By Sydney Swallow
Growing up, I loved reading. But as high school years approached, I became too occupied in my social life and the other responsibilities young teens deal with during that period. It wasn’t until later in life that I realized how much I missed that feeling of reading. It was a breath of fresh air from my everyday life of what I consumed on social media. Whether it be timing or a long-lost passion, I became an avid reader: someone who wanted to pursue their hobbies.
In pursuing a career in the publishing industry, I questioned how I can fit into it with the growth of AI? Will there still be jobs for the younger generation, and if not, what can we do to save it?
I think the answer is in how we embrace AI and its’ impact.
After becoming more familiar with what AI is, I learned that the changes can be beneficial to editors. It was relieving to read from multiple sources that the industry doesn’t plan on replacing humans with AI but rather using it to enhance their jobs.
For example, editors can use it to minimize grammatical and proofreading tasks. With “booktok” and other media offering a platform for the reading community, it can also be used to predict marketing trends and personalized content for people to create sales and know what consumers want to read. I personally benefit a lot from this to get new book recommendations! Another feature of AI is that it can generate ideas for authors experiencing roadblock and illustrations for book covers.
Some of these examples can be controversial. But from what I’ve learned, it seems that keeping an open mind to these enhancements is the best way to keep humans at the forefront of creativity in this industry. While there is concern in AI being trained to create stories without people; their generated stories are coherent, but they don’t impact readers the same way. AI lacks the emotional depth that only a human can bring to life in a story.
If the publishing industry and consumers continue seeing the value and protecting the integrity that humans bring to a story, then AI will be an advantageous tool. There will be setbacks and learning curves. A prime example is the AI company, Anthropic, which recently settled a lawsuit against an author, Andrea Bartz, and others for pirating authors’ stories to train their AI. With eBooks becoming a popular way to consume books, it’s so important to protect an author’s work while we continue to develop with the tools we use.
In the end, it’s not asking whether AI will replace humans in the publishing industry, but how humans will evolve with AI and how we use it to our advantage.
Resources
https://spines.com/ai-in-publishing-industry/ (Nov. 2023)
https://spines.com/ai-and-the-future-of-publishing/ (Dec. 2023)
https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbooksauthors/2025/01/27/ai-in-publishing-a-2025-industry-forecast/ (Jan. 2025)
https://www.inkbotediting.com/blog/editors-and-ai-part-v-will-ai-replace-editors (March 2025)
https://authorsguild.org/news/what-authors-need-to-know-about-the-anthropic-settlement/ (Sept. 2025)