5 Ways Generative AI is Harming Indie Authors

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Being a self-published (aka indie) author was never easy. It’s a hustle and struggle that nobody can prepare you to face. And generative AI is making that challenge even harder for those of us trying to scrape by and turn our dreams into a career.

I unofficially lost my freelance writing job to AI. I say unofficially because my contract was never actually terminated; I simply stopped receiving projects. And it didn’t take a genius to read the writing on the wall—clients stopped hiring freelance writers to create their website content because AI could churn out that content for free. Why type out notes about your business, services, etc. to pay a human writer for their time and talent when those exact same notes could be plugged into an AI prompt and regurgitated in an instant?

A prime example: a group of copyright law professors filed an an amicus brief supporting authors in a lawsuit against Meta, alleging that Meta had scraped copyrighted ebooks without permission to train its AI models. In the argument summary, the brief argued against Meta’s fair use claims:

Meta’s claim that its unauthorized copying of plaintiffs’ works to train its large language models is fair use is a breathtaking request for greater legal privileges than courts have ever granted human authors. It should be rejected. The use of copyrighted works to train generative models is not “transformative,” because using works for that purpose is not relevantly different from using them to educate human authors, which is a principal original purpose of all of plaintiffs’ works. That training use is also not “transformative” because its purpose is to enable the creation of works that compete with the copied works in the same markets – a purpose that, when pursued by a for-profit company like Meta, also makes the use undeniably “commercial.”

In 2025, the Good Law Project posted, “This fake art isn’t just produced by algorithms that are trained with vast amounts of energy and by people paid poverty wages. It also depends on AI giants using creative work and refusing to pay for it. Companies like Meta and OpenAI are hoovering millions of copyright books, songs and films into their AI tools without permission – creative work that the companies admit they would never be able to afford if they were actually paying for it. Writers, musicians and artists depend on this work to make a living, but these multimillion-dollar companies claim that stealing it comes under fair use provisions that are designed for research, criticism, teaching or comedy.”

I’ve seen many firsthand accounts from artists fighting against copycats who follow them on social media, run their artwork through an AI platform, and pass off the new “art” as original works. Even before AI was so prevalent, authors had an uphill battle to fight against their books showing up on pirated sites (and still do). Now, what’s to stop someone from prompting AI to rewrite an author’s book and then publish the variation to compete with the original?

Ex-Google CEO Eric Schmidt was in hot water back in 2024 when he suggested that an AI startup could simply steal intellectual property and then rely on lawyers to fix any legal complications later. Basically, in Silicon Valley, user acquisition and startup success > legal or ethical concerns. (That mindset should surprise absolutely no one.) The goal is to move so fast and break so many things along the way that the courts can’t keep up with the aftermath.

And that’s not even mentioning the devastating environmental impacts of hyperscale data centers destroying ecosystems, wildlife, and communities. (Mine will be joining that list soon if we’re unable to stop the monstrosity being constructed two and a half miles from my house).

The fourth novel in my award-winning paranormal sci-fi/fantasy series was released at the end of last year, and with the AI explosion between the release of my third and fourth installments, I found myself facing a lot of brand-new challenges I hadn’t experienced yet in my eight years of being an indie author. In this article, I’ll focus specifically on a few of the ways generative AI is impacting independently published authors like myself.

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Flooding the Market with Low-Quality Books

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In 2025, more than 50% of new book releases contained AI-generated content. There was 38.7% growth in self-published titles with 3.5 million new ISBNs (4M+ titles total industry-wide).

Anyone who claims an AI-generated book is indistinguishable from a human-authored book either has terrible taste or simply has not tried to read an AI book all the way through. There’s a noticeable difference, not just in writing style, but also plot holes, clichés, inconsistencies, etc.

Indie authors already have to fight against the stereotype of self-published equating with low-quality, unedited books. That’s because some indie authors put in the proper work and investment in their books while others cut corners. Because self-publishing is free and easy, there’s very little quality control.

AI books are making that problem 1,000 times worse. The people who are publishing these books are not doing it because they’re passionate about writing or care about their story. They want to make money. Which, honestly, adds extra insult to injury because it’s INCREDIBLY HARD for indie authors to earn enough money with their books to turn it into a full-time career. In a large indie author survey, 46% of self published authors earn 100 dollars or less per month.

AI books are testing the quantity vs. quality aspect of self-publishing. And in doing so, they’re bringing down the overall quality of the entire market, which is negatively impacting indie authors, retailers, and readers.

Sowing Consumer Distrust with Lack of Transparency

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Last year, an estimated 74% of authors who use AI did not disclose their generative AI use to readers. And, of course, that’s an estimate. It’s difficult to gauge the accuracy of such a statistic because AI detection tools are notoriously unreliable.

