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Comment by grey-area | Hacker News Reader

$2m crime novel deal collapses amid questions over AI use

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2026/jul/31/crime-novel-de...

So a book that was “stunningly good, everyone fell in love with it. It’s a book that appeals to absolutely everyone.” now won't be published because AI was used to create it?

Personally I prefer stunningly good over exclusively human created.

I'd want to read it before passing judgement on the quality of it, not trust the word of the author's agent, one Marc Gerald of 'Europa Content', who you are quoting here. It appears a lot of people in the chain up to the editor failed at their job here, probably because they are submerged in slop submitted using LLMs and maybe the first chapter was good and had work put into it.

Clearly the editor didn't think it was stunningly good, or they wouldn't have flagged it up.

Exactly my point. Self publishing does not have these entry problems or that level of money. This is the opposite of flooding the market with generative AI

GAI is also being used by prospective authors applying to publishing houses, and they are in fact flooded with dross created with it, which is a serious problem for them.

To the extent that their reviewers get lazy and are not reading entire texts, as evidenced by this slipping through and then being caught by an editor (who did read the whole thing).

So no, this does not prove your point.

It got rejected and that's the proof that these things get accepted by the system? Sure, AI can flood publishing houses with submissions but they have dedicated people and proper vetting process before they publish. That protects slop from getting published. No such safeguards exists in self publishing which is why its easier to see effects of slop there since nothing can stop you from publishing your AI work in that market.

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