What Role Will AI Play in the Publishing Industry?

1. Serve as a Research Tool

Research is an essential component of any written work, but it can be a time-consuming process for a writer or editor. AI can help streamline the research process and make it more time efficient. 

For example, rather than using search engines and multiple websites to research a topic, AI chatbots can provide much of the information you need in one location. Chatbots such as ChatGPT are trained using a massive body of text from the internet and are also interactive, meaning you can “converse” with them on a topic. 

You can also continue to input keywords and phrases and ask them questions to deepen your research. Of course, it’s important to verify the accuracy of information provided by chatbots and other technology, as it’s not always correct.

2. Support Authors as They Write

Machines can’t replace real human authors, but they can support them throughout the writing process and save them time – which leaves more time to focus on writing. Interacting with AI and receiving feedback on questions and prompts can help writers brainstorm and may even help them overcome writer’s block. 

For example, writers who are having trouble beginning a new chapter can use AI to generate a general outline or block of text, and then use that as a starting point for their work. And for writers struggling to come up with a topic, AI-driven chatbots can provide insight into the type of content their audience might want to see.

3. Improve Marketing to Target Audiences

Along with supporting writers, AI and machine learning technology can be used to improve the marketing of new titles. It takes a lot of human resources to read a book and summarize its content to produce marketing materials, such as social media posts. 

Using AI technology – such as Wordtune Read, you can identify and summarize the key themes in a book and create relevant summaries and hashtags for promotional use. Marketing professionals can also use AI to help perform keyword research to discover and analyze what users are searching for and what brings visitors to their website.

4. Predict and Track Industry Trends

AI can be used to analyze patterns, such as customer behavior and buying trends, to predict which manuscripts are likely to be popular with a specific audience. This can help you decide where to focus investments of time and money and anticipate how the market is likely to react to a certain title or topic.

5. Advance Academic Publishing

The use of AI technology has even reached the world of academic publishing. Some journals now use AI to automate the pre-screening and review process for academic literature, which shortens the amount of time from submission to publication.

Academic writers can also use AI to their advantage. Authors can use AI writing tools to improve their concision and perform an initial grammar check – although it’s always a good idea to have your work proofread and edited by a professional, as machines don’t catch every typo and inaccuracy.

In addition, academic writing entails a substantial amount of research, and AI can help authors search by keywords, summarizing relevant publications. It can also help writers perform plagiarism checks to avoid unintentional plagiarism.

6. Translate Texts and Boost Accessibility

In a global society, it’s important that people all over the world can access significant scientific research, no matter what language they speak or where they are in the world. AI translation software and tools can help overcome language barriers by translating research into a variety of languages for worldwide consumption. AI can also make academic texts more accessible to general audiences by generating plain-language summaries and press releases of scholarly articles.

7. Convert Print Books to Audiobooks

Traditionally, it’s a time-consuming process to create audiobooks – it involves a lot of time in the studio and recruiting talented voice actors to make the recordings. The development of digital voice technology has made this process much faster and less expensive. 

Text-to-speech technology – such as Siri and Alexa – generates a recording that sounds like a real human. It’s now possible to use AI to convert an ebook into audiobook format. 

However, although this technology has come a long way over recent years, the digital voices don’t yet translate well to audiobooks or suit every genre – they lack some important features of professional voice actors, such as emotional and reactive reading, and machines are generally not able to use their voices to build suspense.

Can AI Replace Authors and Publishers?

While AI tools and machine learning have their place in the publishing sphere, they can’t replace the insight and vision of industry professionals. Content produced by machines can sound robotic or otherwise unnatural, and customers can usually tell that it’s not written by a human author. And all of the content produced by AI needs to be thoroughly fact checked, proofread, and edited to ensure accuracy and improve the overall quality.

However, despite its limitations, AI and machine learning can streamline several time-consuming processes that are common in the publishing industry, allowing publishers to focus on discovering and developing new talent, increasing revenue, and reaching wider audiences.

Conclusion

If you want to publish content that sells and consistently hits the mark, Proofed’s editorial services for AI-generated content can help. Our editors have extensive experience with a wide range of content types – from blog posts to academic journal articles to creative fiction – and can work with the guidelines of your company’s specific style guide. Schedule a call with us and get started today.