Let’s start with the truth: AI is already in publishing. It’s in your inbox predicting your next word, in your spreadsheets autofilling cells, in your marketing dashboards analyzing campaign performance. It’s not coming—it’s here.

The bigger question is what we do with it.

If you work in publishing, you’ve probably heard the extremes. On one end, AI will replace us all. On the other, AI will magically solve everything from discoverability to shrinking margins.

Neither is true. What is true is that publishing, like every creative industry before it, is at a transformation point—and the choices we make now will determine whether that transformation makes our jobs smaller and more brittle, or smarter and more sustainable.

This post is here to do three things:

• to clarify what AI can realistically support inside publishing organizations
• to name the work it will never be able to replace
• to show how publishers can use these tools to strengthen human judgment rather than erode it

After all, according to a recent cross-industry survey, the usage of AI tools within organizational workflows has surged, with 88% of businesses reporting regular AI use in at least one function  although many are still experimenting rather than fully deploying it. In publishing, it’s far less, and we think it’s time for the industry to catch up.

AI Can’t Replace the People Who Make Publishing Work

AI cannot spot raw talent in a query letter. It cannot nurture an author through self-doubt, shape a narrative arc over multiple drafts, or know why one sentence lands and another clangs. It can’t talk a bookstore buyer through why a midlist debut deserves a chance, or read the room in an acquisitions meeting.

AI doesn’t have taste, instinct, or trust—the currencies publishing actually runs on.

Those skills are relational, experiential, and deeply human. They’re built over years of reading, listening, failing, trying again, and learning how stories move through the world. No model can replicate that.

What AI can do is take on the repetitive, data-heavy, time-consuming parts of publishing work and make them faster, cleaner, and more consistent. Used well, it frees editors, marketers, agents, publicists, and sales teams to spend more time doing the work that requires discernment and less time buried under tasks that drain attention without adding much value.

Publishing Jobs Have Gotten Too Big. AI Can Make Them Better.

Every department in publishing is overloaded. Editors manage larger lists than they once did. Publicists struggle to reach out to legacy media (whose books coverage is ever shrinking) as well as the podcasters, influencers, and other digital media developments of the last 15 years. Marketing and sales teams are under constant pressure to “do more with less,” often without systems that make that possible.

That strain isn’t a failure of talent. It’s a structural problem.

This is where AI can help—not by replacing roles, but by right-sizing them again. A 2025 Book Industry Study Group survey found that nearly half of publishing professionals and organizations are already using AI tools, even as the overwhelming majority report ethical concerns and a lack of formal policies guiding that use.

We get it, and that’s why Next Chapter AI was made, to support the rollout of ethical AI practices and help publishing companies and organizations craft the guidelines and policies that are best for them.

Marketing and publicity teams can use AI to brainstorm campaign concepts quickly, generate early drafts of ad copy or social assets to refine based on their human expertise, or adapt messaging across platforms without starting from scratch every time.

Sales teams can surface comparable titles more efficiently, identify accounts with similar buying patterns, or prepare pitch materials faster so conversations focus on relationships and strategy.

Across editorial operations and production, AI can assist with metadata management, flag inconsistencies, streamline schedules, and reduce the friction that slows books down long before they reach readers.

None of this replaces expertise. It amplifies it.

The Data Problem: Publishing’s Biggest Blind Spot

For decades, publishing has operated with limited visibility into its own data. Decisions are often guided by experience and intuition, not because data isn’t valuable, but because teams rarely have the time or infrastructure to make it usable.

AI has the potential to change that.

Instead of relying solely on gut instinct, publishers can analyze patterns across seasons, identify which marketing tactics actually move books, and better understand how readers are discovering authors. Not in a vague, postmortem way, but in a form that informs future decisions while there’s still time to act.

Research also shows that AI-driven recommendations contribute to around 35% of online book sales, and publishers are using AI to analyze vast quantities of data to tailor content and promotional strategies to specific audiences.

This is great, and more publishers, agencies, and authors can utilize this information to ensure more books are getting into the right hands at the right times.

So you see, AI isn’t the death of creativity. It’s the infrastructure that allows entrepreneurial and creative teams to make smarter bets with fewer blind spots.

AI Can’t Make Books—but It Can Make Publishing Better

The magic of publishing has always been human. The editor’s ear. The designer’s eye. The handseller's pitch. The agent’s belief in a book before anyone else sees it. And of course the creators, making their art.

None of that changes.

What AI offers is the chance to reclaim time from the work that buries teams under volume. Instead of spending an afternoon formatting metadata or drafting twenty variations of back-cover copy, teams can use AI to generate a first pass in minutes—and then do what publishing professionals do best: refine, shape, contextualize, and elevate.

That distinction matters. This isn’t automation for automation’s sake. It’s augmentation. It’s the difference between replacement and relief.

Curiosity Is the New Competitive Advantage

Whether you’re enthusiastic about AI or deeply skeptical of it, the authors who rely on publishing teams deserve an industry that understands the tools shaping their careers. Fear isn’t a strategy. Paralysis isn’t protection. Broader economic research suggests that organizations across industries are rapidly adopting AI, but the depth of integration varies widely — underscoring that understanding AI’s strengths and limitations is now a strategic imperative, not an optional skill.

Instead of fearing what AI might do to our jobs, we must become curious about what AI might do for our jobs. That’s the only way we can shape the future of our industry proactively. We can either let outside tech companies decide how AI reshapes publishing, or we can learn enough to shape it ourselves—ethically, intentionally, and with books at the center.

That’s what we’re here to help publishers do.

We’ve tested the tools, studied the workflows, and built approaches that respect craft while improving efficiency. We believe in human publishing—but smarter, faster, and far more sustainable.