BookNet and the U.S.-based Book Industry Study Group (BISG) are hoping that a new survey on AI use in the North American book industry will provide a detailed overview of how those in the industry are approaching AI, including identifying concerns and friction points. 

This year’s survey is a follow-up from the first publishing survey on the use of AI conducted by BISG last year. That survey came out of a BISG working group on AI that was first established in 2023. BookNet Canada, which took the lead on this year’s survey, made some tweaks based on feedback shared during webinars about the results from the first survey as well as answers respondents included to some of the open-ended questions in that survey. This year’s survey includes more possible answers on the particular kinds of AI potentially in use, such as vibe coding and agentic AI, as well as offering respondents the opportunity to answer questions with a little more nuance, BookNet Canada marketing and events manager Nataly Alarcón says. But not so much has changed that this year’s results won’t be able to be compared to those from 2025. 

“Our main goal is to gather the data and bring it back to people and say this is what’s actually happening. This is what people – your colleagues, the people that you work with – are telling us about how they are using AI,” Alarcón says. “Hopefully that helps, for example, employees to advocate for policies that protect their work and that protect their livelihood, and maybe leadership can use that data to make data-driven decisions. … The idea is to empower people with information.”

About 550 people participated in last year’s survey, which found that “AI use within the publishing ecosystem remains uneven and often exploratory.” The majority of respondents were based in the U.S., with only a little over 100 participants based in Canada, Alarcón says. The hope is that more people from different parts of the North American publishing ecosystem will participate in this year’s survey to allow for more comprehensive results. The survey will close on July 17, and BookNet expects to share the results in September. 

Alarcón notes that some people who have already completed this year’s survey are eager to hear how specific parts of the industry are thinking about and using AI; however, for the survey to effectively offer detailed information about multiple sectors of the book publishing industry, a large and varied sample size is required. 

To that end, they are interested in hearing from everyone who works in the book industry’s supply chain: “sensitivity readers, editors, people who work as independents, people who work as part of organizations, people who hate AI, people who love AI – we want to hear from everyone,” Alarcón says.

BookNet is already planning to run a follow-up edition of the survey in 2027.