Georgia Kirke, a veteran of the business coaching world, has launched Clio Books, a new publishing company that combines AI-generated prompts with human creativity and editing to speed up the book creation process. The platform, which has already garnered industry recognition, aims to address a longstanding challenge in publishing: helping authors, particularly busy professionals, transform their ideas into submission-ready manuscripts.
“You can create your first draft in Clio in less than 12 hours,” Kirke said, highlighting the efficiency of her AI-assisted authorship system, which has been awarded patents in the U.S. and the U.K.
Kirke’s journey into AI-assisted publishing began more than a decade ago when she noticed a recurring issue among the entrepreneurs she coached. “Some would directly say, ‘I want to package all of this up into a book, but I don’t know how to go about it, and I don’t want to sit down and write. I don’t have time and I don’t know how,’” she said.
Structured approach
This demand led Kirke to establish Write Business Results in 2015, a company that has since produced more than 100 books using a structured approach to book creation, which involved long interviews and conversations with Kirke, who would transcribe the notes by hand before working with the author to craft them into a book. The advent of large language models (LLMs) in recent years presented an opportunity to digitize and scale this process, resulting in the creation of Clio Books.
The Clio process begins with a planning phase where authors answer questions about their book’s goals, target audience, and key themes. From this information, the AI generates a suggested book structure. Authors then proceed to a “talking plan” where they respond to AI-generated prompts, speaking their content aloud.
Typically, a book will comprise nine or ten chapters, which can be produced with a half dozen prompts per chapter. “The authors are encouraged to speak for less than 10 minutes per question,” Kirke said, noting that the preferred goal is for books that are 70,000 words, “because that is what trade publishers are typically looking for, if the author wants to go down that route.” But she said the software works equally well for books ranging from 40,000 words—what Kirke called a “business card book”—to one as long as 120,000 words.
Supporting creativity
However, Kirke is quick to emphasize that Clio is not a replacement for human creativity or expertise. “It’s not the AI that makes up your content for you,” she clarified. “It gives you frameworks to work within, it gives you workflow, it gives you some accountability... but it doesn’t take away your creativity. It’s actually designed to support it and enhance it.”
Human editors remain an integral part of the process. “At the moment, AI isn’t there yet,” Kirke said. “It’s not sentient. In fact, it’s not good enough to really understand the nuances of human speech and intention. So, I think it’s really important to have the human editor in the process.”
To sway skeptics, Kirke wrote and published her own book, Adopting AI in Publishing, which explores the challenges and opportunities presented by artificial intelligence in the publishing industry. “It offers what I believe is the right way to look at AI, versus where we should be concerned,” Kirke said.
Clio Books offers two primary service tiers: Clio Premium at £2,799, which includes planning, drafting, and editing services, and Clio Professional at £7,799, which adds proofreading, cover design, interior design, and self-publishing support. As of the start of October, Clio has 163 books at various stages in the pipeline. The company’s first traditionally published book, created using the Clio system, is set for release in February 2025 through John Catt Educational Publishers.
Accelerating the book production process
Kirke sees significant potential for collaboration with traditional publishers, positioning Clio as a tool to accelerate the book production process. “Publishers don’t profit from books until they’re live,” Kirke pointed out. “The longer they have to wait, the more harmful that can be financially. All of the books they put through Clio come back within a month, instead of what might normally take six or 12, 18 months—there’s quite a significant opportunity there.”
She emphasizes that Clio represents an ethical use of AI in publishing. “All new technologies have naturally been observed by the publishing industry with some concern at first—AI is no exception,” Kirke said. “However, with tools like Clio Books, the publishing process can be streamlined and made significantly more efficient, creating new revenue opportunities for publishers.”
