a company that has trained hundreds of people in her method and is preparing to launch software for AI-assisted authors.

Backlash

Hart says she has received tens of thousands of hateful messages and multiple death threats. Social media posts call her a fraudster, a villain and diabolical, and critics describe her books as AI slop. She has chosen to speak publicly, saying the discussion about AI and writing has to happen.

If the AI label makes you hate a book, is it the book you reject, or the AI?