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Week 25: How might AI affect your business?

The relationship between AI and the publishing industry is rapidly evolving. Right now, news headlines focus primarily on unauthorized use of authors’ works for AI training, or fears of creative displacement, but I see a much more complex picture emerging. Rather than focus on the copyright issues—which will ultimately be worked out in court—today I want to consider the wider effects and business opportunities for writers, editors, and publishers. My views here are based on the certainty that AI is here to stay, and it cannot be ignored.

The editorial process

If you’re using tools like Grammarly or ProWritingAid, you've probably already experienced AI’s impact on editing. But the technology is now penetrating deeper into professional editing processes in ways that will affect how authors work with editors.

A recent Book Industry Study Group panel revealed several important trends. First, professional editors increasingly use AI tools to handle repetitive, mechanical tasks. And tools like editGPT offer simple interfaces for proofreading and streamlining text. For authors, this means:

• Your work might be pre-processed with AI tools before a human editor reviews it (the publisher should be transparent about this and disclose all ways in which they use AI)
• You may receive more consistent mechanical editing (grammar, style, etc.)
• Human editors may spend more time on deeper structural and conceptual editing
• The editing process could become more efficient, potentially reducing costs or turnaround time

For copyeditors: This means your skills will be less marketable in the future if you focus on mechnical editing.

AI editorial capabilities will become increasingly integrated with publishing workflows. Rather than just helping edit a paragraph, AI might check patterns across a publisher’s entire catalog or consider marketing implications—potentially leading to more targeted editorial recommendations.

Audio and translation are seeing rapid change

Several AI publishing startups have emerged that offer genuine value to authors, publishers, and readers. ElevenLabs enables high-quality text-to-speech and AI voice generation, including voice cloning capabilities. Major publishers like HarperCollins and media outlets like The Washington Post, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic are already using this technology. For authors, this could make producing audiobooks significantly more affordable and accessible. Nuanxed offers AI-enhanced project management for translations. As machine translation quality improves, authors may find their work can reach international markets more quickly and at lower cost. Taylor & Francis, a major academic publisher, recently announced they will use AI to translate works that would otherwise not make economic sense to translate.

Using AI as a writing partner or coach

While you can use ChatGPT or other major AI tools to assist with general writing tasks, some startups have developed tools specifically for creative writing. Sudowrite provides AI-powered assistance specifically for fiction writers, helping with brainstorming, overcoming writer’s block, and exploring narrative options.

If you’re considering using AI in your creative process, the US Copyright Office has clarified that:

• Using AI for research, outlining, or brainstorming doesn’t affect your copyright and doesn’t need to be disclosed
• You can own copyright for creatively manipulating and arranging AI outputs
• The work as a whole can receive copyright protection even if it contains some AI-generated text (though those specific AI portions aren’t protected)

From a practical standpoint:

• Consider using AI for tasks like summaries, brainstorming, headline testing, shortening wordy passages, and alternative phrasings
• Maintain your distinctive voice and perspective, which remain your greatest assets
• If working with a publisher, be transparent about AI use; be mindful that policies are still evolving

Exercise

If you’re AI curious but haven’t experimented much, select a project or task you’re not emotionally invested in—perhaps a writing prompt, a character sketch, or a plot problem you’ve been stuck on. Use AI purely as a brainstorming tool rather than for actual writing.

• Ask open-ended questions. Try prompts like: “What are 10 unusual occupations for my protagonist set in a coastal town?” Or “Suggest three unexpected plot twists for a story about siblings who discover an old family secret.”
• Mix and match. Take one idea from the AI and two of your own (or vice versa) and combine them into something new.
• Ask yourself: Did the AI suggest anything genuinely surprising or useful? How did the process feel compared to brainstorming alone? Did the AI suggestions spark new ideas of your own?

In my experience, the key is to approach AI as a creative sounding board rather than a replacement for your creativity. This exercise lets you experiment with AI in a low-stakes way, maintaining full control over what (if anything) you incorporate into your actual writing process. Many writers discover that AI functions best as a conversation partner that helps them clarify their own thinking and break through creative blocks rather than as a direct source of finished content.

Explore further

• ​I Hired ChatGPT As My Writing Coach by Audrey Kalman
• ​Like It or Not, Publishers Are Licensing Books for AI Training by Jane Friedman
• A helpful X thread on using AI tools as a writer and researcher
• Be aware of the “deep research” problems when using AI
• Good news: AI’s impact on the written word is vastly overstated says Byrne Hobart
• ​It’s the human connection, stupid by Oliver Burkeman

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