Could Automation Be Publishing’s Silver Lining?

It's widely known that ‘automation’ was considered a trigger word within the industry - synonymous with dehumanisation, AI-generated books, algorithmic culture and shrinking editorial care. Headlines reported of deepening job crises and the extinction of human judgment, predicting the reign of ‘automated’ slop.

There’s no kidding that the nature of automation is so overtly contentious (and not to mention significantly politically and emotionally charged), that its discussion is often drowned out by the anxieties already attached to it. But have we been too quick to judge?

How can it help publishers?

By September 2025, it was reported by the Association of American Publishers’ StatShot that U.S. publishing revenues were down 0.4% year-to-date, while trade publishing revenues fell more than 3%. At the same time, paper, printing, fulfillment, warehousing, and labor costs all increased. Even large publishers struggled to maintain profitability, with some reporting declining operating profits despite revenue growth.

And as for publishing sales and marketing teams, it created an almost ironic scenario in which they were expected to drive audience reach, boost sales performance, and generate more measurable ROIs with smaller budgets and a declining team count.

The actual fact is that the processes involved in producing a book and selling it are far more layered than they were before the twenty first century, and it’ll only continue to get more comprehensive.

So realising that the modern publisher is no longer simply competing for shelf space, but for visibility across algorithms, inboxes, feeds and search infrastructure, is where automation begins to be understood as less of a threat and more of a practical necessity.

How does it create major opportunities rather than an outpouring of loss?

The irony is that publishing has already embraced automation for years, just mostly behind the scenes.

ONIX distribution, rights management, invoicing and retailer data distribution are just some of the areas where automation has held the hand of publishers - thought of as an extra pair of hands to tackle the dreaded admin tasks.

But why hasn’t it been thought of for marketing?

When automation comes head to head with marketing, it incites fear and unsettlement.

Marketing sits far closer to creativity and reader trust - areas the industry understandably protects more cautiously. The idea of automating audience communication, discoverability or campaign creation has often felt uncomfortably close to automating taste itself.

And understandably so.

Publishing marketing was once built around instinct, relationships, physical visibility and slower moving campaigns. But over the last decade, the role has changed dramatically. What was once driven primarily by creative positioning is now increasingly shaped by discoverability infrastructure, algorithmic visibility, audience analytics and continuous digital performance.

And we are not suggesting creativity should disappear from that equation.

If anything, human judgement and understanding the cultural contexts may now matter more than ever. But the scale of operational demand surrounding modern book marketing has fundamentally changed and this seems to be where the pressure has weighed down on for publishers:

• Research from HubSpot found that marketers now create substantially more content than they did just a few years ago.
• Salesforce reported that 71% of customers expect personalised interactions across channels.

For publishers, this creates an almost impossible operational expectation: to maintain highly personalised, constantly active marketing ecosystems at scale.

Automation can help publishers, it can:

• Automate audience segmentation for email campaigns.
• Generate multi-format marketing assets.
• Monitor discoverability performance.
• Streamline campaign deployment across platforms.

So, the result is not necessarily less human involvement, but potentially more meaningful human involvement.