Majority of books in Amazon’s ‘Success’ self-help genre likely written by AI : Study
Hundreds of authors published in Amazon’s “Success” self-help book subgenre used artificial intelligence to write and sell their books, a recent study found.
AI detector Originality.ai analyzed 844 books in the subgenre that were written by 773 authors published between Aug. 31 and Nov. 28 2025. It found that 77% of them were likely written by AI. Of these books, 90% contained at least some likely AI-written elements in their product descriptions, author bio or sample texts.
Of the 773 authors Originality.ai looked at, 29 wrote more than one book. Some of them published multiple books within a few days.
Michael Fraiman, who wrote the study, said this is damaging to Amazon’s brand and unfair to those who buy this AI content without knowing it.
“It creates a significant mountain of AI-generated self-help slop that real authors must slog through in order to have their voices heard and make some money off their labour,” Michael Fraiman, who wrote the study, said. “…In this category, male-oriented tips for “mastering your emotions” and bogus stories of self-fulfillment are diluting the pool and taking advantage of Amazon’s inability to catch or unwillingness to crack down on unlabelled AI-generated books.”
Content guidelines on Kindle Direct Publishing’s website, where people can self-publish and sell their own books on Amazon, require writers to inform them of AI-generated content, which they define as “text, images, or translations created by an AI-based tool.”
AI-assisted content does not need to be disclosed, though. KDP considers a book created by an author who then uses AI-based tools to “edit, refine, error-check, or otherwise improve” it to be AI-assisted content.
Fraiman noted that there are deceptive Amazon subcategories, such as “Herbal Remedies,” which have a large number of outright fake authors. The “Success” subcategory, on the other hand, more often features real people who used AI to write their books, he said.
AI versus human-written books
There were some differences between books written with AI and those written by real people, the study found.
One of these were reviews: on average, books likely written with AI had 26 reviews. Human-written books, meanwhile, had 129.
AI books usually had titles with words such as “code”; “guide”; “wealth”; “build”; “secret”; “strategies”; “master”; “blueprint”; “habits”; and “mindset” in their titles. In contrast, humans used what Fraiman called “grandiose and emotional words,” including “purpose;” “journey”; “life” and “love”. in their titles.
The same thing went for summaries: certain words were used more by AI than humans.
AI summaries Words such as “practical”; “guide”; “blueprint”; “strategy”; “mindset”; “blueprint”; “personal growth” and “build a” (as in “build a better life”).
Only one real person used the phrase “step into,” compared with 67 likely AI models. Additionally, there were five humans who used emojis in their summaries, while 87 likely large-language model written summaries had them.
AI-written books were around one dollar cheaper on average than human ones, but human books were also an average of 19% longer.
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Ella Rae Greene, Editor In Chief
