The Impacts of AI on the Publishing Space

Written By Ivy DeWitt

Hawthorn & Aster holds an unwavering anti-generative AI stance—and we're not here to apologize for it. In this post, we're breaking down exactly why generative AI in the publishing space is a problem: from homogenized creative output and the devaluation of human craft, to unethical data scraping and environmental destruction. We're also giving you concrete steps to protect your work and push back. This one's for every artist who is tired of watching their industry get swallowed whole.

We did the SEO. You know the drill. Keep reading for the real stuff.

Before we dive in, let us be very clear: Hawthorn & Aster holds an unwavering anti-generative AI stance. Full stop. We find the use of generative AI in the arts to be unethical. This blog is written from that lens—so if you're looking for documentation or a think-piece that rationalizes the use of technology in human-created art spaces, this will not be the blog for you.

Now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's talk about the oil slick in our ocean.

With rapid advancements in technology, we've seen a dramatic uptick in generative AI in spaces that were, historically, reserved for human creatives. AI-generated illustrations, videos, and yes, books. With these advancements, we've seen our communities become rather divided.

People seem to fall into three camps:

  • Staunchly opposed — all AI is evil and should be stopped

  • Indifferent (Selective Use) — sure, generative AI isn't great, but I'll use it to edit my manuscript

  • All For It — ChatGPT generated my cover, my illustrations, my editing, and wrote a few sections for me when I was stuck

We're not here to moralize or posture about all forms of AI (we're not going to dive into assistive AI, algorithmic AI, or anything else in this blog). We're only focusing on the impact that generative AI has on this very specific space: the publishing industry.

Let us break down the concerns, piece by piece.

Homogeneous Creative Output

To understand this concern, we have to first explain how AI is trained.

Imagine AI as a super-brained toddler. In order for the toddler to learn anything, it has to be shown. This is how you brush your teeth, this is how you eat a popsicle, cows say "moo" and birds go "tweet tweet." As the toddler grows, their language and understanding of the world expands. What was once "frogs go ribbit" turns into "this is how you write your name," then, later, "this is what a parenthetical is."

AI learns in a very similar way. By demonstration. By being fed input. And where did AI get the input?

If you guessed from pre-existing works, you're right on the money.

ChatGPT and Claude have both boasted substantial refinements in their "creative writing" functions, trained on the backs of other writers. Which, sure, can sound pretty enticing to authors who are working on a budget and can't afford editors or are stuck on a particular scene—but here's the problem: LLMs don't actually understand how language works. They merely recognize patterns, and lack any and all discernment a human artist would naturally catch.

AI takes common writing conventions, chucks it all into a blender, and spits out beautiful-sounding prose that, if you actually read it, doesn't make a lick of sense.

Same with art—at a glance, yes, visually stunning. But there are seven fingers on one hand, and one eye has the pupil of a goat.

AI doesn't have style or voice—it can merely mimic. So when it takes the most potent elements of human creativity and dumps it all into one slop-piece, something is always lost. And over time, as consumers get used to what I like to call "dirty bath water," uniqueness—the pieces that make human artistry so beautiful—starts to fall out of favor.

If platforms like TikTok have taught us anything, it's that people really like sameness. We have beauty standards, we have trends, we have comp titles. From a psychological perspective, people are drawn toward what is recognizable. Art has always existed to stand out and to push back against those conventions. It's human rebellion.

Devaluation of Human Craft

Working inside this industry, we've seen human creatives' work become more and more devalued. Illustrators in particular have been hit the hardest. After all, why would someone spend hundreds of dollars on an illustrated cover when ChatGPT can crap one out in a matter of minutes?

What's fascinating is that people don't seem to realize the snowball effect. Once we start devaluing one specific kind of art, the rest get swept up alongside it.

Today it's illustrators, tomorrow it's our books—and friends, it's tomorrow.

More and more, we're seeing authors skip editing altogether in favor of AI editing. Tools like Grammarly (which have been lauded as every author's lifesaver because no one knows how semicolons work) now offer generative AI functionality—and then there are tools like ProWritingAid that use generative AI to "spark ideas" or rewrite whole sentences (or sections) for you. These seem innocuous. These seem like added benefits to the software you already purchased, but the impact is still the same.

And allow me to remind you again: AI is not human. AI does not understand how language works. Not in the way a human can speak it.

What's even more alarming is that we're seeing books partially—or more wildly, fully—penned by AI.

We're losing potency in our art. We're losing real human voices and real human experiences. The more that dirty bath water becomes the norm, the harder it will be for real people to share their art with the world.

