$4 fantasy novels, written by committee

What it does Feed it a prompt and a chapter count, and it spits out a complete fantasy novel as an EPUB. The pipeline runs plot generation, plot selection, title extraction, chapter-by-chapter writing with memory of prior events, cover art generation via Stable Diffusion, and final compilation. The newer Claude 3 version reportedly writes “far better novels” with “much simpler code.”

The interesting bit The author is admirably frank about the project’s rough edges: prompts were “written very quickly,” short novels (under 7 chapters) break, and chapters sometimes cut off early. The README doubles as a public todo list, which is either refreshing honesty or a cry for help.

Key highlights

• Outputs actual EPUB files, not just text dumps
• Claims a 15-chapter novel costs ~$4 in API calls
• Claude 3 version added April 2024; original version now “outdated”
• Runs in Google Colab or local Jupyter with pip install openai ebooklib requests
• Includes sample novels you can load on a Kindle

Caveats

• Short books (fewer than 7 chapters) “tend to cause issues”
• Some chapters cut off mid-sentence
• Token limits mean later chapters may lose context unless compressed
• Currently fantasy-only; other genres require modification

Verdict Good for developers who want to prototype automated long-form writing pipelines or study prompt-chaining architectures. Not for anyone expecting publishable prose out of the box — the author doesn’t pretend otherwise.