AI, Publishing and the Road Ahead

On the 23rd June 2026, Richard Charkin was a keynote speaker for BookTech Collective. He spoke about the role and responsibilities of a publisher, and where AI fits into this in a modern and global publishing world. Essential for anyone working in publishing or in an adjacent industry, read his speech below.

I am honoured to have been invited to deliver the keynote address for this important initiative. Over the next few hours, you will be hearing from some of the world’s leading professionals in the use of artificial intelligence and digital technology. The focus, rightly so, will be on the global South and emerging economies and how publishers in these territories can become leaders in innovation, entrepreneurism, and sustainability. But before we address these new challenges, I’d like to set the stage with some thoughts on what really matters in our industry. 

Back in 1978, I was working as a medical editor at Oxford University Press. Without any internal consultation or market research, working on a no more than a hunch, we decided to build a list of medical books we could sell through the vibrant network of OUP branches in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. We got lucky – never underestimate the importance of luck in publishing – by identifying a maverick doctor. Maurice King, working initially at Makerere University in Uganda. He realised that treating disease in tropical countries with little human or financial resources required radical thinking and an approach to prevention and treatment unconsidered in the traditional Western medical textbooks. The books we published by him sold hundreds of thousands of copies at low prices. Arguably, his titles, including Medical Care for Developing Countries. Primary Child Care, Medical Laboratory, Primary Anaesthesia, Mother and Child Health, may have done more for the health of children and adults in the global South than many of the more feted clinical discoveries of the twentieth century. 

The publisher’s role in this example is typical and illustrates a general theme. We didn’t create the books. The authors with the help of illustrators, expert advisors, and the generosity of their employers, the World Health Organisation created the intellectual property of the books. The printers manufactured the physical products. Shippers transported the books to overseas warehouses and thence to booksellers. Doctors and nurses, often supported by local government grants, purchased the books for themselves or for the hospital library. The money from the sales returned penultimately to the publisher and finally back to the authors themselves. 

So, what was the publisher’s role then – and now? Perhaps a reasonable parallel is that the publisher, being neither the mother nor the baby in a maternity ward, is the midwife. The person who cares for the mother during pregnancy, as the fertilised egg grows from an inchoate mass of cells into a recognisable foetus, oversees the actual birth, and then ensures the baby’s immediate health and well-being. The two most important people in this scenario are the mother and the baby. The midwife’s role is important but not necessarily essential. 

In publishing, the two most important entities are the author and the book, the mother and the child. We must never forget this. The publisher is no more than the facilitator or indeed, to pick another metaphor, the conductor of an orchestra but not the players nor the composer. 

But back to the midwife metaphor. What are the qualities that make a good midwife? I guess empathy scores as highly as it does with publishers. If you don’t empathise with authors and their objectives, you need to go and do a different job. And then comes professional competence. Our midwife must understand how the human body works, not just the reproductive organs – blood, circulation, brain, hormones, nerves, psyche etc. Publishers need to understand not just their specific role – sales, marketing, distribution, finance etc – but how these functions hang together. On top of all that we expect our midwife to be using the very best, most up-to-date technology to ensure a safe birth and a healthy baby. Some technology is simple and well-established – weighing machines for babies, education on the importance of breastfeeding, thermometers – some is highly sophisticated – ultrasound, MRI, CT etc. 

So it is with publishing. As a trade, publishers have been open to the adoption of new technologies albeit often a little slow on the uptake. In some areas they have led the field. The invention of a global unique identifier in the form of the ISBN is one such innovation. In other areas, the transition from moveable type via phototypesetting to digital file creation, from hot metal to offset printing, far too slowly print-on-demand digital technology, and of course the globalisation of bookselling through the Internet via Amazon, Kobo and others. All these innovations had their detractors – typically organised labour concerned about the impact on their members’ jobs, or board directors fearful of any change which might reduce profit. Some still do but nonetheless progress was made and will continue. 

The latest, and perhaps the most potentially disruptive – for good and bad – is the main item for our conversation today and in the future, artificial intelligence. The concerns about threats to copyright, creation of fake material, the hyper-publication of new titles congesting our traditional distribution channels, the undermining of trust in information, and others are legitimate.  

But we are midwives. Our authors are fundamentally seeking readers. We must use every tool to help them. How can we not offer authors automatic audiobooks in their own voice? How can we not make every author available in all languages simultaneously? How can we not accelerate our publishing schedules in line with the speed of changing fashions? How can we not help readers find the exact book they need and help authors find the exact readers they are aiming for? How can we not work to ensure the probity of the scientific record? How can we not streamline our systems to reduce waste, both human and environmental? 

The BookTech Collective has been instigated to advance answers to some of these (and other) questions. We need to recognise our fears and address them, not by obstruction and prevarication but by debate, creativity, and risk-taking. To (mis)quote from Marx and Engels: Publishers and midwives of the world, you have nothing to lose but your chains. 

And a reminder from a bygone age, the great publisher, Sir Stanley Unwin: 

To write books is easy, it requires only pen and ink and the ever-patient paper. To print books is a little more difficult, because genius so often rejoices in illegible handwriting. To read books is more difficult still, because of a tendency to go to sleep. But the most difficult task of all that a mortal man can embark on is to sell a book. 

This is as true today as when he wrote it in 1927. 

To end on the words of that less eminent communicator, Donald Trump: Thank you for your attention.