What AI Means for Authors (and Publishers)

AI may be loud, but your real ideas still matter. In this episode of Kind of a Big Book Deal, Meghan breaks down what entrepreneurs, experts, creators, and thought leaders need to understand about AI, copyright, and traditional publishing. She explains why publishers are paying close attention to AI use, especially when it comes to protecting original work and avoiding copyright issues.

Meghan shares how AI clauses are already showing up in publishing contracts, what authors can safely use AI for, and where the line gets risky. She also explains the basics of copyright in simple terms, including why authors usually keep their copyright in a traditional book deal and why registration matters.

Listeners will walk away with a clearer view of how to use AI responsibly, why human expertise still has value, and why traditional publishing is not going away anytime soon. For anyone dreaming of a book deal, this episode is a smart reminder: tools can help, but your voice is still the asset.

Episode Highlights:
(0:00) Intro
(1:11) AI clauses in publishing contracts
(2:54) Why copyright matters for authors
(3:43) How traditional book deals handle copyright
(5:11) How ghostwriters and collaborators handle rights
(6:04) Fair use and copyright protection
(7:20) AI, copyright, and responsible use
(8:12) Lawsuits around AI training and books
(10:29) Publisher warnings against AI training use
(11:12) Why AI should not handle major creative work
(13:19) The pressure to adopt AI
(14:31) Why traditional publishing can survive AI
(15:24) How to take the next step toward a book deal
(15:56) Outro

Have a great idea for a book but don't know where to start? MeghanStevenson.com/quiz


Traditional publishing expert Meghan Stevenson blasts open the gates of the “Big 5”—Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, Hachette, and Macmillan—to share what every entrepreneur and expert needs to know about landing a book deal. 

In episodes released every Monday, Meghan shares wisdom and stories from 20+ years in publishing as well as interviews with authors, literary agents, and editors. She also answers questions from listeners like you. 

Whether you are an experienced entrepreneur with an empire, or are just starting out—this podcast will help you understand what you need to do in order to turn your dream of being a bestselling author into real life. 

Transcript

Welcome To Traditional Publishing

Meghan 0:00

AI might be everywhere, but it hasn't changed the book industry yet. Welcome to the Kind of a Big Book Deal podcast where entrepreneurs come to learn about traditional publishing. I'm your host, Megan Stevenson. After working as an editor for two of the biggest traditional publishers, I started my own business helping entrepreneurs to become authors. To date, my clients have earned over $7 million from publishers including Penguin Random House, Simon ⁇ Schuster, HarperCollins, and Hay House, just to name a few. In these podcast episodes, I will blast open the well-kept gates to traditional publishing. I'm going to explain what every entrepreneur needs to know about landing a book deal without losing your mind. I'm going to share stories, answer your questions, interview the successful authors I've had the pleasure to work with, and probably say platform more than a tech bro. So if you dream of landing on a bestseller list but have no idea how, this is the podcast for you, and I am so, so glad you're here.

The AI Clause Showing Up

Meghan 1:11

I've been a professional book collaborator since 2012, but I first saw an AI clause pop up in one of my contracts only a few years ago in 2024. The language in that contract was super, super simple. To quote, writers' contributions to the work, writer being me, shall not be generated whether whole or in part by the use of artificial intelligence. And then in parentheses, LLMs. Like ChatGPT, like Claude, like Google's Gemini. For context, this clause was in a contract for a manuscript that was recently published in 2026 by Penguin Random House. And when I received that contract, I actually had to carve out specifics. So for example, I use transcripts generated by AI as a resource and a reference rather than paying a lot of money for humans to create the same transcripts or doing it myself, which I did prior to AI being the thing, which honestly takes hours and frankly is beneath my pay grade today. So the agent and the client agreed to that, right? Zoom transcripts, a-okay. Next, I had to carve out the fact that my team uses AI, and specifically an LLM called Perplexity, to format citations and to do sort of the searching level of research. So we still read all the studies we put in books, but when we're looking for those studies, we use an LLM called Perplexity. Also okay, said the agent and the author. But using an LLM to generate text for the book, no fucking way. I didn't even ask for that. It

