The key facts

  • 371 novels written with AI in 20 months, revenue exceeded $1 million (about 16.5 million rand)
  • The author comes up with ideas, plots and chapter structure herself; AI helps with drafts and editing
  • Due to threats from opponents of AI literature, the writer hides her identity

371 novels in 20 months

In South Africa, a writer working under the pseudonym Cora Hart has written 371 romance novels in 20 months using artificial intelligence tools and earned more than $1 million from their sales — according to Kun.uz, that is roughly 16.5 million South African rand. The books are sold on Amazon and other online platforms.

How her process works

Hart uses the popular chatbots ChatGPT, Claude and Grok, but does not leave the text entirely to the computer: she develops the book's idea, plotlines, characters and chapter outline herself. AI helps prepare a draft and edit it according to a given plan, and she rereads every finished work and fixes its flaws. Before working with AI, she spent 14 years in the publishing industry and wrote dozens of books herself, and she spent several months honing her prompt-writing skills and developing her own method for quickly producing texts.

Threats and debates about literature

Despite her success, the author hides her real name: according to her, after she began working with AI she received thousands of angry messages and even death threats from traditional writers and readers who oppose AI literature. As Kun.uz notes, the case itself sparked debates in the book industry about copyright and the substance of literature: some experts see such practice as 'devaluing literature and turning it into an assembly line,' while others view AI as an effective 'assistant' that speeds up an author's work.