Good to hear you decided to self publish. Don't let people online put too much pressure on you (is it done yet?)

On the subject of AI. I'm a great believer in that AI is a huge force for good (gives a single individual a huge power). I've been using every popular commercial and open weights models there are. I know their strengths and weaknesses.

But I think there will always be a need for human book writers. Just like there will be a need for human programmers. Although for different reasons. With software, humans are needed, because AI is still very, very far from being able to grasp actual, overall architecture of even modest sized hobby class projects (there is a special "trick" that is used to convince us otherwise, notice all very impressive examples are almost always "one shot" small prompts, with not a lot of refinement later. That almost never happens in real projects. In fact the opposite.)

With books, the AI is good explaining small chunks of knowledge. But an entire book, that is fun to read, consistent, and has a plan of "reader advancing in capability" through chapters and has some of the author's personality? No way.

Will I buy the book? I don't know. I have built a small library of physical books over the years (maybe about 200 books). But I also have about 50 of them on my kindle. I tend to buy an ebook first. If I really like it I buy a physical copy.

But I'm definitely reading a lot less than i used to. I've been working from hone exclusively since 2016. Before that I did a lot of commuting and that provided an opportunity of time to read loads of books. I certainly do not miss the airports, the budget airlines, the crowded trains and underground, but the reading took a big hit.

I imagine I'm not the only one. So the market for books probably shrunk substantially in the last decade.