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A $2.5m Book Deal Was Cancelled. Every Author Should Worry.

Alyssa Matesic

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A debut thriller author was offered a $2.5 million deal from a major publisher...until he was accused of using AI. Here's how he responded and what this latest AI scandal means for the publishing industry (and all writers) going forward.

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THE AI ACCUSATION THAT COST $2.5 MILLION
00:00 Intro
00:59 What happened
04:31 The author’s pushback
06:59 Publishing in crisis
09:59 What should writers do?

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My name is Alyssa Matesic, and I’m a professional book editor with over a decade of book publishing and editorial experience. Throughout my career, I’ve held editorial roles across both sides of the publishing industry: Big Five publishing houses and literary agencies. The goal of this channel is to help writers throughout the book writing journey—whether you're working on your manuscript or you're looking for publishing advice.

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20 Comments

@AlyssaMatesic Creator 1 month ago Pinned

Writers, what are YOUR feelings about AI and the future of publishing?

@TheGreatDenial 1 month ago

To test AI detectors, I put in a short story that I originally published in 2014 in a literary journal—well before AI was an issue. It came back as 86% AI generated. Since that moment, I have found AI detectors to be highly suspect.

@ladyethyme 1 month ago

This just makes me so mad. What do they expect us to do? AI says Frankenstein is AI. Wtf

@volkerding 1 month ago

The best part about the book I’m writing is that it sucks so bad no one is going to accuse me of using AI. 🙃

@20Dare_Devil 1 month ago

Does this mean authors need to record themselves writing their book now?😭

@virginiaweir-hj1rt 1 month ago

If I were Falade, I'd self-publish the novel and give the publisher the middle finger.

@JoJo-zl7qh 1 month ago

This is a ridiculous story in my opinion.
On one hand everybody talks about how horrible AI generated work is. And the stuff I’ve seen confirms that. But then on the other hand apparently it’s written so well that 14 people in the industry, who you would think would be really good at knowing what’s good and what’s not, love an apparent AI generated book? It doesn’t make sense. Either it’s badly written slop or it’s not. You can’t have both ways.

@rca8309 1 month ago

Given that Google automatically produces AI summaries for every query by default now, it's practically impossible for anyone to completely avoid it even if they want to.

@marmantole 1 month ago

Who the heck is going to want to be repped by that agency now??

@Dimitarsdim 1 month ago

What's baffling is if this manuscript was 97% AI written, how did the agent/s and the dozen of publishers not immediately suspect anything. Instead they were raving about the book. Wouldn't at least one of these professionals immediately spot something was off if it was so clearly AI-generated. This author must have used some real advanced AI from the future to be able to fool so many experts.

@FatCatAttacked 1 month ago

In the screenwriting world there’s a production company, who I won’t name, that is actively taking screenplay submissions to consider producing them from development to distribution. However, they are using AI software to parse through submissions to determine the strength and potential of each script, and only then will a real pair of human eyes take a look. This normalization of feeding unpublished, hard work into an AI algorithm, only for it to possibly be used against you if that data is shared with other models such as Pangram, is textbook dystopian horror. I hate this timeline we live in.

@DrShaym 1 month ago

It's absurd to rely on AI to detect AI. These AI detection tools are basically automated defamation machines. Sooner or later, they will be sued into oblivion.

@kristenlong5244 1 month ago (edited)

The one thing that I am taking away from these AI scandals is that writers now have to keep notes and documentation about every thing concerning their manuscripts. All because these AI companies and AI detention software are constantly pushing and acting like real people cannot be creative on their own.

@katryn77 1 month ago

Authors need to start including a clause with their submissions formally prohibiting any agent or publisher from feeding their manuscript into any AI tools beyond spellcheck. Especially cloud based tools.
1. If you haven't paid me, you have no legal right to distribute my intellectual property to a third party without my express consent.
2. If said agent/publisher cannot assess my work without using AI tools, I cannot trust their experience, knowledge, judgment, or capability to edit or market my work. I do not want to work with anyone who is unable or unwilling to give my work their real attention.

@stelladarkley1155 1 month ago (edited)

AI detectors are completely unreliable. I ran a couple of my old uni essays through several checkers just out of curiosity, and most flagged them as 85%+ AI-generated—which is physically impossible given when I actually wrote them. It’s absolutely wild watching how all these new tools are making a total minefield of the landscape, for both writers and publishers alike!

@VickiWeavil 1 month ago

The fact that all these AI programs were fed the STOLEN texts of innumerable authors (including me) to "train" them means.... The AI detectors will automatically flag most book manuscripts as having been written with AI because the data in their memory banks is ACTUAL HUMAN WRITING that was ripped from books written by ACTUAL HUMAN AUTHORS. It's totally ridiculous to have any trust in any current AI "detection" software.

@amatsu9752 1 month ago

LMAO the irony. Putting faith in AI detection tool to help stop people from using AI. I'm convinced the literary world is full of idiots and virtue signalers.

@zugabdu1 1 month ago

I don't like how the agent's standard was that they couldn't prove AI wasn't used. How do you prove a negative like that?

@DavidLewis-v4m 1 month ago

That's another thing. Who goes out of their way to make sure a 2.5 million dollar deal fall through, one which they stand to make a sizeable portion of themselves, when nobody asked them to? Who wakes up and says, "You know, instead of doing nothing and taking a quarter of a million dollars for myself, and being the most awesome agent who ever lived who got the best deal in HISTORY for a debut author, turning me into a talent magnet who has to beat potential clients away with a stick, I'm going to accuse my own client of lying to purposely ruin everything at the last minute."?