Hugh gets one thing right: his success was luck and timing. He self-published a modest story at an opportune time for cheap, and the easy accessibility of Kindle books for pennies made him enough success to quit his day job.

"Pulp" fiction has always been a very hard way to make a living, and nearly everyone has failed at doing so. Centuries before AI.

Now, if people leverage AI to write magnitudes more mediocre pulp fiction, what will happen? I have a guess:

1. millions of ebooks drive prices down to almost free (or just free).

2. quality eventually gets worse.

3. Consumers perceive it as lower and lower value. A commodity at best.

4. Distributors like Amazon eventually cut out the 'producer' and simply manufacture it themselves.

Spoiler: this is already happening.

And interestingly, most of these were predicted at the advent of the "self-publish to Amazon" era 10-15 years ago.