AI Book Editing: Can You Use AI to Edit Your Novel?

You may have been told that AI tools are capable of speeding up the writing process, finding grammatical errors you’ve missed and even doing your book marketing for you.  

But are these tools all they’re cracked up to be? And can you really use AI to edit a whole novel, cutting a human editor from the process ahead of publishing?

Here, I take a closer look at AI book editing — its pros, its cons and which parts of the book editing process AI is best suited to.

What are the benefits of AI book editing?

Okay, let’s start by looking at the pros — the reasons why working with an AI book editing tool over a real-life human editor can be a good thing for you and your novel.

It’s cheap

Professional editing services can be expensive. AI editing tools also come at a cost — particularly if you want to use advanced features and work without book word count restrictions. But these subscriptions are a fraction of what you’d pay to an experienced book editor. 

For writers without the funds for professional editing, AI editing tools are an affordable fallback option.  

It’s fast

AI book editing tools can assess a manuscript in seconds. It would take a human editor much longer to review your work, at any stage in the editing process.

Working with AI, you simply copy and paste your text, then view recommendations. If you’re in a hurry to get your book onto digital or real-world bookshop shelves, it can help speed up the process.

It’s easy

AI editing tools are incredibly intuitive to use. You simply sign up, enter your text and you’re on your way. Getting started with a human book editor takes more time.

You have to find the right editor, get to know their ways of working and book space in their diary. It’s not as quick and convenient as jumping on your laptop and subscribing to an AI tool.

It’s less scary than sending your book to a human editor

This is an aspect of book editing that people don’t always talk about. But sending your manuscript to another human can feel daunting.

Your editor may be the only person outside your circle of friends and family (or the only person full stop) who has read and critiqued the manuscript you’ve poured so much of your time and yourself into. Using an AI book editor can feel like an easier, less exposing alternative.

It’s a useful tool for initial corrections

Most editors ask for a sample of your work before quoting. If your manuscript is littered with mistakes, the quote is likely to be higher.

Let an AI book editor cast an eye over your story first, and you can correct obvious grammar and spelling errors before you submit your sample. If your AI tool does a good job on this first editorial pass, it can mean lower costs for professional editing.

And what are the drawbacks of AI book editing?

So we’ve looked at the benefits of AI book editing. Now onto the drawbacks. What are the reasons to think twice before trusting AI with your novel?

It gives generic advice

An AI tool looks at everything that already exists out there in the world of words. And it reduces those words to numbers.

It can predict which word is most likely to come next in any given sentence. But it can’t understand the emotion or meaning behind those words — or the atmosphere a writer is trying to create.

The editorial tips AI book editing tools give are therefore based on averages, on the way people write and talk most frequently.

An AI tool is unlikely to understand the dialect you’ve used for a particular character. It won’t understand why you’ve purposefully used an unusual rhythm or made an odd word choice or broken a grammatical rule.

Instead, AI editing tools give generic advice. They fail to take into account the uniqueness of your novel and writerly voice.

It over-edits

In trying to get your writing to fit in with the words that are already out there, AI tools are often guilty of over-editing.

I stuck just a few short paragraphs of Samantha Harvey’s Booker Prize-winning novel, Orbital, into Grammarly. It came up with no fewer than 11 suggested corrections, all completely unnecessary.

Left unsupervised, AI will flatten your prose. It’ll prioritise grammatical correctness over mood. Make metaphors and imagery more obvious. Edit your work based on how it reads rather than what it actually means. And remove any sense of individuality and personality.

That’s a huge issue. Because those idiosyncrasies and purposeful imperfections give your work tone, style and emotional clout. They’re what make your writing sound like you. And this is central to connecting with readers and getting your novel to stand out.

With AI as your editorial sidekick, everything becomes less brilliant and a lot more beige.

It’s prone to mistakes

While AI editing tools can do a lot of things very quickly, they’re not infallible. There have been many examples — gleefully shared across the internet — of AI tools getting things wrong.

Up until recently, for example, AI engines couldn’t accurately tell you how many r’s there are in the word strawberry. (Two, it confidently asserted, even when challenged.)

When editing a manuscript, AI is prone to mistakes. It pulls data from (sometimes) badly written sources. By over-editing and smoothing out your prose, it can introduce new grammatical errors. Across a paragraph or a chapter, AI can lose track of the tense or point of view you’re using.

This means human oversight remains an essential part of the process. You can’t simply accept all of the changes an AI tool recommends. You need to be really vigilant and apply your own judgement to each and every one of them.

When a tool presents you with hundreds, maybe thousands, of suggested amendments, that means spending a lot of time deciding which you actually want to action.

You need to watch out for AI hallucinations

Beyond sentence-level issues, AI can make mistakes in terms of the facts included in your novel.

