“If I can generate a book in a day, and you need six months to write a book, who’s going to win the race?”
This intriguing quote is from a fascinating New York Times article featuring “Coral Hart,” a Cape Town-based writer who has maintained her anonymity while discussing her remarkable journey into AI-driven authorship. Hart claims to have produced over 200 romance novels that she sells on Amazon, all while raking in six figures from approximately 50,000 sales, without disclosing that her creations stem from AI models like Claude and Grok.
Hart’s visage, smiling and approachable, was shared by the Times—not just as a nod to her personal brand, but to attract those intrigued by her AI methods for writing. She offers services to teach others how to leverage AI in their own storytelling endeavors through her coaching business, marketed under the same “Hart” pseudonym.
Yet, how secure is her anonymity with a real photograph publicly available?
According to Alexandra Alter from the Times, a Zoom call revealed that an unnamed AI program managed to produce a full novel in just 45 minutes. Hart is also developing a proprietary software via her business, Plot Prose, capable of generating a book from an outline in under an hour, priced between $80 to €75 and $250 to €235 per month. This proposal echoes the capabilities she showcased in her Times interview.
PlotProse’s offerings, such as “The PlotProse Skip-the-Draft Package,” promise manuscripts that are 90% complete and ready for publication.
The “February Launchpad” program, costing $300 (around €280), claims to guide participants from a single idea to a three-book catalog. Those who produce their three books using AI can anticipate “instant momentum” and a replicable blueprint for market expansion. The package aims to erase the daunting blank page and replace painstaking drafting with a data-validated manuscript.
Alter notes that Hart remains discreet about her AI methods even to her readers, citing the stigma still attached to such technology.
Her decision to reveal her face while withholding her name carries over to YouTube. Last year, Hart appeared on the video podcast “Brave New Bookshelf,” discussing her experiment with various pseudonyms, admitting that “Coral Hart” is now a former identity. She often refers to herself and her personas as “we,” blurring the lines between her multiple identities.
“When I say ‘we,’ it’s just me and those personalities of pen names, right? My AI pen names are run just by me. That was part of the experiment. See if I could substitute volume of publishing as opposed to throwing ad money into something. So far the answer is yes. I’m still putting out quality books. I just learned how to do it fast and stack and juggle a lot.”
Achieving six figures a year is undoubtedly impressive, yet it feels almost modest when you consider the vast potential of AI-generated text. Creating millions of words and marketing them on platforms like Amazon demands a degree of effort, but the financial return can be dwarfed by easier scams elsewhere.
This seems to embody a curious passion over greed. Who is this Coral Hart, truly? Is she motivated by the mere joy of writing in exchange for a comfortable income, or is there a deeper, unacknowledged ambition lurking beneath the surface?