For every studio and publisher and digital media enterprise partnering with artificial intelligence technology but nevertheless promising that AI won’t actually affect writers and creators, there’s a publisher like “Spines” emerging with the sole aim to “disrupt” the entire industry. Per The Bookseller, Spines has existed since 2021 but just published its first titles this year. Now it plans to flood the market with thousands of books using AI.
Spines—which is really more accurately described as a tech startup than a publisher—plans to publish 8,000 books in 2025 by using AI to proofread, produce, publish and distribute books. In that way, the company can cut down the possible six- to eight-month period it takes to traditionally publish a book to just three weeks. Authors “retain 100% of their royalties as well as rights to their words once their books are in the world,” according to The Bookseller. All a prospective author has to do to get their work out in the world is pay a measly $5,000 for the privilege of being “published” by “Spines.”
Let’s be clear: if you’re spending $5,000 to have AI edit and publish your book, you’re throwing your money away. AI tools are not yet better than proofreaders and certainly not better than editors. If you care so little about your work that you’re willing to see it go the way of AI slop, it would probably be more efficient to just get Grammarly and throw it up on Amazon with the AI scammers wasting our planet’s resources to have ChatGPT write entire shoddy manuscripts.
Because, when it comes down to it, Spines sounds like a self-publishing scam. Obviously, Spines would disagree with that, characterizing itself as “a publishing platform. That’s a new concept,” in the words of CEO and co-founder Yehuda Niv. Asked about bypassing the human labor of so many professionals (proofreaders, book designers, translators, editors, etc.), Niv offers that old chestnut, “We are not here to replace human creativity.” He says, “We focus on books that are written by humans who are looking for the most efficient and up-to-date way to get their manuscript published and distributed worldwide.” He pitches this technology for those who aren’t trying to make a living off of writing a book but do it as “a hobby” and want to leave “a legacy.”
At best (or really, at worst), Spines is an uneasy vision of the future. So far, the AI partnerships at traditional publishing houses have been used to sell out their catalogs to help train large language models. And oh, wouldn’t you know, Microsoft is now launching its own publishing house with the intent to use technology to “accelerate and democratize” book publishing, and is building a “rigorous” editorial process that will supposedly identify “meritorious” ideas quickly, assist with manuscript development, and meet “style and substance standards” (via The Guardian). Spines might get there first, and badly, but they’re not the only ones pushing forward towards a cheap, fast, AI slop future.
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