Imagine you’re writing historical fiction and need to know if there are any anachronisms in your work. Or you’re writing a thriller and want it to reflect the ins and outs of real-world policing in 2026.

A real-life editor, experienced in your genre, has the knowledge to highlight factual errors or inconsistencies. But you can’t trust an AI bot to bring reliable insight to the table.

What’s more, AI tools often produce plausible-sounding but false outputs. They don’t say “I’m not sure” or “I don’t know”. They spout misleading information confidently.

Include AI-generated input in your novel without interrogating it, and readers may come across factually incorrect information that leads them to lose faith in your work.

AI struggles with larger story elements

AI book editing tools can be useful when analysing and correcting the finer details of your writing. 

You can get them to (with a healthy dose of caution) review your spelling and grammar, correct dialogue punctuation, highlight repetition and point out overused sentence structures.

But when it comes to the larger elements of your novel — things like character development, plot, structure or natural dialogue — AI editing tools can’t keep up. 

They don’t understand those very human, very complex elements of a story, particularly when reviewing a manuscript in its entirety.  

They don’t experience a sense of excitement as an inciting incident sets your story in motion. Your pacing never has them hooked and unable to put your story down. They don’t enjoy the payoff of a satisfying story climax.

A human editor experiences all of those emotions while reading your novel. They then have the expertise to tie that emotional experience back to story issues, like an incomplete character arc, weak plot points, telling instead of showing or an unnecessary chapter.

They can give you real insight into where your story works — and where it doesn’t — in a way that AI tools, treating your words as data points, simply can’t.

You miss out on the editor/author relationship

Take it from me, the editor/author relationship can be something really special. Because when you hire an editor for a project that you’ve put your heart into, you’re not just paying for objective critique.

You’re paying for back-and-forth with someone who genuinely wants you to succeed. Someone who’ll flag what isn’t working, but also tell you what is — without a trace of AI’s empty, sycophantic praise.

You also get something no algorithm can offer: a glimpse into how a real human reader responds to your story. 

I love telling writers about the parts of their manuscript I adored, the characters I really felt for and the ones I loved to hate. So I build this feedback into my process. 

After I send feedback to an author, we have an hour-long call. It’s a chance to talk through my notes, discuss next steps and generally geek out over their story. Writers come away understanding not just what I changed, but why, so they can improve their writing going forward.

This aspect of the editorial process is one of those most enjoyable and valuable for writers — and it’s something AI book editing tools don’t come close to replicating.

What are the stages of book editing and where are AI tools most useful?

There are a couple of different stages of book editing. These include developmental (or structural) editing, copy (or line) editing and proofreading.

• Developmental editing is where an editor looks at your book in its entirety. The editor will provide feedback on story elements, like structure, characters, plot, pacing, narrative and point of view.
  

• During copy editing, an editor focuses on your manuscript at a sentence level. They’ll look at grammar, punctuation, sentence structure, flow and any instances of repetition. The aim is to ensure the reading experience is engaging for a reader.
  

• Proofreading is where an editor (or a proofreader) performs a final quality check, poring through your manuscript, looking for any remaining spelling, grammar, punctuation and formatting errors. This is the last stage of editing before a novel is published.

AI can be more, or less, useful depending on the type of editing you’re using it for.

Use it for spotting basic grammar and punctuation mistakes involved in proofreading, and it will do a decent (although imperfect) job.

Try to use it for developmental editing or copy editing, and it’s unlikely to understand nuance and context well enough to do your work of fiction the justice it deserves.

So should you use AI to edit your book?

AI tools have their place in the book-writing process. You can use AI as a sparring partner, fleshing out characters, playing around with points of view and formulating a rough structure.

But — just as I’d never recommend getting AI to write any of your novel for you — I don’t recommend it for book editing either.

Ultimately, you’re writing stories for humans. Real-life people who can fall in love with your characters, escape from reality and even find insight into their own lives by reading the words you’ve carefully committed to the page.

AI book editing tools don’t know what it feels like to read something moving or funny or exciting. They may be cheap and easy to use, but they’re also prone to mistakes and over-editing, and they require a ton of human oversight.

Critically, they fail to grasp what it is that makes your story unique and special. So if you want to improve your novel — so it retains its originality and really connects with its audience — you need a human editor, not a bot that relies on formulas and best-guess predictions.

In my view, having read both human and AI-edited work, experienced real-life editors do a far better job than AI editing tools at every stage of the editorial process — at developmental editing, copy editing and proofreading, too.

So for any writer who really wants to give their book the best chance — to find a readership or a publisher — human editing services are, in my opinion, the only way to go.

On which note, why not take a look at my fiction editing services?

And if you’d like to chat about your story — or need help deciding which of my editing services is most relevant to you right now — get in touch to arrange a call.

Until next time!

Candida