Starting a business is not for the faint of heart. Most entrepreneurs underestimate the time and effort it takes to administrate a buiness.
I’ve been self-employed for many years as a freelance writer. I was always able to keep administrative tasks to a minimum. For example, I never felt the need to write a vision or mission statement, to draft “company” policies, or to communicate core “company” values to the public at large. If a potential client approached me with an assignment which didn’t align with my personal values, I simply didn’t accept the assignment.
As I am starting over as a micro-press publisher, I find there’s value in making decisions that reflect my core values as an author and a publisher, and to communicate them to the public in the early stages of my business.
In this blog post, I would like to state my opinion about Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools, some of which are commonly used in the publishing industry.
I reject AI tools. I won’t use AI tools knowingly, and will take great care to assure that I won’t unknowingly use AI tools, either.
Numerous past and present lawsuits against AI companies alleged and continue to allege that AI software tools were developed through acts of copyright infringement on a large scale, or that these AI software tools are now used to create “new” works based on material, including books, for which other people or companies hold the copyright.
These lawsuits allege that texts written by many different authors were illegally used to train AI models or to create “new” works. Copyright infringement and theft on a large scale are, in a nutshell, the allegations made against the creators of AI tools.
As far as I can tell, AI tools are used in the publishing industry during three different stages of the publishing process:
1) Authors use AI tools to “write” their books. Hachette Book Group cancelled the publication of “Shy Girl” by Mia Ballard in March of 2026 over allegations that AI tools were used to “write” the novel. Hachette Book Group also will no longer sell the book in the United Kingdom, where it had already been published, reports Emma Loffhagen in The Guardian. The consequences of this book’s publication? Reputational (and quite possibly financial) damages for everyone involved in this project.
My opinion: Using AI tools to “write” books is stupid. I won’t do it. Ever.
2) Apparently, AI tools were developed to assist authors and publishers during the editing stages of a book. A quick Google search resulted in numerous listings for AI editing tools. I won’t name any of those AI tools here, as I don’t want to promote them.
Here’s how I edit manuscripts: I print them out, and then I read them carefully. Not once, not twice, but numerous times.
My opinion: Using AI tools to edit books is stupid. I won’t do it. Ever.
3) Illustrators contribute greatly to the success of many books. Who of us hasn’t bought a book based on a visually appealing cover design? Illustrations are an essential element of children’s books, and many books for adult readers are also greatly enhanced by illustrations. These days, many software tools for illustration design incorporate AI tools.
I can’t draw. I can’t create illustrations for books I write or publish. I’ll definitely need to hire illustrators, should I decide to incorporate illustrations into my books. I don’t want these illustrators to use AI tools to create illustrations for me.
How can I possibly guarantee that “my” illustrators won’t use AI tools? I don’t have an answer yet to this question. But that’s why I wrote at the beginning of this blog post, “I won’t use AI tools knowingly, and will take great care to assure that I won’t unknowingly use AI tools, either.”
I can say this much: I will go to greath lengths to assure that any illustrators I might hire would not use AI tools.
My opinion: Using AI tools to illustrate books is stupid. I won’t do it. Ever.