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AI In Self-Published Amazon Books

News Summary: What the Viral Study of AI in Self-Published Amazon Books Really Sets Out to Do

This story is related to the first of the week. I promise(ish—breaking news depending) no AI on Saturday, but the issues around Tuhin Chakrabarty's hugely impactful study on AI in self-published novels are so important and widespread I think it is warranted. Especially as this great piece in the New York Times brings out another angle of the story (with thanks to Jane Friedman, whose newsletter gifted the link from behind the NYT paywall).
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AI-Generated Books Now Match Human Output

News Summary: Economist Graph Shows AI-Generated Books Now Match Human Output at 150,000 Titles Monthly

Wherever books are discussed, the past few weeks have seen heated discussion of a graph that appeared in the Economist. It puts flesh on the bones of that "million more books" claim that did the rounds a little earlier. What it shows is the correlation between the steepening of the "books published" figures and the release of ChatGPT 3.5 in November 2022. In classic hockey-stick style, it shows AI-generated books sharply increasing to the point where they are equaling the number of non-AI-generated titles at around 150,000 a month.
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Rakuten Kobo

News Podcast: Rakuten Kobo Took a ‘Book Community First’ Approach to AI — and Rejected 45 Percent of Submissions

On this episode of Self-Publishing with ALLi, Dan Holloway reports on a revealing piece by Rakuten Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn, who explains why Kobo rejected 45 percent of self-published submissions in 2025 — most of them suspected AI-generated — and frames the decision as a "book community first" choice over a "readers first" approach. Dan also returns to the Commonwealth Short Story Prize controversy, where organizers have taken a strikingly different and very human approach to AI detection: gathering notes, drafts, and timestamped evidence from authors rather than relying on AI detection tools. He closes with news of a BISG and BookNet Canada survey on AI in publishing that indie authors in the US and Canada are encouraged to take part in.
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Librarians Propose Fairer E-book Pricing Model

News Summary: Librarians Propose Fairer E-book Pricing Model; Commonwealth Prize Verifies Winners without AI Detectors

Following on from recent discussion in this column about what it costs libraries to buy the license for e-books, thanks to Jane Friedman for linking to this fascinating article which outlines exactly what libraries would like to see in this regard. What it attempts to describe is what librarians actually mean when they call for fairer pricing from big publishers.
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Suspected AI Content

News Summary: Kobo CEO Reveals 45% of Self-Published Submissions Rejected for Suspected AI Content

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.
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AI Witch Hunt

News Summary: US Book Show Warns against AI Witch Hunt as Publishers Face Detection Dilemma

The start of this month saw the second staging of the much-vaunted US Book Show. There is already some great coverage out there, notably from Publishers Weekly, who hosted the show, and from Publishing Perspectives. I've also enjoyed reading Jane Friedman, who has been involved in the hosting. But I will try to pull out the highlights. Of course, AI was on the agenda. And the headlines from the show have been grabbed by the centerpiece panel featuring David Shelley, CEO of Hachette, which was the company at the heart of the Shy Girl storm.
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Commonwealth Short Story Prize Winner Accused Of Using AI

News Summary: Commonwealth Short Story Prize Winner Accused of Using AI; Judges Face Impossible Dilemma

This week I feel we reached the peak "oh good grief, what now?" moment of the AI scandal hypercycle. And to be honest, I am genuinely not sure whether the whole thing feels more Woodward and Bernstein or Arthur Miller. In short, this week we saw serious shade cast on the Commonwealth Short Story Prize winner Jamir Nazir. Nazir's story, "The Serpent in the Grove," was straightaway called out by several highly qualified people for being AI-generated.
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Hachette Pulls Horror Novel

News Summary: Hachette Pulls Horror Novel over AI Allegations; Author Sues Publisher

Literary scandals have been with us since Christopher Marlowe got sassy in a sketchy pub, and no doubt for centuries before. And this week, one almighty scandal erupted into the mainstream media (I confess that before this week, I hadn't noticed it bubbling away). At the same time as another literary brouhaha released its latest chapter (in which it turns out the author of the allegedly less-than-accurate memoir "The Salt Path" had actually published beforehand under a different name and was therefore not entitled to the debut prize that launched the book), publishing giant Hachette pulled one of its books from shelves after AI claims.
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