Publishing consultant Thad McIlroy suggests that “AI Is About to Turn Book Publishing Upside-Down” in a Publishers Weekly column this week.

“The latest generation of AI is a game changer,” McIlroy writes. “I believe that every function in trade book publishing today can be automated with the help of generative AI. And, if this is true, then the trade book publishing industry as we know it will soon be obsolete.”

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Such a dramatic prosect shouldn’t be cause for fear, but for excitement, he advises.

As PW’s Andrew Albanese tells me, McIlroy raises critical questions that the book world cannot avoid for long: What will publishing look like after generative AI has been fully assimilated into our current workflows? What will reading look like?

“What Thad McIlroy has done is reframe the discussion in a way that pierces some of the fear and gets to some of the possibilities,” Albanese says.

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Author: Christopher Kenneally

Christopher Kenneally hosts CCC's Velocity of Content podcast series, which debuted in 2006 and is the longest continuously running podcast covering the publishing industry. As CCC's Senior Director, Marketing, he is responsible for organizing and hosting programs that address the business needs of all stakeholders in publishing and research. His reporting has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, The Independent (London), WBUR-FM, NPR, and WGBH-TV.
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