Israel Centeno

The calculation of the market has never been absent from publishing. There have always been editors attentive to fashion, to demand, to what the public asked for. But there once existed a threshold, an aesthetic mediation: the manuscript passed through readers, proofreaders, and editors who filtered, who took risks, who could reject or champion an unexpected voice. There was room for the unforeseen: the work that surprised and broke through against dominant trends.

That threshold has now been broken. Today, a book can be ordered on demand and manufactured as an industrial product with the help of Artificial Intelligence. The author becomes a prompt engineer, a supervisor of machines generating chapters on request, like in-house scriptwriters for a soap opera. The publishing house no longer waits for the writer to propose: it decides the theme, commissions the product, and sells it with the assurance that it fits the forecasted market.

At the same time, the small publishing houses that once welcomed singular voices have disappeared or survive only by charging authors to be published. And the large houses no longer edit: they produce. The criterion is no longer the strength of the language nor aesthetic novelty, but the certainty of economic return.

Thus, the legitimacy of the writer no longer comes from the work itself, but from his wallet. Whoever has money publishes; whoever does not, is left out. Many, driven by the desire for recognition, pay exorbitant sums to see their books printed. And even if the work lacks literary value, rigor, or aesthetic depth, money replaces merit.

Here the issue of the author’s self-esteem arises. The legitimate aspiration to see one’s work published becomes a trap when publication is confused with legitimacy. The so-called vanity presses offer this illusion: a printed book but no readers; the title of “writer” but no work recognized for its value. The result is bitter: an author who has invested money and emotions receives, in addition, degrading treatment—few copies, exploitative contracts, editors excusing themselves with the precariousness of the market.

Yet the deepest wound lies elsewhere: publishing houses no longer legitimize through critical reading, but through market prediction. In the past, a manuscript could, against all odds, find a reader who discovered in it a spark of truth or beauty. Today publishers pre-fabricate catalogs, genres, and even literary prizes, reducing the margin of error to guarantee secure sales.

In this world of self-publishing and publishing on demand, where Artificial Intelligence accelerates processes and sours authenticity, the genuine creator finds himself more alone than ever: alone before a market that renders him invisible, and before a system that no longer believes in the work but only in the product.

I recognize that I write these lines as a reaction to change. But not every change is good, and not every change brings benefits to what it touches. Perhaps, taken as a whole, all of this may eventually produce something positive for society or for the cultural industry. Yet for the art of writing, for the craft of the writer, I doubt it.

I admit to being conservative in this: I cannot see how, in the future, the value of a literary product will be judged and legitimized with fairness. What will those mechanisms be? What criteria will sustain the difference between the authentic and the prefabricated, between what is alive and what is manufactured?

At least until now—either I am shortsighted, or those mechanisms have not yet appeared