Publisher Spines will charge authors between $1,200 and $5,000 to have their books edited and distributed with the help of artificial intelligence The

Writers condemn startup’s plans to publish 8,000 books next year using AI

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2024-11-26 21:30:03

Publisher Spines will charge authors between $1,200 and $5,000 to have their books edited and distributed with the help of artificial intelligence

The company, Spines, will charge authors between $1,200 and $5,000 to have their books edited, proofread, formatted, designed and distributed with the help of AI.

Independent publisher Canongate said “these dingbats … don’t care about writing or books”, in a Bluesky post. Spines is charging “hopeful would-be authors to automate the process of flinging their book out into the world, with the least possible attention, care or craft”.

“These aren’t people who care about books or reading or anything remotely related,” said author Suyi Davies Okungbowa, whose most recent book is Lost Ark Dreaming, in a post on Bluesky. “These are opportunists and extractive capitalists.”

Spines – which recently secured $16m in seed funding, according to a profile of the company in the Bookseller – says that authors will retain 100% of their royalties. Co-founder Yehuda Niv, who previously ran a publisher and publishing services business in Israel, claimed that the company “isn’t self-publishing” or a vanity publisher but a “publishing platform”.

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