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Books - Perfect Bound, Self-publishing Posted by Ann O'Brien on 06/18/2025

Looking for ways to use AI book research? Research is a fundamental aspect of writing a book, from delving into a specific era that your characters live in to learning about authentic clothes, vocabulary, and mannerisms that your characters will use that make them appealing and real to your readers. Authors have hundreds or even thousands of details to consider when developing a manuscript, with each detail potentially coming from painstaking research.

In years past, uncovering this critical information came from long sessions at the local library and poring over books and other media that were representative of the timeframe the author was seeking. Sometimes, a trip to a distant location, specialized library, or other resource was required for book research, oftentimes adding days or months to the process. But with the advent of the internet and online artificial intelligence assistance, this research is now faster, wiser, and more efficient than ever.

Learning how to leverage AI book research effectively can help authors speed up their search for information, provide them with reliable information, and give writers a leg up on details that may have been difficult to uncover with traditional research techniques.

AI Book Research Can Reveal the Details You Need

Utilizing the power of artificial intelligence can help you scan thousands of documents to put together content so you can do the writing is a smart use of this technology. But understanding what kind of content AI book research can provide and knowing how to phrase your prompts so your results are what you need are the keys to efficiently using this amazing tech tool. There are four main areas where you should use AI in your book research and specific prompts you can use to help you get the results you need for your AI book research.

Using AI to come up with prompts will give you a variety of details you can use within your story when you have a solid book concept to begin with. For example, if your book idea centers around a female main character in the 1950s in Harlem, New York, seeking to change her life’s trajectory by attending culinary school, we can follow through with specific AI prompts to help you research the details that will bring your story to life.

1. Use AI Book Research to Learn Authentic Setting Details Perfect for Your Story

Crafting a believable setting, especially one with historic ties, can make or break a story. But portraying every detail accurately is a big task even for someone with strong background knowledge of an era or place. Doing AI book research is an excellent way to ensure the details of your story’s setting are realistic while streamlining your efforts to extract the right information from outside content.

To create an accurate picture of what life was like for your main character in 1950s Harlem and what her culinary school experience would be like, focus your AI book research on looking for lists or charts of details that would fill in the facets of life a young girl might experience during that time frame. Begin your questions with phrases like tell me all about, provide a comparison chart, create a list of, or give me more information about when formulating questions for your favorite AI tool.

Prompts to Use

• Tell me about [life in Harlem, New York, in 1950].
• Compare [life in Harlem in 1950 and 1955 and 1959] using a chart.
• Give me more information about [what life was like for a young female] during this time.
• Present a list of [places a young person might frequent in 1955 Harlem].
• Tell me about [culinary school options near Harlem in the 1950s].
• Tell me more about [each school] using a comparison chart.

2. Discover the Political and Social Context of Your Story Timeframe with AI Book Research

Having a great story concept is only just the beginning of crafting an interesting plot with believable characters. But traditional research to compile meaningful research would take a long time even if an author has all of the important documents at their fingertips. Instead, AI book research into the social and political context of a story’s setting and plot is almost instantaneous.

Since this amazing tech tool can not only find requested content quickly but it can also summarize it into useful bits of information, you can use AI to help you understand and put into perspective the more nuanced historical information that can be challenging to fully understand otherwise.

Prompts to Use

For our story about a young student hoping to attend culinary school, we would want to understand how the volatile political climate affected her life and family as well as how the social and economic status of a middle class person of color in the 1959s. The answers to your initial prompts will lead you to ask additional questions.

• Give me an overview of [life in Harlem during the 1950s].
• Give me more information about [what schools were like during this time].
• Provide a chart showing how [new laws across the US affected people living in Harlem in the 1950s].
• Present a list of the [different ways a person’s social class affected their life opportunities in the 1950s].
• Explain how [social movements might affect someone during this time].
• Compare and contrast in a chart format [city vs rural professional opportunities in the 1950s].

3. Create Realistic Main Character Details with AI Book Research

Fleshing out your main character is a vital part of developing a story your readers will love, and using AI to support your concept can save you time and help you to come up with a unique and memorable main character.

Coming up with historically accurate details about your main character is an important part of developing your character’s backstory and motivations, and AI book research can cut down on the time it takes to craft a well-rounded protagonist. One way to use AI book research to do this is to ask it to describe any types of details that connect with your character, the setting, and the historical aspects of life that may influence your protagonist.

Prompts to Use

Think about the physical, emotional, psychological, and social influences on your protagonist when considering how to best utilize AI book research to craft your character.

• What type of clothes were popular for [a teen girl in Harlem in the 1950s]?
• Tell me more about how [clothes choices were affected by social and economic class].
• Describe the typical types of [meals in a middle-class Harlem family of this era].
• Tell me more about [food options in Harlem in 1954] using a chart.
• Make a list of the most common phrases [a young person would say] at this time.
• Tell me more about [what a young person would value in society] at this time.
• Create a list of the [most important social pressures on a young person in 1954 in Harlem].

4. Use AI Book Research to Build Your Story’s Plot Points

Even though you have already decided on the key plot elements of your story, doing AI book research can help you add realism to your plot by allowing you to quickly discover the little historical details that make your story exciting and complex.

AI book research can lead you toward concepts that compliment your main story arc that you may not have thought of but will ultimately contribute to depth and general interest in the plot. Utilizing strategic prompts can help you discover details to add to your story so you can develop engaging subplots or historically accurate secondary characters to add to your story’s plot arc that resonate with readers.

Prompts to Use

When researching supportive content for our character in Harlem, we would need to think about what types of authentic experiences would contribute to her career choices and how that would influence her motivations and the problems she encountered.

• Give me a list of topics [that a culinary student would study in the 1950s].
• Tell me more about the challenges [a culinary student] would face in this era.
• Give me more details about [the life of a culinary student in 1954 New York].
• Provide a list of typical [culinary student] characteristics, ages, and socioeconomic backgrounds in this era.

AI Book Research Helps You Finish Your Book Faster

With the advent of AI technology, many people have shied away from using it because they wanted to write and develop their unique content. But the reality is that utilizing AI’s ability to instantly review and summarize vast amounts of content is a smart and efficient way to conduct book research while still writing and producing a wholly human-created book with that research.

This time-saving creation can help you speed through the research process, allowing you to spend your valuable time writing your story, crafting memorable characters, and developing story arcs that your readers will love. Embracing this new technology as a friend of writers — and not a challenge to the creativity and hard work of an author — can help you go from concept to manuscript to printed book much more rapidly today than in any time in the past.

And Dazzle Printing can help you turn your final draft into a beautiful book when you are finished writing, but only you can harness the power of AI book research to add depth, interest, and historical accuracy quickly to your writing.