Book Publishers Are Quietly Using More AI. Staff Are Revolting
Workers at three major publishing houses tell WIRED that LLMs are being used for publicity, cover art, back cover copy, and emails, as some execs push junior staff to champion the tech.
Behind the scenes, three major U.S. book publishers—HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, and Hachette—have quietly integrated AI tools into their publishing operations without informing the public or obtaining author consent, according to interviews with over two dozen unnamed employees. These publishers utilize Large Language Models (LLMs) like Claude and ChatGPT for a range of tasks, including emailing literary agents, drafting publicity and back-cover copy, designing cover art, and creating marketing materials.
Executives frequently push for this technology, despite objections from staff who are unsure of how to effectively implement it. At HarperCollins, senior leaders bought Claude licenses from Anthropic without knowing how to use them, leading to the creation of "AI Champions" who were tasked with finding practical applications for AI in monthly brainstorming sessions.
When staff expressed concerns about the ethical and environmental implications during one such session, their worries were dismissed as "the cost of doing business." HarperCollins has since added an AI section to its employee portal, stating that while AI has an environmental impact, it is minimal compared to individual digital footprints.
The company uses a variety of AI tools, including Claude, ChatGPT, and Jasper, an agentic platform for end-to-end marketing workflows. Some divisions have fully embraced AI, including the generation of marketing videos. However, many in the publishing industry believe the reliance on AI-generated publicity copy is short-sighted, as it undermines the duty of publicists to engage honestly with readers and media professionals.
Independent publishers like Hub City Press, on the other hand, view the use of AI-generated marketing and publicity as inevitable for larger publishers, while others insist that human involvement remains essential. Agents at major publishers have also suspected that specific editors may use AI to write rejection letters, citing consistent signs of AI-generated text.
While Hachette claims to support AI tools for operational purposes and prohibits creative uses, Simon & Schuster allows limited access to enterprise-level AI tools but does not mandate their use.
Written by urgent.news from Wired's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
