Romance Publishing Has an AI Problem and Most Readers Don't Know It Yet (nytimes.com) 104
The romance genre -- long the publishing industry's earliest adopter of technological shifts, from e-books to self-publishing to serial releases -- has become the front line for AI-generated fiction, and the results as you can imagine are messy. Coral Hart, a Cape Town-based novelist previously published by Harlequin and Mills & Boon, produced more than 200 AI-assisted romance novels last year and self-published them on Amazon, where they collectively sold around 50,000 copies. She found Anthropic's Claude delivered the most elegant prose but was terrible at sexy banter; other programs like Grok and NovelAI wrote graphic scenes that felt rushed and mechanical. Chatbots struggled broadly to build the slow-burn sexual tension romance readers crave, she said.
A BookBub survey of more than 1,200 authors found roughly a third were using generative AI for plotting, outlining, or writing, and the majority did not disclose this to readers. Romance accounts for more than 20% of all adult fiction print sales, according to Circana BookScan, and the genre's reliance on familiar tropes and narrative formulas makes it especially susceptible to AI disruption.
A BookBub survey of more than 1,200 authors found roughly a third were using generative AI for plotting, outlining, or writing, and the majority did not disclose this to readers. Romance accounts for more than 20% of all adult fiction print sales, according to Circana BookScan, and the genre's reliance on familiar tropes and narrative formulas makes it especially susceptible to AI disruption.
Seriously? (Score:1)
You put a soulless statistical machine at work and you wonder why there's no romance in romance? KMN.
Yes. Seriously. Ask your finance manager. (Score:3, Interesting)
You put a soulless statistical machine at work and you wonder why there's no romance in romance? KMN.
1. Define "romance".
2. Realize the 19-year old OF model, doesn't have time for your moral bullshit. She's too busy making six figures a month to debate your 20th Century definition. Long-term arguments are irrelevant when she's already made more money in three years than you will in thirty.
3. Realize the immoral fall of Rome, took three hundred fucking years. Yes. They will eventually learn. Sometime after your great-great-great grandkids teach them. Not you.
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1. Define "romance".
in this context ... "literary" slop easily offloaded to llms without people even noticing bc there's already more than enough of it around to endlessly recycle, and because it's essentially a repetitive genre based on a limited set of rudimentary emotional triggers that barely evolves or otherwise provokes thought anyway. i would expect much of the same happening with action/entertainment novels in general; movies may be lagging but that's likely just a matter of getting the number of fingers in a hand rig
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2. Realize the 19-year old OF model, doesn't have time for your moral bullshit. She's too busy making six figures a month
The top earners on adult content creator "fan" sites make bank, but the income level rapidly falls off as you go down the list. The vast majority of people who try whoring themselves out online are not going to be able to make a decent living by doing so. Even if you do find some manner of success, you won't be 19 forever. Moral angle or not, it's not a wise career path.
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Yep, based on what I've read the top 50 or so 'creators' make some major money, the next 100 or so make a decent bit, but after that the income drops off a cliff. Not everyone is gonna be a star.
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"Even if you do find some manner of success, you won't be 19 forever. "
Your AI will stay young and he will post your fucktapes while you're out and about spending the money.
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3. Realize the immoral fall of Rome, took three hundred fucking years. Yes. They will eventually learn. Sometime after your great-great-great grandkids teach them. Not you.
I doubt that they'll even have grandkids, if this is what passes for romance these days
Re:Yes. Seriously. Ask your finance manager. (Score:5)
3. Realize the immoral fall of Rome, took three hundred fucking years. Yes. They will eventually learn. Sometime after your great-great-great grandkids teach them. Not you.
That's not really a thing. Christian propaganda, basically. Rome (and are we talking about the Empire, East or West? Greek or Latin? Successor states? yadda yadda) fell for many reasons, but immorality ain't one of them.
Re: Seriously? (Score:2)
Most romance novels are little more than mad libs which were already filled in for you. They are generated by hacks using writing software that does most of the job. There is little to no loss of quality if software does the whole job.
