Three of the Big Five US book publishers have been quietly folding generative AI into everyday editorial and marketing work even as the industry publicly battles the technology in court and in author contracts, Wired reported. Interviews with more than two dozen employees at HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster and Hachette, all speaking anonymously to protect their jobs, describe tools like Claude and ChatGPT being used to email literary agents, write publicity copy, design cover art and generate marketing materials.
The findings sit alongside a year of visible AI fights in publishing, including a lawsuit against Google over copyright and the cancellation of books by authors suspected of using AI, such as Hachette's horror novel "Shy Girl." According to Wired, editorial staffers say those publicized cases represent only a small share of the real total. One editor told Wired that every imprint has an unreported story of a well-regarded author losing a book deal over AI use.
At HarperCollins, senior leaders purchased Claude licenses from Anthropic months ago but, according to a current employee cited by Wired, quickly realized they did not know how to implement them. Dozens of junior and senior staff were then assigned, in the employee's words, to become "AI Champions," tasked with surfacing use cases in monthly brainstorming sessions.
When some HarperCollins employees raised concerns this spring about the legal, ethical and environmental impact of AI during one of those sessions, a person leading the meeting dismissed the concerns as the cost of doing business, according to an attendee. A statement was later added to the company's internal employee portal saying that while AI does have an environmental impact, it is a small part of most individuals' total digital carbon footprint, Wired reported.
One HarperCollins employee told Wired the brainstorming sessions felt like a slap in the face, saying staff had spent years making the case for better pay only to watch the company spend money instead on software most employees did not want. Wired noted the average entry-level salary for New York City publishing employees at the Big Five and Scholastic was $47,583 in 2023. Staffers said HarperCollins has also bought licenses for ChatGPT and Jasper, a platform marketed as running end-to-end marketing workflows.
Publicity copy, the text used to pitch books to booksellers, journalists and critics, is one of the most common AI use cases across all three publishers, according to workers Wired spoke with. A Big Five publicist called the practice short-sighted, telling Wired that publicists have a duty to engage in good faith with media contacts who have little tolerance for AI-generated pitches. Meg Reid, publisher of the independent Hub City Press, told Wired that AI-written marketing feels inevitable for the Big Five, predicting a widening split between corporate publishers chasing efficiency and smaller presses insisting the humans involved are the whole point.
Literary agents this year began suspecting specific Big Five editors of using AI to write rejection letters, comparing emails across different books and finding what one agent described to Wired as classic AI writing patterns. Employees at Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins and Hachette told Wired they believe the agents were right. A Hachette spokesperson told Wired the company supports AI tools for operational purposes that help authors' books reach more readers but does not support creative uses, including communication with authors and partners.
Simon & Schuster's global chief marketing and communications officer, Wibke Grutjen, told Wired employees across all functions have access to a limited number of vetted enterprise AI tools on a non-mandatory basis, with the goal of freeing employees for deeper creative work alongside authors. Workers at the company also attended a workshop with OpenAI representatives who, according to one attendee, had no real understanding of what publishing staff do, yet recommended using ChatGPT to draft agent emails, a practice Wired reported has spread at HarperCollins and Hachette as well.
Contracts and a staff letter
In May 2024, Simon & Schuster ran an internal contest for the best AI use cases, awarding $10,000 to the winner and $5,000 each to two runners-up, staffers told Wired. The company has since pulled back some of that push after employees complained repeatedly in town halls, one employee said. Staffers also told Wired that AI-generated assets are appearing in cover art, with some foreign presses distributed by Simon & Schuster openly disclosing AI use in their designs.
Agents told Wired they fear publishers could paste manuscript text into AI tools to generate rejection letters or publicity copy, prompting some to add contract clauses barring the practice. One HarperCollins source said editors who asked whether they could run a full manuscript through an open-loop AI tool were told by the company's legal team not to. Hachette employees are bracing for the company's AI policies to shift under new chief information officer Carl Hixson, who previously served as chief technology officer at SRMG, a Saudi state-backed company Wired described as having publicly embraced agentic AI.
Some staffers told Wired they have turned to AI reluctantly after layoffs shrank their teams and multiplied their workloads. One employee said large teams have been cut to five or six people handling double or triple the books, adding that the company, not the staff cutting corners, deserves the blame for forcing the shortcuts.
Word spread among Simon & Schuster workers in recent weeks that the company was trialing Skan AI at the apparent urging of KKR, the investment firm that bought Simon & Schuster in 2023, according to Wired. Skan AI's own website says its product gives leaders the evidence base to reduce costs, prioritize automation and meet board-level transformation mandates. Employees began gathering signatures on an open letter to CEO Greg Greeley opposing the move, citing both surveillance concerns and fears that the software's automation-discovery tools could be used to replace them.
New York magazine's Book Gossip newsletter published news of the letter on October 6, Wired reported. That same day, Greeley sent staff a memo confirming the company had been exploring Skan AI's Blueprint product but said no decision had been made to use Blueprint or any other productivity-monitoring or workflow-analysis tool.
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