AI book publishing economics
The economics of AI books are flatter than the pitch.
The useful question is not whether an AI-assisted book can earn money. It can. The useful question is what hundreds of them earn after the average stops hiding the median.
The headline numbers
The catalog earned $19,701 across 17 months. The best month was $2,531. The median title earned $17.90 over its entire life, not per month. Across the meaningful monthly window, revenue per title sat around $3.25 per month.
A median book cost about $10 to produce and earned $17.90 lifetime. That leaves about eight dollars before valuing the operator's time. That is why this site does not sell the operation as passive income.
The average is the trap
Average lifetime revenue per title was much higher than the median because a small number of titles did better than the long tail. But even the winners did not carry the whole catalog. The top 50 titles were 44% of revenue, which means the other 499 were still the majority.
The practical lesson is that the business is about cost per book, quality control, and not losing the catalog. Optimizing one title matters less than protecting the system.
Related public pages
Start with the real numbers
Module 0 is free and ungated. It shows the revenue, the median title, the cost structure, and why this is not a passive-income pitch.