Retailers are also not clearly labeling AI books as such. Nowhere on the product listing does it say whether AI was used in any part of the process, even if the entire book and cover were generated by AI.

I’ve spoken to both regular readers and bookstore owners who have expressed frustration about trying to identify AI books. People overwhelmingly want books that were actually written by human beings, but it’s getting harder to identify them. A close friend, who is very much anti-AI in support of real authors, was recently duped by a book she didn’t realize was AI-generated until after she’d purchased it and started reading. The first few chapters were passable… as if the “author” either wrote them or heavily edited them to fool readers upfront before passing off the rest of the writing task to AI for the last 80% of the book.

In many cases, readers don’t know a book is AI unless they read reviews that expose it. And even that is getting more difficult because the supposed “AI tells” are becoming harder to spot, and authors are also being accused of using AI if they have any of these basic elements such as em dashes and metaphors in their writing. (I’ll dive deeper into this topic later in this article.)

Straining Self-Publishing Resources + Increasing Costs

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AI “authors” have figured out how to manipulate the self-publishing system. Uploading multiple titles to a single account at once raises red flags because even rapid-release authors aren’t capable of producing at that speed/quantity.

So, rather than uploading a few dozen books at a time to one account, they’re creating a new account for each new book. This means independent publishing platforms are being bombarded with new accounts, and they’re struggling to keep up.

Here’s what readers need to understand about the wide distribution model (at least, from my experience). Even with other retailers carrying an author’s books, Amazon is still the behemoth that dominates the industry, hands down. Despite my books being available on just about every platform available, the vast majority of my online sales still come from Amazon. For ebooks specifically, we’re talking more than 90% of my sales last year.

I would almost certainly make more money if I pulled my titles from other locations and granted Amazon exclusivity so I could take advantage of their extra promotional tools and marketing opportunities.

But that would mean libraries, bookstores, and other retailers would no longer be able to sell my books, and I don’t want to do that… for many reasons.

1. I don’t trust Amazon. They have a long history of screwing over authors. They’ve removed books and banned authors from the platform for allegedly violating their terms and conditions, even if the the circumstances were beyond the author’s control. (For example, if a book is stolen and published on a piracy site, that violates Amazon’s exclusivity requirement and can result in the author’s account being suspended or terminated on KDP). That’s just the tip of the iceberg. For a long time, Amazon allowed customers to consumed complete ebooks and audiobooks and then return those digital downloads at the author’s expense; not only did the author lose those royalties, but they actually owed Amazon money to cover the delivery fees. For years, Amazon has been caught reselling damaged books back to authors and customers after authors returned them because the copies were unsalable for events. Amazon has also been embroiled in Kindle Unlimited discrepancies for the last few months, although when I dug a little deeper, I learned that this is a recurring problem that has persisted for years. Authors have been getting zero KU page reads (which means no royalties), even with brand-new releases and steady sales that suddenly took an unexplained nosedive out of the blue, all while KDP’s customer service gaslights authors and tells them that everything is normal and the simple answer is nobody is reading their books (which is not true). So… lots of problems. Still recent, still relevant. If there’s a way for Amazon to throw an author under the bus, they’ll do it without a second’s hesitation.
   
2. I support public libraries and indie bookstores. I want them to have access to my books.
   
3. Not everyone uses Amazon; I don’t want to cut off any of my fans by giving them only one option. If they prefer to use B&N’s Nook instead of Kindle, or indie-friendly options such as bookshop.org or libro.fm (both of which share profits with independent bookstores), then I’m happy to provide alternatives to Amazon’s monopoly, even if that means my royalties are slightly lower.

The truth is, I don’t make very much money from other sources outside of Amazon. And that’s okay. I really don’t like the “put all of your eggs in one basket” approach, especially with such a shady company.

However, Draft2Digital made an unexpected, unwelcome policy change in April 2026 with two new fees for indie authors:

• If you open a new account, you’re subject to a $20 activation fee.
• If your annual net royalties are under $100, you must pay a $12 maintenance fee. (Note: this threshold is after D2D has taken their cut of your sales, so your gross sales must be higher.)

D2D authors were blindsided by this sudden announcement. I had just uploaded my fourth novel to Draft2Digital and was about to switch my other titles over from IngramSpark when this shift occurred. Prior to the new maintenance fee, my overall royalties would have been higher with D2D distributing my ebook titles than IngramSpark. But this new annual fee would wipe out those small gains.

Draft2Digital is the first to switch from free to pay-to-play for indie authors. IngramSpark used to charge setup fees, which they eliminated in 2023. They also charged revision fees, which irked me to no end, but they eased those charges by allowing a 60-day free revision window and then finally removing those fees earlier this year, although those gains were reduced with increased print costs. KDP, on the other hand, has never charged setup or revision fees. And, until now, neither did D2D. This is a shift in the wrong direction.