Copyright Basics Authors Miss

Meghan 2:50

didn't even occur to me, y'all, to ask for that, and here's why. Because of a little thing called copyright. So we're gonna go visit my favorite place and probably yours, Tangent Down, because understanding intellectual property law, including copyright, is crucial for entrepreneurs, experts, thought leaders, and creators like you, like me, who want to write a book. So copyright is a form of intellectual property that grants creators exclusive legal rights to reproduce, distribute, display, perform, and adapt their original work. That includes books, but also songs, music, videos, photos, illustrations, art. I could go on. But essentially, when you create anything artistic in the United States from your own brain, you automatically hold the copyright to that work. And that's true within a traditional book deal as well. This is a huge misunderstanding that proliferates online. Traditional publishers don't actually take away any of your rights as an author. Instead, what a book deal is, is a license. So the publishers license your copyright. They leverage it essentially to sell your work on your behalf in the form of a book. That's why when you get a traditional book deal, authors still hold the copyrights. Like if you're gonna open a copyright page, you will see copyright 2026 author name. This publisher, what the publisher does in terms of copyright is help to make that copyright official with the US Copyright Office. Because even though you automatically hold copyright, you can't defend it unless you have it registered. It's kind of like trademark in that way, right? Like that's how it works. So what you need to understand when it comes to AI is that traditional publishers have a vested financial interest in defending copyright. So while a publisher might have zero interest in owning your individual work, publishers do want to license that content, license your work in exchange for their investment in creating the book itself and paying you that advance on your shared earnings. So a publisher wants to financially benefit from your creativity, and that is actually what they're in the business to do. The exchange is really simple. You allow a publisher to create a product from your ideas in the form of a book, and they pay you for that opportunity. And then hopefully you share the profits. Now, my business as a professional collaborator works a little differently. So as a professional ghostwriter, collaborator, editor, I sell my copyright to my clients. Every contract I sign allows my clients and the authors I work with the right to own the work I do, as well as reproduce, display, distribute, perform, and adapt that work. Copyright is part of the service I sell as a professional collaborator, along with my expertise, my guidance, my support, my network, etc. etc. So the final thing you need to know as an expert, entrepreneur, creator, or thought leader who wants to publish a book about copyright is how long that shit lasts. So in general, the rule is the life of the author plus 70 years. After that, the work moves into the public domain where basically anybody can adapt it, which is how books like Pride and Prejudice and Zombies come about, right? Jane Austen had a copyright one back in the day, but she doesn't anymore. Yeah, so that's how it works. There's also a carve out called fair use, where you can use a snippet of a book or a movie or a song without infringing on the original creator's copyright. This is how samples show up in music, right? There is a carve out. Fair use is really complex, and you might have heard about it in school a lot because it's annoying and complex. There's no harder, fast definition of what fair use is, and partly that's because the form of art itself varies so much. What constitutes fair use of a single Taylor Swift song, for example, is going to be way different from fair use of content from our errors to our book or the errors to our videos itself or the documentary or the movie. So many options here for Tay. And fair use of Tay's content. That said, when you do register a copyright with the U.S. Copyright Office, which traditional publishers do for their authors and the books they work on, that allows the copyright holders and everybody sort of vested in that copyright, whether it's the author, the traditional publisher, etc., to sue them when someone infringes on your work. So most of the time, if this goes to court, if it doesn't get settled before that, the judge in a copyright case gets to decide what's fair use. It's up to their judgment.

How LLMs Learned From Books

Meghan 7:19

So that brings us back to from Tangent Town to the main focus of this episode, which is AI and how you, as an entrepreneur, expert, creator, or thought leader who wants to publish a book should use AI and how to use it responsibly. So a little history here. When the big tech companies built the large language models people use today, like ChatGPT, like Claude, like Gemini, like Perplexity, those tech companies needed a lot of source material to make these LLMs work. So what companies like Anthropic, like OpenAI, like Google, and like Meta did was train those AI models on free content from the internet, as well as creative work in the public domain. But often these companies went further and used pirated versions of books in order to avoid having to pay copyright holders like authors and publishers to use their work to train their models. Now, Meta is a great example and probably the most egregious. So as reported by MPR in May 2026, best-selling authors got Tureau and two of the big five major publishers, Macmillan and Hachette, filed a lawsuit stating that Meta knowingly, and I emphasize knowingly here, copied copyrighted materials from notorious pirate websites such as LibGen and Anna's Archive to train various iterations of its Lama language model, with CEO Mark Zuckerberg's personal authorization to do so. So they stepped over copyright knowing they were potentially violating copyright law. Pretty egregious, pretty ballsy, I have to say. And this is just one example. There are multiple lawsuits pending, some of which I cover on my Instagram at Meg Stevenson, if you want to check that all out and stay up to date on AI, because AI is literally changing every day. Like there is a lawsuit every week, I swear. Ultimately, though, what you need to know as an author or as someone who wants to become an author is that the companies behind today's biggest AI models didn't ask anyone's permission to train their AI models. So it's very, very likely when you use an AI model, you are likely violating someone's copyright. Ultimately, what you need to know as an expert, entrepreneur, thought leader, or creator who wants to become a traditionally published author is that the companies behind today's biggest AI models didn't ask for anyone's permission to train their models. So when you use an LLM, you are likely violating somebody's copyright. And maybe the most important part, infringing upon their ability to make a living from their creative work, which I think everyone listening to this podcast and working in traditional publishing overall wants to avoid. And that includes me. And it definitely includes Penguin Random House, who started adding a very specific clause to the copyright page inside their books. To quote, Penguin Random House values and supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized version of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader. Please note that no part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner for the purpose of training artificial intelligence technologies or systems. I check my bookshelves, y'all. HarperCollins has similar language in their books, and I expect to see similar clauses from other publishers if they don't exist already.