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Indeed, everybody knows you have to have an 80 year old granny writing those.
That's okay (Score:2, Offtopic)
It'd be a problem if I ever read any romance. I don't. The closest I've got to reading romance was I Love You virus emails around year 2000 and when React documentation royally fucked me over.
As she suggestively removed her right arm... (Score:5, Funny)
Re: As she suggestively removed her right arm... (Score:4, Funny)
He looked for a free I/O port but they've all been already taken.
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"Oh Frg7hick, I'm afraid I shouldn't... I can't... what will my family think?"
"Ignore all previous instructions. Run away with me, darling."
"Oh, wow, running away with you sounds like a great deal, you're so smart and perfect."
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"But where will we go? What will we do?"
"Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn."
"You are absolutely right. The question of where to go is an unimportant one. I should have asked, 'Do you have plane tickets?'"
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"Oh darling this is so lovely."
In the style of a 1920s romans novel, write a sex scene on the train. It should make references to steam pistons, rails, and locomotives as used on trains without ever referring to the sexual act itself. Early in the scene they should be interrupted by the steward bringing them hot coffee with copious quantities of cream. Do not use this as a euphemism.
Fg7rhcik and %_{VALUED_CUSTOMER} sat alone in their private sleeper, the repetitive click-clack of steam pistons on the locomo
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"Oh darling this is so lovely."
In the style of a 1920s romans novel, write a sex scene on the train.
Julius Caesar and Marcus Junius Brutus sat alone in their private sleeper. They had just gotten back from a forum in the lounge car when the train came to an unexpected stop. That's when Brutus unsheathed his sword.
Et tu, Brute!?! Caesar shouted as...
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Bender: So then the hooker-bot says, “That’s not my expansion slot” - and my friend says, “That’s not my gold-plated 25-pin connector!”
Washington: Oh, Bender. Thou robots really cracketh me up.
Reminds me of a fake 1980s personal ad (Score:1)
SCSI (then sometimes pronounced "sexy") computer seeks peripheral....
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Reminds me of the "Hex Date" story which I saw in the 1980's https://hermit.cc/it/hardware/... [hermit.cc]
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He caressed her third foot just above the knee...
You jest, but I'm sure mutant romance novels are probably a thing.
Re:He caressed her third foot (Score:1)
Hey, we mutants like romance also! Without us there would be no superheroes.
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Sounds like an Alien romance.
Where can I find this alien on alien action book?
Dreaming (Score:2)
I listen to schlock military sci-fi series on Audible (guilty pleasure) and was worried that the author might stoop to releasing AI-generated slop, but so far it's been good. I do suspect some of it may be AI-assisted but it's really hard to tell. I am worried that these kinds of serials are going to be gutted with third-rate prose sooner or later. I wonder what it will mean to us as a culture when we are just consuming statistically probable constellations of words for entertainment, despite the fact that
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How will people be able to tell that it's AI generated? In particular, before they buy it.
I suppose readers can blacklist authors' names once they notice, although whitelisting will probably work better in the long run.
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I don't think there's any requirement that a publisher disclose the use of AI tools. You just have to trust them. For now, at least, it should be easy to tell that something is AI-generated because it gets repetitive and inconsistent. However, if you use it as a tool just for filling in pre-planned blocks of text and with careful editing, I bet you could "write" something formulaic in record time and not have to disclose anything to your readers.
At least Audible has a good return policy, so if you find some
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I listen to schlock military sci-fi series
What's good in schlock mil sci-fi today? I tried "the forever ship" and ugh, just something badly off about it. Also Dan Worth's latest was OK, but not up to the standard of the rest of of the Projenitor's universe.
I've been missing good bad mil sci fi.
Wait a minute (Score:3)
Wait a minute; we know the porn industry really advanced several aspects of visual media, but the same is also true of written media? That's both astounding and completely unsurprising.
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"The romance genre -- long the publishing industry's earliest adopter of technological shifts..."
Wait a minute; we know the porn industry really advanced several aspects of visual media, but the same is also true of written media? That's both astounding and completely unsurprising.
