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Studio Notes


AI, Authorship and the Crisis of Trust in Publishing
AI authorship has arrived — and publishing isn’t ready.
Books can now pass through the entire editorial process without anyone being entirely certain how they were made.
The question is no longer what we’re reading, but who — if anyone — truly wrote it.
9 min read


Attribution, Legacy and the Risk of “The Start of an Idea”
What happens when decades of creative labour are repackaged as “the start of an idea”? An industry explainer on attribution, acquisition-led growth, and why visible human authorship matters more than ever — especially in the age of AI.
4 min read


Predictions: what lies ahead for the book trade in 2026?
Publishing leaders offer predictions for 2026—AI, audio, BookTok, the Year of Reading. But what if we treated them like Roman chicken-liver omens: not certainty, but judgement? An essay on the real signs, the contradictions, and what growing up might look like for the trade
9 min read


Erasure Culture
When a phrase like "after careful consideration" is deployed, you're meant to hear moral gravity. What you're usually hearing is the soft click of a filing cabinet closing. David Salariya examines the pattern behind British publishing's quiet erasures — and the revealing moments when it suddenly moves at speed.
9 min read


Why the Society of Authors Keeps Getting Blamed - And Why the Real Problem Lies Elsewhere
Why is the Society of Authors criticised for neutrality while authors feel increasingly unsafe? Because publishers have abandoned cultural leadership. This blog explores how consultancy thinking, risk avoidance, and corporate amnesia have left the SoA carrying the weight of an industry too timid to defend its own creators.
5 min read


Two Copyright Cultures: Why France Protects Creators and Britain Protects Markets
Why does France defend authors while Britain backs “innovation”? The answer lies in two centuries of cultural philosophy: France treats creators as custodians of national identity; Britain views them as participants in a market. As AI reshapes publishing, these old instincts have re-emerged - with profound consequences for anyone who makes books.
8 min read


Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) in UK Publishing: A Deep Dive and Spilling the Beans!
Non-Disclosure Agreements in UK publishing protect trade secrets, manuscripts, and confidential deals — but they can also silence victims, bury scandals, and distort public narratives. Here’s how NDAs shape, protect, and sometimes poison the industry.
17 min read


What AI-Generated Books Reveal about Publishing
The rise of AI-generated 'slop' books on Amazon hasn’t broken publishing—it’s simply exposed the fault lines that have been there all along. If we’re serious about defending authorship, we need more than polite concern. We need credits, clarity, and structural accountability - across the board.
6 min read


The Fake Memoirs That Fooled the World
Notorious Autobiographical Fantasies. When truth becomes a plot device… Who is who? Autobiographical Fantasies Memoir is supposed to...
5 min read


The Salt Path Controversy
It’s almost poetic: a trauma memoir that ends up traumatising the publisher. Because when a story like The Salt Path begins to wobble, it’s not just the author who falls. The editors, the marketers, the readers—all are caught in the collapse of a narrative sold as unflinching truth. This is the soft lie of emotional truth—and publishing has been complicit in making it a genre.
10 min read


Dead Authors: What Happens to a Book When Its Author Dies?
When I began work on The Secret Journal of Victor Frankenstein on the Workings of the Human Body, I wasn’t just adapting Mary Shelley’s classic, I was exhuming it. Shelley, who died in 1851, had no idea her cautionary tale about ambition and monstrosity would spark not just horror films, Halloween masks and bolts-in-the-neck clichés, but an entire mythology. I imagined Victor Frankenstein not as a mad scientist, but as a curious, obsessive student doctor scribbling anatomical
30 min read


AI in Publishing: One Rule for Amazon, Another for the Rest?
AI is no longer a whisper in the wings of publishing - it’s centre stage, and the script is changing fast. From manuscript polishing to audiobook narration and translation, AI is reshaping the entire industry. But while publishers and authors wrestle with questions of ethics, copyright, and consent, one name seems to be quietly storming the stage with barely a whisper of protest: Amazon.
6 min read


Why Erasing Creators Always Backfires
What happens when a publisher decides the creator of a book no longer matters? When authorship becomes an inconvenience and branding takes centre stage? This article explores why the corporate strategy of erasing origin stories is not just ethically questionable—it’s commercially short-sighted. Books aren't toothpaste. And readers, as it turns out, have very long memories.
6 min read


Celebrity Books and the Ghostwriting Problem
What happens when the biggest names in children’s books didn’t write them? This blog unpacks the ethics of celebrity authorship, ghostwriters, and rebranded classics.
6 min read


Publishing vs Content Creation – What Modern Book Companies Get Wrong
One still lives by the pitching of ideas and editorial meetings, perhaps dog-eared manuscripts in canvas bags are long gone.
7 min read
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