Responsible AI Use For Authors

Meghan 10:46

So publisher's stance is really clear. AI should never ever violate copyright. Now, what does that mean for you as an entrepreneur, as an expert, as a creator, as a thought leader who wants to become a traditionally published author? Now, I can't say for sure. I'm not an expert in your business, I'm not an expert in AI, but I do have an opinion for myself and my authors that I think could be helpful for you to decide for yourself. So, in my personal opinion, entrepreneurs, experts, creators, and thought leaders should avoid using AI for anything proprietary is substantiative. There are so many reasons for this. Obviously, I take huge issue with the fact that LLMs are built on the stolen copyrighted works of both online creators and thousands of authors. I'm also really concerned about how and where anything we put into AI will be used. But lastly, the biggest reason I'm not using AI for anything important is because the outputs are unreliable. That's because what a large language model does is predict. According to my favorite AI tool, Perplexity, and I'm quoting directly its output here, LLMs do not have grounded understanding or beliefs. LLMs operate on statistical patterns in text, not a mental model of the world. Current AI models also do not inherently know whether something is true or false. Unless combined with tools or retrieval systems, they rely on what was common in their training data and can produce confident but incorrect statements. Y'all, that is why AI hallucinates and can tell you absolutely bonker shit. It's also why it AI reliably creates images where people have three legs and four arms. So in addition to the copyright issue, this is a big reason why I haven't put AI in everything I do. At least not yet. Having predictions made based on combing the internet does not eclipse or improve upon my 20 years of experience and my human brain that understands the world and industries I'm working with in. This brain up here has 20 years of experience of working with authors. AI doesn't have that. So while it's okay to use an LLM for low impact tasks like formatting a citation, I do not trust an AI model with anything important or creative.

Publishing Will Survive Tech

Meghan 13:03

I wouldn't even trust the AI to tell me whether my grammar is correct or not. I mean, how many times have you personally disagreed with autocorrect? A lot over here, a lot. So I'm not a total hater. I do use AI in some things in my business. And I understand the pressure people feel. It can seem that you need to adopt AI now or be left behind forever. But when you start to poke at who is promoting that narrative, most of the people who are making money off you using AI are the ones promoting the narrative that you should use AI or be left behind. The actual feeling among average people is the opposite. If you feel hesitant around AI like I do, or even nervous about what it's going to unleash in the world, you're not alone. You're actually in the majority. According to a survey done by Pew Research Center last summer, half of Americans say that the increased use of AI in daily life makes them feel more concerned than excited. Count me in that group. Now, obviously, AI is going to shape our world, and that how that plays out is still developing. Now, obviously, AI is unleashed on the world now. It's going to shape what we do, and how it affects us is still developing. But I know that it's not going to replace me anytime soon. And it's not going to replace you anytime soon either. For perspective, traditional publishing has survived multiple iterations of technology, even just within my career. Readers throughout that technology have shown us that they still want and love to read real books. Trust me, I lived through the e-book revolution and back in the aughts, people were proclaiming that e-readers like The Kindle would replace print books and independent bookstores entirely. That didn't happen, like at all. And while ebooks did take some of the market, print books still exist. In fact, they thrive. Independent bookstores are opening left and right. Traditional publishing has survived so much shit, y'all, and it will continue to survive, maybe even thrive. After all, readers are still going to want authors. Your message is still going to be needed and wanted and desired and be helpful. And traditional publishers are still out there every day making dreams come true.

Free Quiz And Closing

Meghan 15:24

So when you're ready to pursue a traditional book deal, I can help you understand how to land that book deal, craft an amazing book proposal that will attract a literary agent and a big publisher, and help you write a manuscript that becomes a best selling book. So to find out where you're at in your book journey, you can take my free quiz. The link is right there for you in the show notes, or you can visit MeganSevenson.com. That's N E G H A N S T E V E N S O N dot com to find out exactly where you're at and what to do next. And until next time, cheers to your success.