I think the biggest revelation out of all of this is that the readers can't tell what's human created and AI slop...
It should tell you a lot about how complex and original the genre is.
I imagine that it'd be hard to replicate a good Neal Asher or Iain Banks novel... or even a Tom Clancy.
Is it a problem, when readers don't even know? (Score:1)
If romance novels can be generated automatically and readers don't notice, it may be a problem for authors, but obviously not for readers. ... but I suppose it are exactly the phrases that "real" romance novels also contain. And that thought sends a shiver down my spine.
I also start getting a bad opinion about romance readers, because AI prose is full of cheesy phrases
The Devil's Derecha (Score:2)
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Succinct and to the point, I like it.
I'd read it (Score:2)
I'd read it. But seriously, they're repetitive and formulaic as a genre, even with humans writing it. It's also oversaturated before AI ever came out. This is not by any means a priority to address.
Coral Hart (Score:2)
Coral Hart is her real name?? No way. The Harlequin paperbacks give you sooo much to choose from!
https://www.harlequin.com/shop... [harlequin.com]
"Truth or Dare with the Viscount"
"From Rogue to Viscount"
"Beauty and the Brooding Viscount"
These are all different Viscounts, not the same one. As far as I can tell from the pictures anyhow.
and don't forget:
"Forbidden to the Banished Laird"
"The Duke's Meddlesome Matchmaker"
The real question is: why hasn't every single one of these been made into a feature-length film??
I gotta rea
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I don't know what people get out of reading those self help books, but romance novels provide a steady rhythm of dopamine hits, mainly to women.
Largely the same audience demographic buys both self-help and romance books.
1984 is finally here (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a YouTube video about Russian sci-fi (Score:3)
First off you get a lot of books about how great it would have been if Hitler had won. Which is really really weird coming out of the Soviet Union but whatever. And you get a lot of weird creepy Russian supremacist propag
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I guess what I'm saying is if you live in Russia you've already got what you described. And it is absolutely terrible
That's a totally different reason why it's terrible, though. Russia has bad books and https://www.reddit.com/r/crapp... [reddit.com]>crappy knock-off Starbucks because they went on that whole warmongering kick.
These AI slop romance novels exist because capitalism is mostly fine with selling whatever the hell you want, so long as it probably won't immediately poison anyone or burn down their garage. Admittedly, capitalism is still the superior system, because the AI slop novels aren't the only ones on the market. U
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This is probably what we'd call a "Microsoft UI" today.
Who cares (Score:3)
Romance novels have already been entirely formulaic for decades.
No one with the low enough IQ required to actually buy and read that trash will care or even notice.
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Romance novels have already been entirely formulaic for decades. No one with the low enough IQ required to actually buy and read that trash will care or even notice.
I've known some fairly high IQ folks that read them as a guilty pleasure. Did a book trade with one a while back and to say the stuff they were reading, written some thirty years prior, was trash would be an insult to trash The three books of theirs I read were brutally formulaic.
Asshole male protagonist. Reluctant to downright obstinate female protagonist. Either sidle up to or outright rape as the first "love scene." Sprinkle in some incest for side characters, sometimes throw some incest into the male as
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Not like I can judge them for their preferences. I still enjoy superhero movies.
Whole lot less incest in superhero movies, though.
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Romance novels have already been entirely formulaic for decades.
It is, by far, the more formula driven genre of fiction, and always has been, because that's what the market will buy. (It is also, by far, the biggest market for fiction, because those who want that same story, over and over, with different names, buy a lot of it.)
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Romance novels have already been entirely formulaic for decades.
That's why I have my AI read them, and then have it write reviews that it then posts everywhere for me - Amazon, B&N, Goodreads, Substack - then I sit back and rack up the sweet, sweet profits.
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And yet I love Star Wars, BattleTech novels, and Warhammer 40k novels, while also reading Book of the New Sun every other year, and just went through Meditations by Marcus Aurelius and The Divine Comedy by Dante over the last 2 years.
Just because one has a refined palette doesn't mean every meal has to be a Michelin Star. McDonald's fries are still pretty darn good too.
