Author Nation Is Just Another Trip with AI Writing Books

Would you ever read a book written by artificial intelligence? Would you know if you had already done so? Are you sure you could tell the difference?

If you wait much longer to tell the difference, you may not be able to separate the two. At whatever pace you think AI technology is moving, it’s almost certainly moving faster — even though I’m not certain how you measure the advances.

But . . . the speed is immense.

A couple months ago, I wrote a post about how much indigestion AI is causing among the author community.

Guess what?

It’s baaack. And it’s not going away.

I recently returned from a week in Las Vegas to attend Author Nation 2025. This 1,200-person conference is a collection of some of the most successful (and enthusiastic) indie authors in North America, although it was easy to meet authors from the UK, Ireland, Australia and other parts of the world.

In three days of one-hour sessions that covered all aspects of writing, publishing, marketing and technology, you could find AI sessions in every area. How to write a book using AI. How to edit your manuscript with AI. How to use AI to market your books more effectively. How AI can help you publish your books more efficiently. How AI can produce audio books for you — with your own voice (cloned, naturally) or with someone else’s cloned voice.

It. Was. Mind-numbing. In this case, what happened in Vegas won’t stay in Vegas.

Indie Authors Embrace AI Like No Other Author Group

Credit: Deposit Photos

The other constant at Author Nation was this: acceptance.

Unlike the AI presentations at Killer Nashville, where authors pushed back on the notion that AI could help them write/edit/products their books, attendees at Author Nation were all in — emphasis on all.

This is what sets Author Nation apart from almost every other writing conference in the world. (I say almost because there are a couple others out there that are loaded with indie authors. And indie authors are the ones who are looking for cheaper, faster ways to crank out their books.)

Indie authors know that there are only a few ways you can make money by writing fiction:

• Have an out-of-the-blue, lightning-strike bestseller that is so popular that, when you crank out your next book, it’s pretty much predetermined to also be a bestseller. Think John Grisham, Stephen King, and James Patterson.

• Have a book that gets turned into an exceedingly popular movie. Think Andy Weir (“The Martian”), or Winston Groom (“Forrest Gump”).

• Have so many books on your backlist that your superfans will buy them all and that new readers will buy them all, too. Think James Patterson, Colleen Hoover, or Janet Evanovich.

All three ways are difficult. But only the third option is one you can control as an author. And that requires time.

AI can shrink the timespan on method No. 3.

Adapt to AI or Die

Again, in Vegas, this notion is not considered cringe-worthy. Instead, it’s a reality.

Perhaps the most famous indie author in Vegas this year was Joanna Penn, someone who is self-published in multiple genres, including that of self-help for authors.

Her message to authors during her personal state-of-the-industry AI talk was adapt or die. “If you’re not using AI, you’re falling behind,” she said.

It wasn’t long ago that Penn caught a ration of shit from people on social media about her welcoming adoption of AI as a tool. In Vegas, she acknowledged the criticism, and it gave her pause.

Now, her pause is over. She stands by her stance. Not only that, she’s happy to leave critics in the dust. Like so many indie authors, she long ago adopted another perspective. The reason to publish is not merely to put a creative endeavor into the public realm. It’s to make money from whatever it is you create.

That, in fact, is the driving theme of Author Nation, which is a carryover from its conference predecessor, 20Books.

Write more books, sell more books, make more money. That mantra has changed slightly to: Write more books, convert them into multiple languages, publish them in multiple formats (e-book, paperback, hardback, audio books, special editions, etc.), and make even more money.

AI Acceptance No Surprise

Here’s the thing. I knew it was going to be like this. Vegas, I mean.

Two years ago, the two themes that emerged from this conference, then called 20Books, were how much success indie authors were having with TikTok and the emergence of AI narration for audio books. AI narration is now on steroids, and TikTok — thanks to President Trump’s override of the TikTok ban and the negotiated U.S. part-ownership of TikTok — is still a major source of success for many authors.

Forget agents, editors and publishers. Most of them anyway. Touring through the vendor section in Vegas, there was one live narrator promoting his vocal cords and two live editors looking for authors to work with.

There wasn’t an agent in sight.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is new school publishing: authors building their teams with AI.