Case Study: Book Surf — AI‑Powered Book Generation in 8 Weeks
From idea to production in 8 weeks, marketing launch in 10 — GhostWriter delivers chapter‑by‑chapter first drafts with human‑in‑the‑loop editing.
Book Surf — AI‑Powered Book Generation in 8 Weeks
If you’ve ever stared at a blank page, you know the hardest part of writing is getting started. Book Surf’s GhostWriter flips that dynamic: it drafts the chapter, you stay in control. In eight weeks we took Book Surf from concept to production, and by week ten the product and marketing engine were live. You can see it in action at book-surf.com.
The Problem We Set Out to Solve
Aspiring novelists, business leaders, coaches, and educators know what they want to say—but momentum dies at the empty page. Existing tools are either generic or demand heavy lifting from day one. Our goal was simple: a guided, human‑in‑the‑loop authoring flow where first drafts arrive quickly, authors edit confidently, and publishing is a smooth handoff.
How GhostWriter Works for Authors
The experience leads with clarity and speed. Authors start with a brief and pick a template; GhostWriter proposes a table of contents; Chapter 1 is drafted for free so momentum is immediate. When the author approves the direction, pricing snapshots are taken and they can buy chapters one‑by‑one or the full book at a discount. Drafts arrive chapter‑by‑chapter, and the author edits and applies each one. Behind the scenes, cross‑chapter review keeps tone and structure consistent, and exports to PDF (print‑ready), EPUB, and Word make handoff to publishing straightforward—even including a cover creator and print‑on‑demand via Lulu.
Building for Speed without Lock‑In
We composed the system as small, cooperating services and skills rather than a monolith. The API orchestrates jobs, the worker handles generation, and the PDF service produces print‑quality output. Provider configuration is vendor‑agnostic: defaults by book type, with the option to override at the book or chapter level. If a provider is unavailable or a model underperforms, we fall back automatically. That flexibility keeps the roadmap in our hands instead of a vendor’s.
SkillzWave accelerated the build. Reusable agent skills—permissions, documentation, deployment hygiene—gave us reliable patterns so we could spend time on the authoring experience instead of reinventing supporting workflows.
The 8→10 Week Journey
Weeks 1–2 were all about foundations: repo bootstrap, authentication with Firebase, analytics and pixels (GA4/GTM/Ads), database and networking on GCP, buckets for artifacts and exports, and Pub/Sub for the job queue. Weeks 3–4 delivered the API and core schema, Stripe checkout and webhooks, plus a worker that reliably turns a brief and TOC into chapter drafts. Weeks 5–6 brought the authoring wizard to life—free Chapter 1, regens and versions/diffs, and export pipelines. In week 7 we added the provider configuration system, moderation and policy controls, and observability. Week 8 pushed to production and hardened performance with a public sample library. Weeks 9–10 focused on launch: creative, ads automation, attribution, and dashboards.
What Shipped and Why It Matters
Authors get momentum and control: a guided path from brief to TOC to drafts, guardrails to keep quality high, and the ability to approve and apply content chapter‑by‑chapter. Operators get a tidy platform: Cloud Run services for API, worker, and PDF; Cloud SQL for data; GCS and signed URLs for artifacts and exports; Pub/Sub for job flow; Stripe for commerce; Firebase for auth. Governance is built in—secrets are managed, permissions are least‑privilege, and moderation and logging are standard.
The result: production by week eight, launch by week ten, and a product that’s easy to evolve. Because the generation pipeline is decoupled and configurable, quality improvements—new models, better prompts, smarter recency checks—roll out with minimal friction.
Under the Hood (For the Curious)
The worker runs a structured pipeline: outline, section drafting, refinement, optional recency checks, and proofreading, followed by a cross‑chapter review pass that keeps narrative arc intact. Context flows through each step—book brief, TOC JSON, and summaries of prior chapters—so drafts feel cohesive. Jobs record timing, usage, artifacts, and costs; exports are durable and link‑secure. Provider routing is explicit and testable: sensible defaults with clean overrides and automatic fallbacks when needed.
If you want the full breakdown, we’re happy to walk through the pipeline in detail or discuss how this pattern can fit your domain. For a quick look at the live experience, visit book-surf.com. For how we accelerate delivery with reusable agent skills, see skillzwave.ai.