Author Ariana August

You deserve to know exactly how my books and everything around them get made.

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My books are mine

Every word of every story, character, and world rule in MOTHS and Nuama After Dark comes from me. I’ve been building Nuama for almost a decade, and I have the receipts to back that up if anyone is curious (although I’ll admit I’m embarrassed by early drafts lol). After I’ve done my own full read-through and initial edits of a book, I use AI to hunt for typos and continuity errors (it catches more than I do, lol). Then I go through that list and make every fix myself. AI does not write my books, nor edit them directly—and that will never change.

Covers

I design all my covers myself, and AI generates some of the parts I build them from. Even Canva, the tool most indie authors use for covers, has AI image generation built right into its editor now, so it’s in more covers than most people realize (sometimes when I’m in a group promo I’ll scan covers to see how many have AI elements—it’s usually over 90%). I wish I could afford human artists right now. As soon as I can, I’ll hire one.

Maps

I designed my map of Nuama myself in Inkarnate, and then I had AI make it prettier. I have well over a thousand hours in that map 🥲 every island, temple, duug, and coastline was placed by me.

Art

Some of the Nuama art you’ll see in my newsletter, on Discord and in the Nuama app is made with AI image tools. I guide it and edit it. I don’t use AI images on TikTok. To give you an idea of the math: if I wanted just character art for my main cast, one pose each, I’d be looking at $2,000 or more. That’s before a single cover, map or scene.

See “What actions I’m taking” further down for info on how I support ethical use of AI.

The Nuama app

The stories in the “Explore” tab are mine: I wrote those myself, and they’re free for everyone. The personalized stories made just for you are written by AI working inside the world I built, using my phrasing, locations, and lexicon. I spent many hours teaching it Nuama’s canon (no clocks, no money, no gardens!) and correcting it every time it slipped. I chose to create an app because I want everyone to be able to imagine themselves in Nuama—the app has options from choosing your wings and gown color, to exploring various locales, to choosing your own Fa’loom and/or Evermate. I hope you’ll check it out! As an aside, the app has potential to bring in additional income so I can hire a human artist sooner. Ironic, I know.

Running the business

I’m a mother. I have ADHD and CPTSD. I spend 6–10 hours a week on the road for family. And I do every part of this myself—I write the books, design the covers, build the website, send 15–20 newsletters a month, make social media posts, answer your emails, build/edit the Nuama app, and more. There’s no team behind me. No assistant, no editor, no marketing department. AI helps me with the behind-the-scenes work such as coding the app, organizing data, admin, and drafting some newsletter and marketing copy, which I always edit before it goes out. It also helped wrangle my lexicon of over 300 unique terms into a pretty format for my readers. Frankly, none of this would be possible without my AI assistant.

The reality

I’m one woman running a whole publishing house, and without these tools there is no way I could publish the world of Nuama the way I do. Period. The market rewards publishing quickly, and in addition to that, I can’t afford an editor, a proofreader, an artist and an assistant. Using AI as my editor, my art department and my help desk is how I keep writing the books.

Why my books aren’t on Amazon

For me, this all comes down to consent. I choose how AI touches my work. Amazon doesn’t give authors that choice. Every Kindle book now comes with “Ask this Book,” an AI chatbot that answers readers’ questions about the story, plus AI-written series recaps. Authors weren’t asked, aren’t paid, and can’t opt out. We can’t even see or correct what the AI says about our books. So my books aren’t on Amazon right now, and maybe never again. You can still read them on your Kindle—here’s exactly how.

What I believe

I think telling people “just don’t use AI” is classist. It assumes everyone has thousands of dollars for editors and artists, or the time and energy to do every single piece of it alone. Plenty of us don’t. A lot of people are working around ADHD, depression, chronic illness, caregiving, a day job, or all of the above. For us, these tools are the difference between making the thing and never making it at all. Publishing has always been easiest for people with money and free time, and it’s never been built for women with neither. I’m not willing to let that keep me, or anyone else, out.

I also understand why artists are angry, and I take it seriously. That’s exactly why I’ll hire human artists the moment I can afford to.

What actions I’m taking

I donate what I can afford to the Distributed AI Research Institute (DAIR), founded by Dr. Timnit Gebru (a WOC), who co-led Google’s Ethical AI team. In 2020, she and her co-authors wrote a paper warning about the dangers of AI language models, including their environmental cost and the bias baked into the material they learn from. Google told her to take the paper back or take the Google authors’ names off it. She refused, and she lost her job. More than 2,600 of her colleagues signed a letter backing her. She didn’t go quiet. She founded DAIR in 2021 so AI could be studied by people who aren’t paid by the companies building it. DAIR believes AI harms can be prevented, it can do real good when it’s built carefully, and should always include the people it affects at the table. A Black woman told the truth about this technology, got pushed out of her job for it, and kept going anyway. If I’m going to use these tools, I want to fund the women fighting to make them better for all of us.

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If you ever have a question about any of this, please feel free to email me.

In fact, write me anytime, about anything. ~ Ariana