Revenue and Job Loss (Indie & Trad)

Which leads us to the next point: revenue and job loss for industry professionals—illustrators, editors, authors.

We're already seeing the impacts in major publishing houses, which are laying off editors in favor of AI-led editing software. On the indie side, we're seeing fewer and fewer authors working with editors, as well.

And then there are authors who are pumping out AI-generated novels and flooding an already oversaturated market, leaving the indies who have put their blood, sweat, and tears into their work to have it overlooked—not in favor of another artist's work, but a computer's.

It's already difficult for indie authors to pursue their dreams—between the costs, the marketing, the never-ending investments they have to pour in. And now we're sprinkling in iRobot competition in erotica?

Artists are being forced to step back from their creative pursuits in favor of something more stable, and it's heartbreaking to see.

But the insult to injury?

Unethical Data Scraping by LLMs

Back in the day (she says, waving her cane around and looking for her dentures) the biggest fear authors had was piracy. It was every author's worst nightmare to find out that their book had been stolen and uploaded to piracy platforms like LibGen. After all, blood, sweat, tears, months—years!—of sleepless nights spent writing, editing, and agonizing, all up in smoke because your book is now publicly available for free. Without your consent.

And now, we have to worry about our words—our stories, our characters, our style, our experiences—being thrown into a blender and spat out for someone else to use.

AI had to learn somewhere. Here's where it did:

And it doesn't stop there. Amazon recently introduced the "Ask This Book" feature, which uses AI to metabolize any book written in English. Authors were not given the ability to consent, opt out, or receive any transparency about what this data will be used for.

This is dangerous. Intellectual property is being infringed upon and there is virtually nothing artists can do to stop it. Short of writing on pen and paper and never letting our work see the light of day.

Beyond Creative Industries (Academic, Medical Research, Etc.)

The impacts aren't just being felt in creative spaces. They're also being felt in academic circles and medical research—which, to me, is the most terrifying.

AI hallucinations in academic papers and legal cases are a well-documented phenomenon.

If you're unfamiliar with what an AI hallucination is: AI is meant to be assistive in nature, but most LLMs have famously struggled with not knowing something. Instead of admitting they don't know, they'll use that toddler-brained context-mapping we discussed earlier and slap together something that sounds legitimate but is completely fabricated.

(Do you remember a time when someone told you something with their whole chest and you believed them because they said it so confidently? Yeah. My dad had me convinced there was a whole pond in my backyard that I spent weeks looking for.)

Now, let's reframe this with the understanding that generative AI is being used in medical research. Hallucinations aren't just a quirky mistake at that point. This is something that directly impacts the care of real human beings. Right now, that may not be you—you may be in perfect health. But that may not always be the case.

Which leads us to my final point.

Environmental Impacts

AI data centers require an enormous amount of resources: electricity and water to cool these supercomputers. And in doing so, they're already having significant environmental impacts. We are literally cooking our planet—for what? Sub-average werewolf smut?

So, What Do We Do?

AI isn't going anywhere. It is now so deeply ingrained in our workflows and our culture that a world without AI is an impossibility. It has existed in many iterations long before the advent of ChatGPT (Word's grammar suggestions? AI. Your social media algorithm, like your TikTok FYP? AI. Support chatbots? AI.)

What we can do is speak up, protect our work, and push for ethical use of AI.

For authors:

  • Consider adding an anti-AI scraping clause to the copyright page of your book (this isn't foolproof, but explicitly stating that you do not consent is a protection in its own right)

  • Become a member of The Authors Guild to stay up to date with AI policies and how they affect your work (https://authorsguild.org/)

  • Use your platform and voice to spread the word about the harms of generative AI in creative spaces

For artists:

  • Consider using tools like Glaze/Nightshade to effectively "encrypt" your art and stop AI from using your work to train its models (https://glaze.cs.uchicago.edu/aboutus.html)

  • Update or add a robots.txt file to your website that blocks AI crawlers (Anthropic, Perplexity, OpenAI, etc.)

  • Opt out of third-party sharing on your website's dashboard

  • Use your platform and voice to spread the word about the harms of generative AI in creative spaces

For everyone:

Want More From Hawthorn & Aster?

Subscribe for blog updates, publishing insights, and behind-the-scenes content.
Authors can also opt into our Author Newsletter for marketing promotions, service updates, and exclusive deals—just select the appropriate option when signing up!

Subscribe to Our Blog
Ivy DeWitt
Next

Self-Editing vs. Working With a Pro Pros and Cons, no bullshit