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Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

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Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#381

Post by llm_nerd »

While it's easy to be cynical and see this as everything getting worse somehow, monetizing a simple idea or premise is tough -- I mean, loads of people just put that stuff out there in comments on social media, blog posts, etc, and move on -- so people fluff it up with endless volumes of filler to justify charging a price for it.

Self-help as a domain is absolutely stuffed with this sort of behaviour, where 300 pages just repeat and spin variations on an extremely simple premise, again and again. The reader tags along, sure there's going to be a twist or next level, but in reality it's just trying to justify this being sold as a "book", when at most it could be a single blog entry.

And yes, every single one of Tim Ferriss' books follows this principal. Entire books can be condensed into one page summaries and absolutely nothing will be lost. Nothing. In many cases one paragraph. Sometimes a single sentence.

This problem afflicts all media. There's a "Glucose Goddess" woman who has made an endless series of videos after she had a book do numbers about reducing glucose spikes. She's spinning four bullet points into endless content and it's just a perfect example. Nothing new or revelatory is being shared, but someone made a whole grifting career on this, all to pitch overpriced vitamins and protein powders.

It's actually interesting that someone mentioned YouTube replacing documentaries because people don't have time for that, so to speak, but YouTube is an absolute scourge of time wasting bullshit. I remember years ago one Apple-sphere guy posting a 10 minute video to answer the question "Should you get 8GB or 16GB in your Macbook". Ten minutes of yapping -- apparently ten minutes was the baseline for getting some monetization metric -- and the answer was an unqualified, worthless "get 16GB", because feels or something.

YouTube recently added an "Ask" AI button, and it includes generating extremely good summaries of videos. So many videos propose some clickbait headline with a clickbait graphic proposing some novel revelation, and in the first few seconds I've seen the summary, see that they have added absolutely nothing new or of value, and click back.

Will these people also post complaints about the drop in viewership about worthless, time inconsiderate content dragging not hitting like it once did? Probably. "Back in my day you could make a career by posting shocked-face thumbnail, a Betteridge's law of headlines question that you promise to answer, and then meander for twenty minutes. Kids these days just don't have the attention span anymore!"

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#382

Post by lstodd »

ChrisRR wrote: post #376
digitaltrees wrote: post #117

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hard disagree. I have read lots of books, participated in events and training seminars and had profound results in my life. My marriage is better because of what I learned, I am a better father and leader because of what I learned. And the fact that people sell things as part of that growth journey is how they support their ability to share the lessons and techniques.

There are no doubt a lot of good self-help books out there. But there's very likely way more crap ones out there from armchair psychologists

Yup, so one just reads up on psychology, psychiatry and neurophysiology branching into sociology and anthropology, approximately to a graduate level. After which all this self-help looks quite naive. This sure takes 10-15 years, but the result is that you begin to understand wtf is going on around.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#383

Post by keybored »

digitaltrees wrote: post #293
keybored wrote: post #282

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reach for my revolver when someone says that they are a better leader. That might mean that they have a captive audience of sycophants. The outdated sense of leader of the willingly lead is a different matter.

Why such a strong reaction? Do you think good leaders exist? I have received multiple emails from alumni thanking me for my leadership, mentorship, and the culture I created. Leading is a skill like any other it can be improved with practice and I have worked hard at it. My team has no problem disagreeing with me and knows I don’t want sycophantic agreement, they know that even if I ultimately make a decision I will…

There’s not much to it. There’s a difference between performed N and N as reported by the performer.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#384

Post by neogodless »

Panzer04 wrote: post #137
throwawaypub wrote: post #122

I work for a large online news publisher, one of the oldest in the US. Our traffic is down 50% in year. We likely won’t survive for much longer.

People use LLMs for news?

Remember a few years back when many of us were shocked to learn that...

people use Facebook for news?

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#385

Post by jtbayly »

jeffrwells wrote: post #338

Here I had Claude rewrite his post into a 300 word version without all the filler. https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d49d81d6-7aab-4730-9c3c-4... Which I’m sharing as a meta point…I think self help books are declining because there’s a better way to get the information without all the filler. But filler makes the books thick enough to sell at the airport Also - aren’t LLMs the ultimate choose your own adventure vers…

404 on your link

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#386

Post by vova_hn2 »

Panzer04 wrote: post #138
vova_hn2 wrote: post #17

> What happens when 99% of the rigorously fact-checked media is behind a paywall? The short answer: people skip it and ask the AI. Perhaps there is a business opportunity for a "rigorously fact-checked" chatbot? You can test chatbot to see if it gives "correct" (according to the author's opinion) answers on a topic of your choice and fix errors through prompt engineering, RAG (or other "memory" techniques), fine-tuni…

I think the more salient points for the paywalls is people want pay once access everything, instead of piecemeal. I would certainly be happy to subscribe to "news" in general, but not a dozen different providers for one article apiece.

Hmmm, "Spotify for news" that collects subscriptions and distributes them proportionally to articles clicked/read or whatever can be a viable business model.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#388

Post by ChaitanyaSai »

jeffrwells wrote: post #338

Here I had Claude rewrite his post into a 300 word version without all the filler. https://claude.ai/public/artifacts/d49d81d6-7aab-4730-9c3c-4... Which I’m sharing as a meta point…I think self help books are declining because there’s a better way to get the information without all the filler. But filler makes the books thick enough to sell at the airport Also - aren’t LLMs the ultimate choose your own adventure vers…

One man's filler is another's phatic communication (if done well and not to pad)

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#389

Post by jgalt212 »

Gareth321 wrote: post #380
sinuhe69 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve spent time to read the AI summary (which I normally never do) and the original (of course), and I can tell you the AI summary missed the most important point of the writing. I’d say what they are because it would defy the very purpose of what I’m trying to do. But I can tell you that it’s enough to refute the AI fallacy many believe.

Surely this could be corrected by using the correct prompt? If you ask an AI to summarise a book, it's going to cut out 99% of the content. If you wanted to read some of that 99% of the content, you need to be clear about what you want. Otherwise you're leaving the AI to decide. That summary might be good enough for others, but not you. Tell it the focus you would like it to use. E.g. "include anything about the phil…

If a standard prompt gives you the wrong or spurious answer, the model is not a good model. In 2026, we should not be having to engineer a summarize prompt.

Re: Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#390

Post by DoughnutHole »

Gareth321 wrote: post #380
sinuhe69 wrote: post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ve spent time to read the AI summary (which I normally never do) and the original (of course), and I can tell you the AI summary missed the most important point of the writing. I’d say what they are because it would defy the very purpose of what I’m trying to do. But I can tell you that it’s enough to refute the AI fallacy many believe.

Surely this could be corrected by using the correct prompt? If you ask an AI to summarise a book, it's going to cut out 99% of the content. If you wanted to read some of that 99% of the content, you need to be clear about what you want. Otherwise you're leaving the AI to decide. That summary might be good enough for others, but not you. Tell it the focus you would like it to use. E.g. "include anything about the phil…

Most of the time I’ve gotten major value or insight out of a book it’s because it’s said something truly unique or insightful that I genuinely never would have thought of if I hadn’t read it. Your prompt is useless because I might think I care about area A but I’d have my mind blown by area B which your prompt will drop unless it somehow has a perfect theory of my mind.

Sometimes you just have to read to damn book.

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