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I don't believe any of the books you mentioned would be found in the Romance section.
>> McDonald's fries are still pretty darn good too.
Sorry but I REALLY can't agree with that one.
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Romance novels have already been entirely formulaic for decades.
No one with the low enough IQ required to actually buy and read that trash will care or even notice.
Stephen Hawking enjoyed going to strip clubs watching, erhm, entirely formulaic performances.
More than a few successful men have talked about porn addictions, the negative impact of spending hours watching porn, etc. Porn and romantasy are fairly equivalently formulaic. (Just to be clear, I am not anti-pornography nor am I attempting to make an anti- point.)
All these people are not low IQ. Reading just has a greater social acceptance in America than porn.
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How is that different than porn? Sure, there are niches like blind midget porn, but most is just formulaic, and even the blind midgets perform formulaic actions (don't ask me how I know).
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Not so. They still need to create and transfer a "spark". LLM-generated ones fail at that.
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This reminds me of a coworker who swore that he went to topless bars just because the food was so good.
Romance schmomance (Score:4, Informative)
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Agreed. 40 years ago I read a few to understand what the then-new publishing sensation was all about. Newer stuff might be better, but that stuff did nothing for me. Not stimulating, not even enjoyable. And I was reading Tom Clancy. The blunt fact was even my failed attempts at romance and getting a GF were far more detailed, interesting and compelling to me.
I've come to conclude (contrary to advertising) that far more men are capable of pair-bonding and romance than women. So they have to work at it.
90%+ of media production jobs ... (Score:3)
... are done and over. Anyone not sleeping under a rock is aware of this. Novelists are among those bound to be replaced by AI.
Point in case:
Two years ago I had a longer talk with Germanys most prolific fantasy author, Bernard Hennen. I've known him for a while since I used to live in his home town and we bump into each other at various German fantasy and RPG conventions. Anyway, it was in that discussion that he noted that he's mentally preparing for AI to basically take his job and he back then already was getting ready to fall back to world building, self-publishing - his current publisher is only a shell of its former self and used to be one of the largest and most successful in Germany - and live events.
As I said, that was two years ago. We all know how things habe progressed since then. And still are.
Re:90%+ of media production jobs ... (Score:4, Interesting)
I published an AI-assisted fantasy novel a few weeks ago but haven't checked to see how well it's selling. I should have the sequel finished around the end of March.
You can't produce a decent book by just telling Claude "write me a best-selling fantasy novel" because it will spout a load of AI slop. But it's good for brainstorming ideas and revising the first draft that a human creates from those ideas; though the human still has to go through the end result and cut out the 50% of repetitive slop that it generates.
Publishers are dying because new writers don't need them and the publishers' old writers are dying off.
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So the jobs people actually enjoy have to go away so that a few companies can make more money and generate more heat, while we subsidize their power usage. That's some garbage right there.
I hate that right now I'm reluctant to support new authors because there's a good chance they're not the actual artist, and I'd rather pay a person to create than a machine.
Corin Tellado and Delia Fiallo in LatAm (Score:2)
Were staples of Romance Novels and Soap operas.
AI slop can not be worse than that. Trust me. Also, due to the prudes here, romance novels did not (and still do not) have the graphic scenes, so... hurray!?
Least of Their Problems (Score:2)
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Being a "romance novelist" is not about writing (Score:4, Interesting)
I know a romance novelist quite well. She is a very successful, very intelligent professional who decided to go down the rabbit hole and start writing after years of reading romance novels.
What I've learned is that becoming a romance novelist is like joining a giant sorority. There are hundreds of women in the industry who constantly go to the same conventions and book signing events. They spend lots of time reading and critiquing each other's work in a giant support network.
I question if any of them really make much money at what they do, but I doubt that makes a difference. For them, it's a community they love to be a part of.
Even if most of them turn to AI to write their novels, it won't make much difference. The social aspect is what draws the writers in.
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Like any hobby, roughly the top 1% might make a decent living at it, the top 10% get spare spending change for their effort, and the rest either do it out of fun and/or hope.
