Yeah, frankly, this doesn't make sense to me. Has the author checked any nonfiction categories on Amazon recently? In many categories, 80-90% of all new releases are obvious AI slop. And even for non-self-published releases, about 20-30% previews get flagged as AI by Pangram, compared to roughly 0% pre-2023.

I don't buy (new) nonfiction because it now feels like playing Minesweeper.

I don't necessarily mind reading AI generated content. But the bar you need to clear is: why would I read (or watch or play) what you generate with AI compared to me just directly asking the AI?

To be clear: this isn't meant as a rhetorical question. There are AI generated works I'm happy to consume. It's meant as a real bar that you can clear. But it's also non-trivial, and the goalposts are moving as AI becomes better and easier to use.

I'm in the same boat as you, having only read non-fiction the past few years. It appears quite ironic that the entertainment occurring in the real life events is surpassing the entertainment I hear one usually derives from fiction.

See, because of the learning experience I steer away from non-fiction books. I am deeply afraid of the narrative red string applied to reality - connecting a tiny subset of the observable data points to a simplified interpretation/explanation of the whole. If I want to learn, I look at raw data, reports, white papers, etc.. Because authors always have some bias or other, especially when they decide to write a book-length document. (Except, of course, a data catalog of sorts, like a lexicon or other exhaustive enumeration - those are usually a good starting point) I have enough of my own biases, and rather get a diverse set of inputs on a topic. Fiction though? Sure, let's suspend our disbelief and have some fun.

Edit: to clarify: this is not me accusing authors of non-fiction books to always have some evil agenda to push. One human only has limited capacity and things will always fall through the cracks. Do your own research with the constraints you actually care about, if you can.

Fiction writers also have to hustle a lot to be successful. The average full time writer in the UK would've made more at McDonalds in the UK, and I doubt it's much better elsewhere.

It's both an extremely competitive field, and it's incredibly hard to convince people to read your book even for those near the top of their field in terms of quality.

But non-fiction writers have an additional problem, that I think the article glosses over:

If I like, say, romance novels, I'm not looking for new books to be dramatically different to what I read before. A lot of genre readers - the by far largest genres are romance and thrillers - expect books that stick closely to expected conventions. Romance readers will form a mob with pitchforks if there isn't a happily ever after, for example.

Non-fiction, on the other hand, must set itself apart. Why should I read your How to Win Friends and Influence People look-alike when I can read Dale Carnegie's original?

It needs to be very different or clearly better and I have to find it in between the many hundreds of thousands (not an exaggeration; might even under-estimate the number at this point) of new non-fiction titles every year, where fiction titles are not:

You don't need 50 books on meditation, or 50 books on repairing your washing machine, but you might have 50 books in the same narrow sub-genre of fiction because it's what you like to read, and so the opportunity cost of picking up an unknown name feels very different.

A whole lot of the non-fiction market is also being cannibalised by blogs, tiktok, youtube videos and the like - and LLMs -, whereas a video is more likely to tease the fiction book rather than replace the need for it.

> Someone else mentioned history but AFAICT, at least in the YouTube realm, lots of "history" channels are people with alternative hot take ideas about history portrayed as history experts, because it's what gets views.

Even worse, it’s shallowly regurgitated ideas of other people’s prior works, with music and visuals and all.

Recently, on my formerly favourite new history channel [0], I noticed editing quirks (that would have never passed the bar if a human read it) and overly consistent vocalization… it's jumped the shark :(

[0] Fall of Civilisations https://youtube.com/@FallofCivilizations

Most people give away attention tidbits for free via social media: TikToks, YouTube shorts, posts on Reddit.

That means attention can be sated by microdosing on free attention morsels rather than paying for something long-form that requires investment.

People drowning in free attention and dopamine might not have a need to pay for a premium attention sink.

This is happening at an enormous scale. An evening book or prestige movie might be supplemented by doom scrolling sloppy content and memes. Instead of authors being paid for supplying entertainment, ads are being watched.

The companies that empower this are worth trillions.

Most readers are women, and the largest genre by far is romance novels, so nook stores catering to women is a matter of chasing sales.

Otherwise fully agree with your points. The non-fiction market is easier to saturate as there's only so many unique angles on something, and people will look for something that feels authoritative rather than something fresh, while in fiction you're likely to read many similar premises because it's what you like.