2026-06-28 · all guides

The AI Book Quality Checklist: 25 Checks Before You Hit Publish

Why a checklist, and what standard to hold

AI drafts fail in patterns. Not random typos, but the same recurring defects: repeated points across chapters, confident wrong facts, filler paragraphs that restate headings, formatting that breaks in the KDP previewer. Patterned defects are exactly what checklists catch, which is why editing an AI book is closer to inspection than to inspiration.

The standard to hold is simple: would a stranger who paid money for this feel they got what the cover promised? Amazon enforces roughly that standard through its content guidelines, and reviewers enforce it more brutally. AI slop exists in volume, buyers have learned to spot it, and the checklist below is essentially a formalization of how they spot it.

Structure and substance checks

One: read the table of contents alone. Does each chapter have a distinct job, or do chapters 4 and 9 cover the same ground with different titles? Two: every chapter delivers something the reader can do or decide, not just understand. Three: no chapter opens with a recap of the previous chapter or closes with a preview of the next; models love this padding. Four: the introduction makes a specific promise and the book keeps it. Five: the book is the right length for its promise, a thin topic stretched to 200 pages is a defect, not an achievement.

Six, the substance test: pick three pages at random and ask whether each paragraph would survive in a book on a different topic. Generic paragraphs, "consistency is key," "everyone is different, so find what works for you", are the signature of unedited generation. If more than a scattered few survive the test, the draft needs a specificity pass before anything else.

Factual accuracy: the checks you cannot delegate

Seven through eleven: verify every number, every named person, every cited study, every price, and every legal or medical claim. Models state falsehoods with the same fluency as truths, and under KDP terms you are responsible for the content, including anything misleading and any intellectual property it infringes. "The AI said so" protects you from nothing.

Twelve: check anything time-sensitive. A model writes from training data that may be stale; tax figures, platform rules, and product recommendations all drift. Thirteen: for advice books, run the advice test on yourself: could you actually follow the instructions in chapter 6 as written? Vague procedures that cannot be executed are a factual failure, not a style one.

Prose, formatting, and packaging checks

Prose: fourteen, hunt the AI tics, "delve," "in today's fast-paced world," "it's important to note", and the rule-of-three sentence rhythm that makes every paragraph feel identical. Fifteen, read one full chapter aloud; monotone structure is audible before it is visible. Formatting: sixteen, heading styles are consistent and the ebook TOC actually works; seventeen, chapters start on new pages; eighteen, trim size, mirrored margins, and gutter match the KDP tables for your page count; nineteen, the file passes the KDP previewer with zero warnings; twenty, no markdown artifacts survived, no stray asterisks or pound signs.

Packaging: twenty-one, the title names the reader and the outcome; twenty-two, the cover is legible at thumbnail size; twenty-three, the description sells the outcome, not the process; twenty-four, categories and keywords match what buyers search; twenty-five, the AI disclosure is answered accurately at upload, AI-drafted text is AI-generated content even after your editing, and the checkbox is private and does not block publishing. If you want a calibrated sense of what a raw draft looks like before this checklist is applied, the unedited sample ebookdone publishes at /sample/two-hour-meal-prep.pdf is a useful benchmark: everything this list catches is visible there, unretouched.

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