{"id":243934,"date":"2025-10-27T10:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T10:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/243934\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T10:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T10:46:07","slug":"ai-can-help-authors-beat-writers-block-says-bloomsbury-chief-bloomsbury","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/243934\/","title":{"rendered":"AI can help authors beat writer\u2019s block, says Bloomsbury chief | Bloomsbury"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Authors will come to rely on artificial intelligence to help them beat writer\u2019s block, the boss of the book publisher <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/business\/bloomsbury\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" data-component=\"auto-linked-tag\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Bloomsbury<\/a> has said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Nigel Newton, the founder and chief executive of the publisher behind the Harry Potter series, said the technology could support almost all creative arts, although it would not fully replace prominent writers.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cI think AI will probably help creativity, because it will enable the 8 billion people on the planet to get started on some creative area where they might have hesitated to take the first step,\u201d he told the PA news agency.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cAI gets them going and writes the first paragraph, or first chapter, and gets them back in the zone,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd it can do similar things with painting and music composition and with almost all of the creative arts.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Newton, who founded Bloomsbury in 1986 and signed JK Rowling in the 1990s, said there could be a \u201cproblem\u201d if AI is used to write entire books. However, he said that readers ultimately look for books written by famous authors.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cWe are programmed deep in our DNA to be comforted by the authority and the reliability of big brand names, and that applies more than ever to the names of big writers,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">\u201cThere will be some shoddy content out there so people will turn increasingly to sources of authority for reassurance,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Bloomsbury sales have been increased by a roster of high-profile authors in recent years, including the fantasy author Sarah J Maas, whose popularity has risen on TikTok.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Maas, the author behind the \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/2025\/mar\/08\/romantasy-fiction-books-women-men-heroes\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">romantasy<\/a>\u201d series A Court of Thorns and Roses, has sold more than 70m copies of her books in English across the world. All of the titles have been published by Bloomsbury.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">Last week the publisher, which is headquartered in London and employs about 1,000 people, experienced a share rise of as much as 10% in a single day after it reported a 20% jump in revenue in its academic and professional division in the first half of its financial year, largely thanks to an AI licensing agreement.<\/p>\n<p><a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"#EmailSignup-skip-link-11\" class=\"dcr-jzxpee\">skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-rsfwa\">Sign up to Business Today<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-1xjndtj\">Get set for the working day \u2013 we&#8217;ll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning<\/p>\n<p>Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/help\/privacy-policy\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/privacy\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Privacy Policy<\/a> and <a data-ignore=\"global-link-styling\" href=\"https:\/\/policies.google.com\/terms\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" class=\"dcr-1rjy2q9\" target=\"_blank\">Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n<p id=\"EmailSignup-skip-link-11\" tabindex=\"0\" aria-label=\"after newsletter promotion\" role=\"note\" class=\"dcr-jzxpee\">after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">However, revenues in its consumer division fell by about 20%, largely due to the absence of a new title from Maas.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">While Newton argued that AI could help new writers, many prominent authors have clashed with AI companies in recent years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"dcr-130mj7b\">In September, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/technology\/2025\/sep\/05\/anthropic-settlement-ai-book-lawsuit\" data-link-name=\"in body link\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">AI company Anthropic agreed to pay $1.5bn (\u00a31.1bn) to settle a class action lawsuit <\/a>in the US by book authors who argued the company took pirated copies of their works to train its chatbot.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Authors will come to rely on artificial intelligence to help them beat writer\u2019s block, the boss of the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":243935,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[256,254,255,64,63,105],"class_list":{"0":"post-243934","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-au","12":"tag-australia","13":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243934","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=243934"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/243934\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/243935"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=243934"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=243934"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=243934"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}