Spines and the rise of AI book publishers

Book industry figures have described the team behind a publishing AI startup as "dingbats", "opportunists" and "extractive capitalists".

The new company, Spines, will charge authors between $1,200 and $5,000 to have their books edited, proofread, formatted, designed and circulated with the help of artificial intelligence, but it's already cooked up a storm in the book world.

'Empowering authors'

The co-founder of Spines, Yehuda Niv, insisted that the company "isn't self-publishing" or a vanity publisher. Niv, who previously ran a publishing services business in Israel, preferred to describe his new venture as a "publishing platform".

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His company, which secured $16m in a recent funding round, promises to reduce the time it takes to publish a book to two to three weeks and said that authors will retain 100% of their royalties.

"Our goal is to empower authors", a spokesperson told The Guardian, because traditionally "an aspiring author usually approaches a publishing agency when 99% of authors are refused". Or authors "turn to vanity publishing and pay between $10,000 and $50,000 for a single book", or "go the route of self-publishing which requires their expertise in each task".

Spines, the representative said, is "levelling the playing field" for anyone who "aspires to be an author" to get published quickly and "at a fraction of the cost".

'Self-publishing scam'

The publishing industry has not welcomed news of Spines with much cheer. "Let's be clear", said Mary Kate Carr on AV Club, if you're spending $5,000 to have AI edit and publish your book, you're "throwing your money away". Spines "sounds like a self-publishing scam", she said, and AI tools are "not yet better than proofreaders and certainly not better than editors".

Spines is charging "hopeful would-be authors to automate the process of flinging their book out into the world" with "the least possible attention, care or craft", said independent publisher Canongate in a post on BlueSky, adding of the team that "these dingbats … don’t care about writing or books".

Anna Ganley, chief executive of the Society of Authors, told The Guardian that the Spines model is "very unlikely to deliver on what an author is hoping they might achieve", is "most unlikely to be their best route to publication", and "if it also relies on AI systems" there are "concerns about the lack of originality and quality of the service being offered".

The reactions from publishing folk reflect wider concerns about the role artificial industry may play in the industry going forward. Microsoft has launched its own publishing house, promising to use technology to "accelerate and democratise" publishing, which, said Carr, is "pushing forward towards a cheap, fast, AI slop future".

After the non-profit organisation National Novel Writing Month said it does not "explicitly condemn any approach", to writing including "the use of AI", author Megan Nolan wrote in the New Statesman that "I don't doubt that AI will one day be capable of writing a good or even a beautiful novel", but "the question is why anyone should want to read such a book".

AI is a "very hot-button topic", editorial consultant Anne Hervé told Times Now, and while it "can assist, human creativity and critical thinking remain essential".