Great idea but fails on delivery.
I'll start this review by saying I really, really, really wanted this product to deliver. I had high expectations and as someone who's written a few books with AI previously, I know some of the nuances and challenges. Unfortunately, this failed to deliver, even in some of the basic areas.
To start, the plans are very off putting an not a true Lifetime Deal but rather a steep discount. Regardless of what their normal pricing is, even at the AppSumo discount price, it's overpriced for a single book or package of books. This is especially true based on the output of the final book...
When starting your book, you're limited to only a few options in terms of the target audience and the style. From there, you provide a brief description of the book along with writing your first introduction chapter in your own voice along with any stories or case studies. It'll provide you with an outline for the book and once you approve the outline, you're pretty limited moving forward. The tool then simply starts and takes about 1 hour before the entire book is completed. Unfortunately, there's no way to review the work as it's going or review chapters to assure it's on the track you one. It's all or nothing.
How are the results? Well, let's just say instantly I could tell it was written by A.I. It appears to have ignored my tone and style in the introduction altogether and defaulted to a lot of overused and very common AI words and phrases throughout. Things like "delve into" ,"unlock" , "explore", etc. There was no way to prompt it to avoid commonly used AI words. To that point, there was also no real area to prompt or provide details on key elements to include aside from the short description of the book you want to write.
Based on the output, I went to Claude and tried to recreate the book and it was significantly more natural and more control over the output. Sure it took a little longer (30-60 minutes), but I had more control and simply reviewed, adjusted, and proceeded chapter by chapter.
Would I recommend this? I don't know, probably not at the current price point. The tool has a lot of potential but the only clear value proposition that I see at the moment is that it writes the entire book in one go. That also is it's weakness in that you don't have the ability to get ultra specific and adjust sections. I'll personally be refunding this but if you just need a quick book and aren't as concerned about specifics and don't want to go chapter by chapter using a LLM like Claude or ChatGPT, it may be worth a look.
Casper_FirstBook.ai
Nov 13, 2024Hi there,
Thank you so much for taking the time to share this detailed feedback. I understand the concerns you’ve raised, especially about control over book customization, pricing, and output style.
First Book ai is designed to make the book-writing process quick and structured for first-time business book authors who may want the complete outline and content generated in one session—ready to polish up afterward. We do recommend that, for a high level of personalization, users review and adjust each chapter post-generation, as well as avoid overused phrases to make the book uniquely theirs.
As for the price, our regular full-book package is $249, and we aim to provide AppSumo users a significant discount, but we're always considering new ideas. Also, to avoid using up a purchase on a test, you can create as many outlines as you need before finalizing and generating a full book. If you're considering Amazon or other publication routes, our advice is to review and customize content thoroughly, or, if preferred, work with a third-party for an extra level of editorial finesse.
We’re also exploring future options to allow more interaction at each stage—so your input here really helps us shape improvements.
Best regards,
Casper