AI is pumping out books. Are they any good?

NPR. Think about some of the Western world's most famously prolific writers. You have horror novelist Stephen King. He's written more than 60 best selling books and hundreds of short stories. There's also sci fi author Isaac Asimov, who produced more than 500 fiction and nonfiction books, and also English romance novelist Barbara Cartland, who wrote more than 700 books during her career. So much swooning. Right. But today, large language models or LLMs can match that kind of output in a single year. The number of new book releases on Amazon almost tripled between twenty twenty two and 2025. That's an increase that can be attributed to LLMs. But are these AI written books any good? This is The Indicator from Planet Money. I'm Adrienne Ma. And I'm Waylon Wong. Today on the show, we tackle this quality question through an economic lens. Plus, we hear from a human editor at a niche publisher about how they're fighting the slot wars. Support for NPR comes from IBM. On Smart Talks with IBM, host Malcolm Gladwell speaks with leaders who are pushing the boundaries of AI and technology in partnership with IBM. Hello. Hello. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, host of Smart Talks with IBM. I sat down with Alon Cohen, who leads research and development at UFC to discuss the complexity of using technology to analyze fight data. With kick to the head, it makes contact with the outset of my arm, which I brought up. In our world, that's that's a blocked strike. Yeah. But teaching a computer what exactly that means and when and how. Like, when my arm is up, that's a block. When my arm is down and hits my shoulder, that's not. It's those nuances that proved incredibly difficult for machines to be able to handle for a very, very long time. That is until IBM entered the octagon. Listen to Smart Talks with IBM wherever you get your podcasts. Economists Imka Reimers and Joel Walfoldel have worked together for more than fifteen years. Imka's at Cornell University and Joel's at the University of Minnesota. Together, they've studied how cultural products like music and books have gone digital, And sometimes this has involved some firsthand experience as Imka explains. I tried out to see how easy it is to self publish a book, not to try to sell any units to be very clear. To just say, oh, yeah. I I self published a book. Please don't buy it. What was your book about? Oh, it was it was a half page about my day. It was nothing. I feel like you're underselling it, but okay. I really am not. Did didn't you get two five star reviews? Yes. Because two people did not listen to my my plea not to buy it. Well, it sounds like Imka is part of this wave of self publishing because the number of self published books skyrocketed in 2008 following the launch of Amazon's Kindle e reader. Then 2022 …