A new study from BISG finds publishing workers reporting multiple pain points and serious ethical concerns, in AI usage.

By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson

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‘Resistance and Reservations’

One of the things that makes the artificial intelligence question difficult at this point in the international book-publishing industry, is that it’s extremely hard to know how much actual use of AI is being made in publishers’ offices and operations.

While—to the frustration of many in the industry—the Generative AI issues of Big Tech training on vast swaths of copyrighted content without license or payment is all too clear (and frequently tied up in court cases), the happier idea of AI’s productivity boosts in, say, back-office operations at a publishing house are an upbeat side of the issue.

And yet, just as transparency is so hard to come by in the Big Tech stand-off, it’s hard to get even at “ground level” among many publishing operations on a day-to-day basis. When are publishing staffers using AI productivity tools? Which staffers use them? For what? How often?

Vendors of various “AI services,” of course, tend to paint a highly upbeat picture, as publishing professionals know from waves of digital-publishing focus and the now-powerful audio-sector focus. In AI, many vendors cheer various time-saving, staff-freeing gains to be made in daily operations in publishing—and they may be right, someday.

One major publishing executive whose key portfolio involves digital elements of publishing has talked during early Frankfurter Buchmesse sessions of having “having coffee with lots of people”—code for being pitched by AI  “service” vendors whose enthusiasm levels may may seem . . . caffeinated.

“The majority of organizations using AI lack formal policies or guidelines, and many have yet to institutionally adopt closed and enterprise models to better protect their data.”BISG, AI Use Across the Publishing Industry

But when the United States’ Book Industry Study Group (BISG) made a survey of book publishing industry professionals in the United States on the topic of AI usage so far, the picture was less gung ho.

In this study, most respondents work in the United States (75 percent) and Canada (18 percent). There were some 559 respondents overall, with a big 90-percent completion rate across 24 questions. As  BISG chief Brian O’Leary and operations manager Brooke Horn have explained to the BISG membership, that level of return is quite substantial for this organization’s study work.

And what arises in this interesting and fresh study—published on September 18—is a picture of a less-than avid response so far. In conversation, you may have picked up the impression that publishing houses are hand-over-fist into AI on marketing and royalty statements, for example.

However, the new study shows that at least in many quarters, the actual state of play may be “not so much.”

Some caveats do pertain here.

The data we’re sharing with you, thanks to BISG, has not yet undergone the working-group deep-analysis effort that will follow. One of BISG’s hallmarks is that it involves industry professionals in just such studies so that the most authentic, down-to-Earth implications and revelations can be established, in all areas of inquiry, not just in AI. So simply be aware that in coming weeks and months, BISG will be refining some of its understandings of the study’s initial output.

One more point: The space constraints in our initial print-magazine (from which this article comes) have allowed us to hit only some key points.

We’ll hope to develop deeper material on BISG’s work in analyzing AI usage as the organization refines its work, and as we return to our daily digital production platform, which allows us much more space, of course.

For now, let’s look at these issues.

• Most study respondents engaged in this study reported working for publishers (48 percent), libraries (17 percent) and service providers/vendors (7 percent).
  

  Image: BISG

• And at the high end, just under half of individuals (46 percent) and organizations (48 percent) reported using AI tools.
• Looking in at the areas in which respondents said they’re using AI, “administrative or operational tasks” led, as expected, at 12 percent. Data analysis was next at 21 percent; marketing was at 19 percent; metadata and title optimization was at 15 percent.

More notes of interest: 31 percent of respondents said they are ethically opposed to the use of AI; 33 percent said they’re not interested in using AI to support their work; and 43 percent said AI training is not a good use of their time.

Indeed, just 2 percent said they have “no concerns or pain points around AI.”

The most common qualms, BISG reports involve “inadequate controls around the use of copyrighted material (86 percent), hallucinations (84 percent), AI-generated books flooding platforms (81 percent), and in accurate, false, or biased training data (79 percent).

Key Takeaways

While we hope to return to some of the data from this new study as BISG’s working group develops it further, here are some of the high-level summary points that the in which BISG’s study indicates that the industry needs guidance.

• “While slightly less than half of individuals are using AI for work now, the overwhelming majority reported multiple pain points with AI, including serious ethical concerns.
• “The majority of organizations that are using AI lack formal policies or guidelines, and many have yet to institutionally adopt closed and enterprise models to better their data.
• “There’s a lot of work to be done if AI is to be adopted both ethically and efficiently, but that also indicates unique opportunities for the industry to come together and work toward solutions at the front lines.”

To repeat, we’ll have more in-depth coverage of the BISG study, and we’ll stay in touch with working group developments on it, now that we’re on the other side of the 2025 Frankfurter Buchmesse . For now, there’s information about the working group’s approach here, an informative overview.

For now, the message from this carefully handled study is that as hot a topic as AI surely is this year—and was at Frankfurt—publishers need not feel driven to dive headfirst into areas outside their comfort zones.

There is probably “less going on” inside publishing’s back offices and staff breakrooms about AI at this point than vendor buzz and popular chatter might suggest.

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More from Publishing Perspectives on Frankfurter Buchmesse, its events, and its people, is here. More from us on artificial intelligence and the near-constant debates about it in the book publishing industry today is here; and more on industry statistics is here. 

A version of this story originally appeared in our Publishing Perspectives 2025 Show Magazine, which was released on October 15 as the world’s largest book-industry trade show opened.

If you couldn’t be with us in Frankfurt this year to pick up a print copy, be sure to download our PDF of the full magazine here. 

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