Artificial intelligence has accelerated processes in key industries in recent years, and now a startup is looking to bring the technology to publishing. Publishing startup Spines recently raised $22.5 million in funding to speed up book production using AI, promising to publish 8,000 titles in 2025 alone. Founded in 2021, the company just published its first title this year and claims to have published 273 titles in September, including 33 books in a single day.
“We want to publish up to 8,000 books next year,” Spines CEO and co-founder Yehuda Niv told The Bookseller. The ambitious goal involves reducing the traditional publishing timeline from as long as 18 months to less than three weeks using AI-powered services such as proofreading, metadata optimization, and cover design.
How Spines Works
A form of self-publishing, authors would pay between $1,200 and $5,000 per book and would retain all royalties and rights. The profitability of the model could potentially affect authors whose primary source of income is self-publishing. According to a 2023 study commissioned by the Alliance of Independent Authors (ALLi), the median income of authors who spent most of their time writing and publishing was $12,749.
Some of the biggest traditional publishers including HarperCollins, Sage, Taylor & Francis, Wiley, and Simon & Schuster are showing openness to AI, which could negatively impact employees in such roles as editor, proofreader, and cover designer.
“We are not here to replace human creativity,” Niv said. “We focus on books that are written by humans who are looking for the most efficient and up-to-date way to get their manuscript published and distributed worldwide.” Spines is not alone in stirring up the industry with AI. Microsoft also ventured into publishing when it launched its book imprint 8080 Books in an effort to shorten the gap between manuscript completion and publication.
People on both sides of the publishing world—writers and publishing employees—expressed skepticism and dismay about the announcement online.
“These aren’t people who care about books or reading or anything remotely related,” author Suyi Davies Okungbowa said in a post on the social media platform Bluesky. “These are opportunists and extractive capitalists.”