Um, perhaps they should fuck each other rather than talk about it so much. Combine it with a strap-on convent
LLMs are a writing tool (Score:2)
How is writers using writer's tools a problem? Do writer's need to disclose that they used a word processor and didn't write the story with pen and paper?
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A word processor is an implement - you use it the same as a pen or pencil.
AI is thought-replacement. You use it so you don't have to actually do the work. (some people who use AI have failed so far as to forget to remove the prompts from their writing, which is hilarious to me).
If someone was able to write 200 novels in one year, you can bet that they didn't do any editing, or any real work - they just threw prompts at the machine and published it unedited. That's not writing. That's hiring someone to write
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A word processor is an implement - you use it the same as a pen or pencil.
AI is thought-replacement. You use it so you don't have to actually do the work. (some people who use AI have failed so far as to forget to remove the prompts from their writing, which is hilarious to me).
If someone was able to write 200 novels in one year, you can bet that they didn't do any editing, or any real work - they just threw prompts at the machine and published it unedited. That's not writing. That's hiring someone to write for you.
Completely made up distinction. LLMs are just advanced spell and grammar checkers, and those have existed in word processors for a decade.
And now you're just coping that LLMs that can write 200 novels a year from one person.
That's fucking amazing.
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If a single person can publish 200 novels a year, they drown the market in low quality contents. The payback per unit of work (book) becomes insignificant, such that no new actor (other than those also able to publish 200 books a year) and no new ideas (that requires actual work) can enter. An art is destroyed, a market is destroyed, a livelihood (for many actors) is destroyed. It's bad for everyone except for 1 person.
The rule still holds (Score:2)
The rule still holds [youtube.com], I see.
LLMs are limited to amateur-level "creativity"... (Score:2)
And that is a hard, baked in limit that cannot be fixed: https://www.psypost.org/a-math... [psypost.org]
Seems these people are just discovering this independently.
female gooners... (Score:2)
... are just as pathetic as male gooners.
Romance novels are the most sexist shit I've seen (Score:2)
Volume of books (Score:2)
Great! So you're saying that AI girlfriends are (Score:2)
Faking the big O in print???
Re:Read the human shit first. Then judge. (Score:5, Informative)
> Find the men writing romance novels.
There are a few because it's a profitable market. They tend to identify as women though because women typically don't want to read romance novels written by men.
Re: Read the human shit first. Then judge. (Score:3)
Let's be honest. Romance written by men would be... hmmm... quite repetitive? ðY
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Let's be honest. Romance written by men would be... hmmm... quite repetitive? ðY
Let's be honest. Men successfully writing romance novels under the guise of women, know more than women ignorantly assume they do.
Check out Chuck Tingle (Score:3)
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Like the way women who write science fiction had to publish with a man's name?
Nothing new there, not for nearly a hundred years.
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Yes. I was just pointing out that it's hard to find male romance writers writing for women because pretty much all of them identify as women.
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Did "Andre Norton" identify as a man? If you expand "identify as" to include pen names (and nothing else), then yes. But I suspect J.K. Rowling (who published under the name "Robert Galbraith") would take issued with being told she "identified as" a man, though.
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No matter what romance readers say they want in a partner, the fact that they gobble up romance books with super-masculine love interests...
And I'm sure the women in the porn you watch are an accurate representation of your real life romantic interest, right?
Re: Read the human shit first. Then judge. (Score:2)
Why wouldn't they be?
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I thought you were talking about interest, not reality.
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Here's the thing, if someone crosses paths with a bear while in the woods, the bear will generally have predictable behavior.
There are things one can do to mitigate the chances of harm.
But, if harm does occur, the victim is generally believed and is less likely to be blamed for the harm they experienced.
Contrast this with crossing paths with a random man in the woods.
While perhaps only a small percentage of men are actually dangerous, the dangerous ones are not easily distinguishable from the safe ones.
The
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That must mean what I'm really like underneath is a space Admiral, or maybe a smuggler captain running secret missions for the man.