Is AI destroying publishing, or becoming one of its most useful professional tools?
Rondanini Publishing takes a position somewhere between those two extremes.
In this episode of Between the Covers and Beyond, Luigi Pascal Rondanini sets out the Rondanini position on artificial intelligence across the book business — from writing and developmental editing to factual verification, covers, marketing, authorship and disclosure.
Rondanini uses AI extensively.
But the principle is simple:
AI is a professional tool. It is not a substitute for responsibility.
The episode examines why simply uploading a manuscript to ChatGPT and asking it to “make it better” is not professional editing; why AI can flatter authors, rationalise contradictions, homogenise prose and give generic advice; and why the answer is not necessarily to reject AI, but to build better editorial controls around it.
Luigi explains Rondanini’s approach to adversarial editing:
find the problem, show the evidence, distinguish a genuine defect from an authorial decision, separate remediation from verification and use independent checking where the risk justifies it.
The episode also looks at why different books require different controls.
A novel may need continuity, structure, character and voice analysis.
A technical finance book may require calculations to be independently reperformed.
Historical, factual and specialist books have different risks again.
Also discussed:
AI-assisted versus AI-generated content; what constitutes a material creative contribution; AI disclosure to publishing platforms and distributors; the limits of AI-content detectors; hallucinations and factual verification; preserving authorial voice; AI-generated covers and marketing; human cold readers; and why the ultimate responsibility for a published book must remain with people.
Rondanini Publishing is pro-AI and anti-slop.
The question is not simply whether AI touched a book.
The question is whether the publisher is prepared to stand behind the finished work.
Between the Covers and Beyond
Hosted by Luigi Pascal Rondanini
From Rondanini Publishing