(Keep in mind, these platforms take a percentage of an author’s royalties. When we make money, they make money. Selling more books is mutually beneficial for both of us.)

If I wanted to hit D2D’s new minimum threshold, I would have to QUINTUPLE my ebook sales on all non-Amazon platforms at a minimum. On Amazon? I could hit that sales goal pretty easily. But my Kindle books are managed by KDP, so they’re removed from the equation.

$12 a year isn’t going to break the bank… but is this just the start? What happens if D2D keeps raising the cost? The announcement of the new fee was out of the blue, so why should we expect much warning about price hikes and new policies?

When I emailed D2D to express my frustration and disappointment in their new policy, their response was basically “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”

Really, it’s the principle of the matter that pisses me off. D2D is punishing the smallest indie authors who are already struggling with sales. If you don’t earn $100 annually in royalties after D2D has taken its cut, they’ll hit you with the maintenance fee. If you haven’t earned enough to cover that fee, and you don’t pay within 30 days, your books will be delisted and your account will be suspended.

All of this… allegedly to combat AI slop? There’s no question that publishing platforms are drowning in a flood of AI-generated books right now, and they’re trying to figure out the best way to combat the surge. But there are better ways. The people publishing AI books are doing it to make money. D2D is punishing the smallest indie authors who aren’t making much money.

They’re going after the authors who have micro-niche audiences that are passionate but small. The ones who take years to publish a new book and are slowly building up their reader base. The new ones who are releasing a debut novel without any support yet… and probably don’t fully understand the publishing world, because trust me, it’s a lot to learn. Even if you think you did enough research beforehand, I promise you aren’t prepared yet. I’ve published four novels, and I’m still learning. The industry never stops evolving.

And generative AI is creating a massive hole of uncertainty.

Pressuring Authors to Change Their Voice & Writing Style

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As much as I hate the term “witch hunt” because of the harm that real witch-hunts historically did to (primarily) women, not to mention the overuse of the term in politics, it feels like the most accurate way to describe what’s happening to authors and artists alike.

People are claiming that certain “AI tells,” prove an author used generative AI. What are some of these alleged tells?

• Em dashes (Here’s my take on that—AI can pry em dashes from my cold, dead hands.)
• Metaphors & similes (Writing with AI and calling yourself an author is like ordering a pizza and claiming that you’re a chef.)
• The rule of three (Your writing is beautiful, witty, and memorable.)
• Alliteration (All the lovely letters)
• Short “not this, but that” statements. (Not red. Not orange. But yellow.)

Basically, components that make writing interesting and build an author’s unique voice. But here’s where it gets even more concerning—it’s not just readers pointing out these “tells” to accuse a writer of using AI. Authors have reported that literary agents are pressuring them to remove these elements from their manuscript submissions out of fear of the AI witch hunt.

I find this whole mess downright depressing. AI was trained on human writing without permission… and now authors are expected to strip the humanity out of our writing because LLMs mimicked it too much? AI is allowed to commandeer our voices and leave us sounding like robots? That is completely absurd.

I’m grateful to be an indie author with complete creative control over my work so I don’t have to cater to the whims and fears of a publishing house. I spent years discovering my voice; I’m not going to change my writing style just because a machine is copying it. I will continue to use em dashes, metaphors, similes, alliteration, and the rule of three. If people want to point to those parts of my writing and cry about AI, they’ll be wrong. That’s on them, not me. I’ll die on that hill alongside the Oxford comma.

Overriding Keywords & Metadata to Hijack Marketing

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This is a wild one I recently discovered in the writing community. When we upload our books to a distributor, we have to input metadata to categorize our books in a variety of databases so libraries, retailers, and consumers can find our work. We specify genres and sub-genres, intended age range of the audience, and relevant keywords.

AI is disregarding all of that information and recategorizing books as it sees fit. At least on Amazon, anyway. (I haven’t confirmed if it’s happening on a broader scale, but considering that Amazon has a stranglehold on the book industry, that’s still a big deal.)

Here’s an example: I stumbled across a post in an author group where someone was seeking advice. She posted a screenshot of her book listing on Amazon and said that it had been put into the sci-fi category even though she hadn’t used any of those keywords, and she was adamant that her novel was NOT sci-fi. Her best guess was that AI had flagged certain words in her blurb and placed it in that category, thereby overriding the keywords she had chosen to best describe the book and expose it to the right readers.

I shared this post within one of my own small author groups. Two of those authors were shocked to discover that upon investigation, the same incident had happened with their books! One had her book removed from the vampire romance category even though her protagonist is a vampire… which the AI didn’t know because that detail is a spoiler that isn’t mentioned in the book blurb. Another’s fantasy book had been moved into sci-fi, likely because she used the world “alternate” when mentioning the setting.

