Should you use AI to help write your book proposal?
Short answer: Kelly Bergh’s advice: In July 2026 Kelly advised against using general AI to write proposal content or sample chapters, since it often fabricates facts like comps and shows in the writing, but she said it may be fine as a structural sounding board, for example to help order the points in a chapter summary.
Answered by Kelly Bergh, Literary Agent, Lucinda Literary.
Context: Dated, agent-specific guidance from July 2026. Tool capabilities can change.
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The agent’s answer
Asked how she feels about writers using AI to research and draft parts of a proposal, Kelly gives a time-stamped answer, asking to be asked again in a year because she thinks she may have a different answer by then and says the tools may change. As of now, she says AI does a poor job with tasks like comp research, often fabricating information, and it's evident to her when a proposal has been AI-drafted because it ignores the specific advice she has laid out. Her line is that AI is acceptable as a structural sounding board, for instance to help decide what order to present five points within a chapter summary. It is not acceptable for generating actual sample-chapter content or new material, since the proposal exists specifically to prove the author can write long-form. A heavily AI-assisted draft still needs a hands-on editor to fix it, which in her view makes the shortcut not worth taking.
Source: How to Develop a Sellable Nonfiction Book Proposal.