Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?

#1

Post by imakwana » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 5:11 PM UTC

Has AI already killed self-help nonfiction books?
tim.blog

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

#2

Post by Finnucane » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 5:15 PM UTC

Makes sense. Self-help books are kinda the human slop of the publishing business. Easily replaced by AI slop? Probably.

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

#3

Post by dvh » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:48 PM UTC

Now I'm curious, were there any self-help fiction books?

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

#4

Post by cjs_ac » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:51 PM UTC

Finnucane wrote: post #2

Makes sense. Self-help books are kinda the human slop of the publishing business. Easily replaced by AI slop? Probably.

To be (slightly) more charitable to the genre and to AI, self-help books are a blog post's worth of content padded out to look worthy of the sticker price, so LLMs provide a fair bit of value in extracting the signal from the noise (assuming they do it accurately).

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

#5

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:53 PM UTC

dvh wrote: post #3

Now I'm curious, were there any self-help fiction books?

[deleted]

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

#6

Post by wps » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

I never understood how anyone could write more than 40 pages of “self help”. Especially not for a general audience. All self help boils down to the very foundation of your worldview, all other advice stems from it.

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

#7

Post by comrade1234 » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:55 PM UTC

dvh wrote: post #3

Now I'm curious, were there any self-help fiction books?

Pretty much all of them.

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

#8

Post by deadbabe » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:56 PM UTC

dvh wrote: post #3

Now I'm curious, were there any self-help fiction books?

Yes! plenty of them: The Secret, The 4-hour Work Week, Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, etc…

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

#9

Post by SkyPuncher » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

This stat is limited to print-books only. He talks about all sorts of other forms of content, but seems to mysteriously miss audio books.

If this source [0] is true then 65% of audiobooks (in 2022) were non-fiction. Likewise that the audiobook industry has grown by nearly 3x since 2022. So, by my math, it's simply that people prefer to listen to self-help books (which matches my own experience).

[0] - https://electroiq.com/stats/audiobook-statistics/

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

#10

Post by threetonesun » Tue, Jun 16, 2026, 6:57 PM UTC

dvh wrote: post #3

Now I'm curious, were there any self-help fiction books?

Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance comes to mind, I suppose also the business-parable style books like Who Moved My Cheese?.