A startup publisher has claimed it aims to “disrupt” the book industry by leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to publish 8,000 books in 2025 alone. Founded in 2021 and publishing its first title this year, Spines is a startup technology business that offers paid use of AI to proofread, produce, publish, and distribute books. The company charges up to $5,000 per book, but takes just three weeks from manuscript to publication.
Spines isn’t the only technology company trying to make a name for itself in the publishing world. Last week, tech giant Microsoft launched its own publication, 8080 Books, to accelerate that, telling the Guardian that “technology is accelerating the pace of almost every industry except publishing.” The company also announced that it will begin selling printed books published by its publisher, 8th Note Press, in bookstores starting early next year.
Spines recently secured $16 million in seed funding and claims to have published 273 titles in 2024 so far, 33 of which were published on the same day in September. “We hope to publish up to 8,000 books next year. Our goal is to help 1 million authors publish their books,” said Yehuda Niv, CEO and co-founder of Spines, in The Bookseller told.
“Three years ago, we realized that the publishing industry was about to be disrupted by an emerging technology called AI,” Nibb said. At the time, he was running a hybrid publishing and publishing services business in Israel called Niv Books. “I realized that I had two choices: I could be made irrelevant by AI, or I could lead this opportunity into the world,” he said.
Of course, AI is already “disrupting” the publishing industry, with last week’s news that HarperCollins US is asking some non-fiction authors to hire Microsoft to train their large-scale language models (LLMs). There was news that they were seeking permission to license the . A number of university presses, including Sage, Taylor & Francis, and Wiley, have already signed deals to provide tech companies with backlists for training chatbots and other AI tools. In early November, The Bookseller reported that Dutch publisher Veen Bosch & Keuning (VBK), owned by Simon & Schuster, was “testing” the use of AI to translate a limited number of titles into English. ” was reported to be in progress.
Like Microsoft’s 8080 Books, Spines is all about speed. Niv claimed that the platform can reduce the time it takes to publish a book from 6-18 months to 2-3 weeks. Authors are willing to pay “tens of thousands of dollars” for publishing services for self-published books, but $1,200 to $5,000 for automatic spine proofreading, cover design, metadata optimization, and limited translation services starting with Spanish. It costs dollars, he argued.
Authors pay for publishing services and keep 100% of the royalties and rights to their words once their book is published. This looks like self-publishing. But Niv insists that Spines is “not self-publishing, not a traditional publisher, not a vanity publisher.” He further added: “We’re a publishing platform. It’s a new concept.”
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