Companies are leveraging generative artificial intelligence to perform marketing, creative, and administrative tasks to maximize operational efficiency and financial strength. That includes publishing companies. AI is a game-changer that can redefine the scope of publishing, but depending on the point of view, AI is either a pot of gold or a creative nightmare.

In Shimmer, Don’t Shake: How Publishing Can Embrace AI, Nadim Sadek provides instructive guidance for integrating AI into publishing operations. He first provides a comprehensive history of publishing that connects new technological discoveries to evolutionary changes that inevitably transformed the publishing industry. By visiting the ancient oral traditions, cave paintings, Egyptian hieroglyphics, Sumerian Cuneiform symbols, and papyrus scrolls, Sadek brilliantly connects the dots between the Industrial Revolution and the digital age to inevitable disruptive changes in the publishing industry.

To illustrate, mass production and distribution of content were enabled through the printing press. Twenty million volumes of the 420-line Gutenberg bible were printed by 1470. That was only the beginning. Machine learning, desktop publishing, and personal computing ultimately replaced handwritten manuscripts in the late-20th century.

AI enables automated content generation, immersive experiences, and recommended reading lists through the use of algorithms. Even so, publishers shouldn’t fear AI, Sadek says. The industry adapted to self-publishing, print-on-demand, audiobooks, and e-readers. Publishers will likewise incorporate AI-driven solutions into operations without destroying the industry and needlessly sacrificing creativity, quality, and employee satisfaction.

According to Sadek, the industry will systematically incorporate generative AI into business models in the coming years, too, as “… core and fundamental human creativity and ingenuity remain irreplaceable. Book publishing can thoughtfully adopt AI technologies while ensuring they complement (without replacing) the imaginations of authors and others in the publishing industry.”

With smart planning, publishers can sell more books while authors expand their platforms with AI-driven methods. Even further, publishers can utilize AI in several ways, including replacing repetitive tasks, streamlining royalty payments, optimizing demand forecasting, selecting paper, and measuring marketing impacts.

AI can also be utilized to strengthen and address legal work, translations, editing and proofing, and to connect with customers more meaningfully through list creation and content curation.

Sadek paints a favorable picture of the use and integration of AI into publishing operations by chronicling how the industry has always embraced new technology. He does so by identifying several core operational impacts along with points of caution. This book is a solid and objective resource tool for strategic and tactical planning.

Publishers can (and should) leverage AI for operational growth but must do so without sacrificing human ingenuity. Publishers must continue to be transformational change agents by implementing and designing processes, products, and solutions in dynamic, fast-paced, and ever-changing environments without sacrificing intellect, experience, skill, passion, and intuition.

Most importantly, publishers should continue to foster and build community and provide a personal touch to authors, customers, vendors, and partners. They shouldn’t lean on AI so heavily to sacrifice having an operation with a soul. Connections should be distinctly human, exuding attributes such as emotion, passion, empathy, and joy in policies, promotional materials, and everyday interactions. These differentiators and competitive advantages set publishers apart from competitors. Don’t sacrifice them.

---