Are ChatGPT-written children's books an easy side hustle?

Yahoo

01-05-2025

(NewsNation) — Social media users claim they've made thousands on self-publishing platforms by writing and illustrating children's books using ChatGPT and AI images.
The books are mostly for sale in a digital ebook format. Ebook sales are expected to grow to more than $15 billion by 2027, making up 17% of global book sales.
But this literary shortcut may not be a sure-shot way to big rewards.
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Children's books are 'an effortless way to use AI to make over $10,000 a month,' one content creator said, gaining more than 36,000 likes on TikTok. The creator said, 'AI will do the writing for us.'
Another influencer claimed profits of $500 a day from children's books that only required a few prompts to ChatGPT.
Influencers say all you have to do is come up with an idea, give ChatGPT prompts to write the book, use an AI picture tool like Midjourney to illustrate the book and then post to a host website like Amazon's Kindle Direct Publishing or Etsy.
The plan is billed as zero or low cost because ChatGPT does all the work.
Creating content like children's books using ChatGPT is pretty straightforward, but making money off of it is an entirely different beast, John Warren, Program Director of publishing at George Washington University, said.
The book will still need to be marketed and stand out so people actually buy it, and with so much competition that won't be easy, he said.
When something is easy to produce, a lot of users will enter the market, increasing competition and decreasing prices, Andrey Simonov, a professor at Columbia University's Business School, said.
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'I just don't believe it,' Ian Lamont, founder of i30 Media Corporation and Lean Media consulting, told NewsNation. 'If you were making that much money, you don't want to tell other people how to do it, because then there'll be more competition for your own for your own books.'
'The reality is, it's very difficult to make money on Amazon or any other platform because even though the barriers to entry are low, quality will eventually matter,' he also said.
Children's books seem to be easier to generate for ChatGPT than other types of fiction, Lamont said.
'I don't think we're seeing many fiction books yet because ChatGPT is just not capable of writing good fiction, with the exception of maybe writing some very simple children's stories,' he said.
For some of the influencers advertising this plan, the real business appears to be teaching others how to sell ebooks and other digital products with their own how-to guide, experts say.
These guides may come at minimal cost or even as a free download, but once you give up your email address, you will then be 'relentlessly spammed' to sign up for a master class or a special creators group, which can cost hundreds or even up to $1,500 per month to join, Lamont said.
There is a rapidly growing industry of people teaching others how to make money using AI content.
'If I am a creator who put this video online, you could ask, why would I tell everyone? Why wouldn't I keep making money?' Simonov said. 'And of course, they are doing it because what they want is for this to go viral.'
If these videos become popular and attract a lot of attention, more people will watch them and they will gain revenue, subscribers and followers, he said.
One content creator who tests out passive income pitches on social media said he did not earn a single penny six months after posting a children's book.
'What they leave out when it comes to this side hustle is that you have to pay to promote that book,' the creator said in his videos, adding that websites have thousands of books for buyers to choose from. 'You're not just going to get that book posted and then show up first on the search results when someone searches for a kids' book. You're going to really need to play that SEO game or actually pay for advertising.'
'That doesn't mean it's an impossible side hustle. You just need to know the work that it's going to take to put in.'
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The ecosphere of AI-generated digital products is still the 'wild west' Warren said.
Laws still need to catch up as they had to with other fast-moving technology, he said, adding that part of the problem is the inability to know for sure which sources ChatGPT extracted from.
Lamont said it's largely an 'honor system' and can easily be circumvented.
Amazon has a policy requiring creators to flag AI-generated content.
In a statement to NewsNation, Amazon spokesperson Tim Gillman said the company is 'constantly evaluating developments that impact that experience, which includes the rapid evolution and expansion of generative AI tools.'
Gillman said the company has 'content guidelines governing which books can be listed for sale' and 'proactive and reactive methods that help us detect content that violates our guidelines, whether AI-generated or not. We continue to enhance our protections against non-compliant content, and our process and guidelines will keep evolving as we see changes in AI-driven publishing.'
The company said its Kindle Direct Publishing platform has lowered volume limits on new submissions from publishers and has rolled out Identity Verification for authors and publishers who now may be prompted to verify their identity using their government-issued identification.
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