The world of book publishing is about to get disrupted in a big way.Spines is a tech startup that wants to use AI to edit, proofread, design and distribute 8000 books next year. But is it democratizing the publishing process, or potentially devaluing the artform?Jen Sookfong Lee is an editor and author. Nathan Maharaj is a bookseller who works in book marketing. Today on Commotion, they join guest host Rad Simonpillai to talk about the Spines business model, and other ways AI is already shaping the future of book publishing.We’ve included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.WATCH | Today’s episode on YouTube: [embedded content]Rad: Jen, talk to me about what Spines is up to.Jen: Well, they’re trying to take my job, but it’s fine. They’re going to use AI to edit — I think mostly proofread, actually — distribute, do all the things to produce a book which normally, in traditional publishing, takes between 12 months to 24 months, depending on who’s doing it. They’re saying they’re going to do it in weeks, which is mind-boggling to me, and it’s going to cost I think, like, $5000 at the most…. They’re helping authors get their books to market. They say it’s not self-publishing or vanity publishing, but it really does sound a lot like it, not going to lie.Rad: Yes, and that $5000 is being charged to the customer. I do feel like we’re in an era of vanity publishing, and we’re seeing other companies do that kind of thing too, right? Like Amazon and Forbes Books and stuff like that?Jen: Yeah, 100 per cent. I think a lot of people want to get their work out there, and they want to not have to deal with people like me who might say, maybe change that semicolon. I don’t know.Rad: So Nathan, this startup has been around since 2021, but they’ve only been publishing books this year. What’s the kind of stuff they’re publishing?Nathan: You know, that should be an easier question to answer than it is, Rad. You go to the website — I do this a lot, this is what booksellers do to find out about books — it’s really hard to find out what they’re publishing. When we do finally find a book, the book is Biological Transcendence and the Tao by a gentleman named Carlos Andromeda. But if you want to find out about the book, you’re not going to find out about it on their website because the only thing Spines wants you to know about Carlos Andromeda is how much he enjoyed using their services and what a great deal he got.It’s kind of taken me back to the late ’90s working at Chapters in Mississauga, when I was running the local authors program. Folks would show up with a thing they’d printed, and it was often something similar to Biological Transcendence and the Tao. They’d had an experience, and that’s theirs; I love that for them. But they had a book that they wanted to sell, and it looked a lot like what Spines seems to be facilitating.Rad: The CEO of Spines, Jen, not only says that their plan is to publish 8000 books, but he also said his goal is to help a million authors publish their books. So when you hear that, what’s your reaction?Jen: I didn’t know there were a million authors that want to publish their books. Like, I get a lot of submissions in my inbox; it’s not even close to that number of people, I should just say that. I think it’s nice that people want to publish their stories. Let’s just say you’re somebody who’s doing a genealogy of your family and you want to publish that. That would be a really nice option for you.But I do wonder, what are they going to publish? Because I also used to be a bookseller and every so often somebody would come by and say, “Hey, I want to order this book.” And it would be something like “How to Build a Bomb,” and we’d say, “No, we shouldn’t order that in.” And so I’m wondering with Spines, where is that accountability? Who is going to say, no, you can’t publish this thing that is horribly, graphically violent? You can’t publish this thing that’s a conspiracy theory?Rad: Nathan, what do you make of all this?Nathan: Well, this morning I had a look at their terms. So to address Jen’s concerns, yes, they’ve covered their posteriors pretty effectively with some terms that they won’t publish things that are illegal or what have you. But setting aside how they might filter out the content, the fact is they’re paid before anything comes to market. If no books were published, Spines is getting paid. That’s a business model that tells you a lot. Spines doesn’t seem to need to be thinking too much about readers when they’re thinking about facilitating authors, maybe who submitted a manuscript to somebody like Jen and the answer was no. So if they put some money behind it, they can get to “yes” because there’s someone who will accept their money and offer the services to get it to market.You can listen to the full discussion from today’s show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.Panel produced by Jean Kim.
