Author Produces More Than 370 Published Books in 20 Months With the Use of AI

A South African romance author has sparked widespread debate in the publishing industry after revealing she has published more than 370 books over a 20-month period using artificial intelligence, earning over $1 million this year alone.

Coral Hart (a pseudonym) has faced severe backlash online, where critics have labeled her a "grifter" and accused her of flooding book markets with low-quality "AI slop". However, the Cape Town–based writer, who had worked in traditional publishing for 14 years prior, strongly defends her high-tech production line.

"I chose to be the one to step up and say, these are conversations we need to start having," Hart told reporters. "This is here... They’re not going to switch it off or unplug it because a bunch of authors said so."

Rather than relying on a single prompt, Hart uses a customized framework that orchestrates multiple large language models based on their specific strengths:

• ChatGPT: Used primarily for dialogue.

• Claude: Used to build story arcs and narrative structure.

• Grok: Applied to draft high-intensity or romantic scenes.

  
  

Hart emphasizes that generating a complete book still requires heavy human setup, including character design, subplots, and chapter outlines. Once the initial draft is generated, she runs the text back through AI tools for developmental edits and continuity checks before passing it to human proofreaders.

Publishing under more than 10 different pen names, Hart has accumulated over one million sales across digital, print, and audio formats, with one of her books entering Amazon’s top 100 bestseller list.

Responding to criticism regarding the literary quality of machine-assisted books, Hart points directly to reader response and financial metrics. "For the last 16 years, nobody's asked me what my creative process was," she noted, adding that readers ultimately vote with their wallets. "Books are selling."

Beyond her own titles, Hart has expanded her venture into education and software development, training hundreds of prospective authors in her multi-prompt technique and preparing to launch Authorythm, a software tool aimed at AI-assisted writers.

The original reporting on this story was filed by Brett Wharton (Cape Town), and released through Agence France-Presse.