The past six months in the world of AI, writing and publishing has been frenetic. I liken it to the Zoomies my cat does around the house sometimes. If you don’t own a cat or dog you’re probably wondering what Zoomies are? Well, they’re when your cat or dog suddenly takes off and races around your home – down the hallway, up and over the couch, your bed, kitchen top…everywhere at full speed. And, just as quickly as they started, they stop.

Literally EVERY week over the first six months of 2026 there’s been some major event, activity, announcement, insight, horror story in relation to AI, writing and publishing. Here’s my shortlist.

1. Anthropic CEO Dario Amara visited Australia and got to meet our Prime Minister as Australia now wants to position itself as the next data centre Mecca. Of course, Dario and the other tech bros want Australia to change our copyright laws as they are based on ‘fair dealing’ and not ‘fair use’, the latter being how all the tech companies get around paying anyone with IP and copyright in their works. Currently the Australian government is not budging.

2. AI companies buying up, chopping up and pulping books on an industrial scale. It’s been reported that Anthropic and other artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

3. Write and publish a book for $40

I saw this promotion came through from the Entrepreneur magazine.

“This $40 AI Book Generator Lets Busy Entrepreneurs Publish Without the Learning Curve.” The ‘ad’ breathlessly states: “This AI-powered tool helps you create published books in minutes. Right now, you can even lock in a
lifetime subscription to xxxx plan for just $39.99 (MSRP $149).”

This horrified me, even though you can get something ‘published’ like this will probably damage your reputation, cost you money and impart nothing more than a complete lack of respect for your peers and potential clients.

4. But it’s not all doom and gloom

The global self-publishing market reached $1.85b in 2024, and is predicted to reach $6.16b by 2033. In 2023, there were more than 2.6 million self-published titles with ISBNs compared with a little more than 563,000 traditionally published titles.

5 things to do

1. If you published a book in the 2025-2026 year enter into the Australian Business book awards. Entries are open now and close on 21 August 2026.

Several of our clients have been finalists and winners in the past so don’t be shy. I am a long-standing judge of the Awards (no I can’t judge books I’ve worked on). CLICK HERE

2. Make a conscious decision about what your share online and what you don’t. With the AI companies scraping everything they can it’s important to protect your IP and models as much as you can. So, think twice before you share too much.

3. Successful self published authors are active in promotion, distribution and engagement with their primary audiences. What have you done in the last month to share your book, or insights from it to your audiences? Consistent engagement over time is the way to leverage your book and build your profile.

4. Read this essay in The Atlantic. CLICK HERE
This Atlantic essay argues that Pope Leo XIV’s AI encyclical offers something missing from many AI debates: a
moral vocabulary for discussing not just technological risks, but deeper human failings. AI is framed as part of a wider crisis of dignity, responsibility, power, and moral character. Pope Leo’s intervention matters because it shifts the debate away from machines and back toward human values.

5. Author Interviews with Jaqui. Let me know if you’d like to participate in one of my Author Interviews. It’s fun, helps promote you and your book (good for search). Contact me directly.

5 things from The Book Adviser

1. The Yellow Shelf PodCast. Looking for a PodCast to help gain more exposure for your book. Look at the Yellow Shelf Podcast, and a weekly global Substack newsletter (with 20,000+ global subscribers) who are all Book and Podcast curious humans. CLICK HERE

I’ve spoken with Jo Fink who runs this and she would be keen to hear from authors. Jo has interviewed more than 300 authors in the last few years, spanning every book genre and representing voices from across the globe.

2. Upcoming book launches:
Late August: Government 3.0. A Vision for Public Service in the Age of AI. Victor Dominello with Daniel Nellor
CLICK HERE

21 September: Nation Building. How Immigration Made Australia, by Anthony Brewster and Philip Ruddock
CLICK HERE

Early October: Start-up Investing. Success, Stamina and Serendipity. A Practical Guide, by Dr Eileen Doyle 

3. A few weeks ago the Prime Minister delivered an important speech about AI in Australia and in it he reinforced the Government's commitment to creators and copyright. The next steps involve working with the newly established Office of AI to ensure tech companies are transparent, pay ongoing compensation for the theft of copyright work, and appropriately license copyright material into the future.
Read more about this CLICK HERE.

4. Keep thinking and writing yourself. Researchers at Stanford and MIT have shown that people using AI produce ideas more quickly, but their ideas also become significantly more similar to one another. AI increases productivity while reducing diversity of thought.

Other researchers have found that AI-generated writing exhibits increasingly recognisable stylistic patterns. Even when discussing different subjects, models often rely on similar structures, vocabulary, transitions, and rhetorical devices. As Stephen Klein notes:
"Prediction is fundamentally an exercise in probability.
The highest-probability answer is rarely the most original one."

"The future will not belong to those who merely use artificial intelligence.
It will belong to those who remain intelligently different."

5. Is proofreading really necessary? Absolutely. I have been writing company histories for over 35 years and I ALWAYS get my final draft of the manuscript proofread. AND I get a human proofreader to undertake this. While there are now ‘reasonable’ AI proofreading tools’ none that I have come across are as good as a human proofreader who is well-briefed. Sure there’s a significant cost different between the AI options and the human one. So ask yourself this question. What is your reputation worth? Read more about this CLICK HERE.

5 things to know

1. What is a Style Guide and why you need one. A style guide is a written document that is a reference point for you, your proofreader and others to follow when deciding what spelling, punctuation and grammar conventions you choose to use in your book. Creating your own Style Guide is important is because it will save you time and money. If you have a Style Guide in place before you start writing you can apply it from the beginning rather than having to back through your whole manuscript and fix it up. The more consistent your writing is the less time it will take a proofreader to check and fix it…and this will save you money. 

2.  How to turn up in AI Overviews. With ‘search’ changing you need to change the way you approach SEO. SEO is still important as searches in Google are still significant. But you now need to also think about AEO - Answer Engine Optimisation. A short-cut way to think about this is ask yourself “What would people type into AI search engines that means your book/content would provide the clearest, simplest answer for. Then review what you are writing with this in mind. Also, spread your activity. LinkedIn, newsletter, YouTube, articles, PodCasts, Reddit…and be consistent with your messaging. It takes time but start now.

3.  AI companies buying up, chopping up and pulping books on an industrial scale. It’s been reported that Anthropic and other artificial intelligence labs are in a new arms race to buy up millions of rare books, slicing them open, scanning the pages and pulping the remains — sparking concerns that the last remaining copies of out-of-print texts are being destroyed on an industrial scale.

Rare booksellers across Europe are seeing a similar surge in purchase requests which they suspect are coming from AI labs in America.

I’ve been wondering what to do with the copies of the books I have published and/or written and published. I have one copy of each. I am now thinking I’ll just keep them safely stored away and NOT digitise them.

4. The global self-publishing market reached $1.85b in 2024, and is predicted to reach $6.16b by 2033. In 2023, there were more than 2.6 million self-published titles with ISBNs compared with a little more than 563,000 traditionally published titles.

5. Company histories I’ve been working on. Edgell. 100 Years; Thomas Global @ 80; Parterre. 40 years of timeless design; Genus. A WA Success story. I am also working with four people on their Memoirs/family stories

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