“Yes, we have had several successes.”
Let him book
A startup called Spines apparently wants to use AI to edit and publish 8,000 books in 2025 – but it’s unclear whether they’ll be useful.
There are several problems with the premise. First, AI is a a notoriously talentless wordsmith. He will no doubt struggle to cope with the myriad tasks Spines gives him, including “proofreading, cover design, formatting, publishing and… distributing your book in just a few weeks”, according to THE Venture’s website.
Oh, and then there’s the matter of Spines publicly embarrassing himself.
“A prime example of how no one can find real uses for LLMs that aren’t scams for crooks,” short story writer Lincoln Michel wrote about the flap on X-formerly-Twitter. “Literally the LAST thing publishing needs is… AI regurgitation.”
Author Rowan Coleman agreed.
“The people behind the Spines AI publication are WITHOUT a spine,” Coleman posted on the same site. “They don’t care about books, don’t care about art, don’t care about the instinctive human talent it takes to write and edit and produce a book. They want the magic, without the work.”
Wild page
Yehuda Niv, CEO and co-founder of Spines said The booksellera British magazine specializing in the book sector, which Spines had already published seven “bestsellers”. But when Spines was pressed to provide sales figures, a company representative claimed that “the data is private and belongs to the author.” Hmm, suspicious.
Niv also promised The bookseller that Spines “is not self-published, is not a traditional publisher, and is not a vanity publisher.” This is despite the fact that the Spines website, which sells editing plans between $1,500 and $4,400, advertises to customers who are clearly looking to team up with a cheap vanity publisher.
“I sent my book to 17 different publishers and was rejected each time, and vain publishers quoted me $11,000 to $17,000,” the author of Spines’. “Biological Transcendence and the Tao: A discussion of the potential for relief from illness and aging and considerations of secular wisdom,” which does not currently have only review on Amazon. “With Spines, I published my book in less than 30 days!”
Hmm, interesting. This testimony makes Spines look an awful lot like a vanity publisher.
AI startups love to reinvent the wheel and claim it has never been done before. Like a Founder of an EdTech Startup who used AI to cover up his trivial embezzlement, or a Finnish AI company which brought a high-tech twist to the common practice of exploiting incarcerated workers.
Will this work for books? We will watch.
Learn more about AI: Character.AI hosts pro-anorexia chatbots that encourage young people to engage in disordered eating