I missed this story when it first came out a fortnight ago (I think because the title of the article by Rakuten Kobo's Russ Tamblyn is decidedly oblique, so I just moved on). Fortunately the substantive content has generated several more helpfully titled spinout columns since then, so I'm circling back to the original. A single sentence is at the heart of this piece, and it contains a figure that provides additional context for much of the recent debate over AI-generated content. Tamblyn is speaking in his capacity as president and CEO at Rakuten Kobo.
ALLi News Editor Dan Holloway
“Last year, we rejected 45% of the self-published books that were submitted—literally hundreds of thousands of books—and most of those rejections were because, best we could tell, the books were generated with AI.”
Context from the Industry's AI Debate
The context into which this slots is the announcement earlier this year that in 2025 four million books were published, an increase of a million on 2024, largely thought to be driven by AI-generated content. There followed the kind of existential panic usually reserved for a change in Audible's terms and conditions, with dire warnings on one side and accusations of overreaction on the other.
Readers First versus Book Community First
Whatever your position, Tamblyn's account of Rakuten Kobo's internal debate is fascinating, and a great companion piece to James Daunt's much-vaunted (could AI manage an internal rhyme with such elegance?) comments that Barnes and Noble has a no-AI policy but might also change that if readers want AI content. By contrast, Tamblyn talks explicitly of the choice his company faced between, as he put it, a “Readers First” and “Book Community First” approach. In the end, that led Rakuten Kobo at least to a position where they would be willing to say no to the wishes of some readers who wanted AI content in order to support the creative community.
He concludes, “We need authors and publishers to be able to make a living,” but there is a lot more nuance that I highly recommend reading in full. It will become increasingly important for many indie authors to know where the platforms they are thinking about using stand, so I welcome the openness and, I have to say, Daunt's eventual statement of his position.
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