As an author, let me tell you… this in insane! We should not have to spoon-feed readers and give away potential spoilers in our blurbs just to appease the AI overlords when they categorize (or re-categorize, since we’ve already done that) our books. There’s a fine line between providing enough information for readers to know what kind of book they’re buying while still teasing some mysteries and twists. AI should ABSOLUTELY NOT be putting our books into the wrong genre categories when WE ALREADY INPUT that data ourselves.

From what I can tell, my books seem to properly categorized… for now. My first novel has prominent keywords in the blurb, but my later books in the series don’t have as many keywords because, shocker, readers already know what kinds of books they are if they’re continuing the series. I shouldn’t have to break down the worldbuilding and genre with every single book. I think my saving grace was having the novels linked together as a cohesive series with the first installment bearing the keyword burden.

But it shouldn’t be this way. Authors know their books better than a flawed AI scan. When it puts our books in the wrong categories, we aren’t reaching our target audience anymore. You can imagine how devastating that is for our marketing strategies… which were already challenging enough anyway.

Final Thoughts

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What does the future look like for indie authors as AI continues to permeate the publishing world? Nobody knows, and that’s terrifying. There’s alarmingly little oversight from a legal standpoint despite class-action lawsuits from bestselling authors and organizations such as The Author’s Guild. Governments around the world are dragging their feet, if they’re reacting at all.

Money talks. And the tech companies pushing AI have a LOT of money to lobby their interests, leaving civilians at their mercy with very little legal recourse available.

Even the Big Five publishers (Penguin Random House, HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Hachette Book Group, and Macmillan) are openly embracing AI in parts of the process, including editing, marketing, and cover design. This is particularly disheartening for authors and artists alike.

And yet… even the Big Five aren’t all on the same page with a cohesive stance for or against the use of generative AI. In 2024, HarperCollins was the first of the group to reach a licensing agreement with Microsoft by opening its nonfiction backlist for AI training for $5,000 per title divided equally between publisher and author over three years on an opt-in basis. Penguin Random House, on the other hand, came out around the same time with a public statement including “principles to guide our approach to the responsible use of AI at Penguin Random House UK” (see below):

First principle: Penguin champions human creativity. We seek out and enable talented people from all walks of life to tell their stories, and make sure they are heard by the widest possible audience. We do not see any technology as a substitute for human imagination.

Second principle: we must advocate for intellectual property. We are a major investor in human creativity, and our investment – together with our authors’ – rests on a basic principle – that as a society we value creative work and have mechanisms to reward it. We will vigorously defend the intellectual property that belongs to our authors and artists.

Third principle: we will innovate responsibly. We have a long track record as an innovator in the publishing industry, and we will use generative AI tools selectively and responsibly, where we see a clear case that they can advance our goals.

Penguin Random House, Hachette, and Macmillan have added AI-related clauses into their contracts stating that publishers won’t allow AI training without the author’s consent.

And yet, the Big Five seem to be focusing primarily on the training and licensing aspects of generative AI. When it comes to writing manuscripts and designing covers, they’ve been pretty quiet… and their silence speaks louder than their statements. Self-published authors and independent bookstores are protesting the unethical nature of AI much more than the major publishers that dominate the market.

As both an author and an artist, it’s a bleak reality, and I really don’t know what to do other than certify my books as human-authored and speak out when I can. I’m worried about sharing my art on social media and even here on my own website… but what’s the alternative? No longer sharing it with my followers at all anymore? We are risking our livelihoods with no legal safety net protecting our intellectual property.

I can say this with absolute certainty:

• I do not use generative AI in my creative process. In fact, I go out of my way to avoid it. No predictive text, no plot suggestions, no generated outlines, no writing. At most, I might use the summary function when researching a topic. I can honestly say that I’ve never used ChatGPT or any of its competitors.
• I will not replace my beta readers and/or editors with AI. The input I’ve received from real people has been invaluable. Yes, it’s expensive to pay for a professional line editor, but I have a good relationship with mine, and she’s willing to work out payment plans with me as long as I’m upfront with her. It’s an investment I won’t outsource to an LLM no matter how tight money is.
• I will not replace my narrators with AI for my next audiobook. I’ll admit that finances are what have prohibited me from moving forward with Book II in audio form… but I would rather find alternative solutions to cover those costs rather than use AI. AJ Shuck and Mia Hutchinson-Shaw did a phenomenal job with my first audiobook, and I have every intention of hiring them again once I’m able to do so.

I don’t know what the future holds. But I will continue to keep AI as far away from my creative works for as long as I can.

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