Imagine you're in a bookstore, and you wander over to the fiction section.

There you find two shelves, one for human written novels, and one for novels written by AI.

That future may not be as far off as you think. Roughly four million books were published in

the U.S. in the last year alone. That's a more than 32% increase from 2024, according to the

trade magazine publishers weekly. It's unclear how many of those books were written using AI,

in part because software used to detect AI writing isn't always 100%

effective. And the vast majority of those four million books published in 2025 were self-published,

making it even more difficult to know the true number of books written using AI.

Later, we hear from a self-published romance author who uses AI to write her novels.

I look at it this way. AI can't unlearn what it's learned. So it's learned from my books,

from all of the books and everything out there. I'm embracing this tool. I genuinely don't think

it will go away. But AI isn't only showing up in self-publishing.

Hachette, one of the largest publishers in the U.S., canceled the publication of one of its novels,

Shy Girl. That's after allegations emerged that the author used AI to write it. The book was

originally self-published and then acquired by Hachette. This incident isn't the only one involving AI to rock the publishing world, but it marks a turning point.

I'm Jen White. You're listening to the 1A podcast. Today, what are the ethical and legal concerns of using AI,

which is often trained on copyrighted books to write new ones? And in an already crowded market,

how will lowering the bar for writing books affect readers who are already faced with millions of options? We'll get answers to

those questions and more after this short break. Stay with us. Welcome back to the 1A podcast.

We're talking about AI in publishing and book writing.

Let's get into the conversation and meet our panel.

Joining us in studio is Derek Newton.

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