A publisher ditches its design department

Is Artificial Intelligence taking jobs?

The Bookseller reports that Oxford University Press is letting go about twenty workers from its US office, including the entirety of its US design department, just weeks after ratification of a new collective bargaining agreement. (I’ve posted before about the ongoing labor struggles at OUP.) Since Oxford is also known to have embraced Artificial Intelligence partnerships, I’m left to wonder whether design of books at OUP is being outsourced not just to other offices around the world—which would presumably have plenty of design work already in their queues—but to AI.

It’s a threat that hovers over things, with Penguin Random CEO Nihar Malaviya recently saying AI will “[make] it easier to publish more titles without hiring ever more employees.” And perhaps we’re seeing a version of that at Oxford—and a particularly sinister version, since management is letting go an entire department amid assertive labor activity by its workers. OUP’s president was quoted last year with a prediction that sprung to mind when I read about the layoffs: “I think we’ll quickly find that a theoretical insistence on human engagement withers once we’re presented with effective alternative technologies.”

This is all, of course, informed conjecture on my part, but the new era of AI seems naturally to introduce these questions. Publishers who don’t want speculation about whether they’re replacing workers with deeply problematic new technologies should make their positions on Artificial Intelligence clear. It would be nice to see trade groups become involved with providing clarity in this realm, as well.

Also this week is a happy story that, for me, seems the opposite of the grim news from Oxford’s New York office. The tiny press at the University of Akron, noisily slated for closure in 2015, not only stayed open, but—it was announced Thursday—has had a title longlisted for the National Book Award in poetry. It’s actually the second Akron book recognized by the National Book Foundation since its troubles nine years ago. Another one of Akron’s poetry titles made the NBA shortlist in 2017.

Having even one book recognized by the National Book Awards—these are publishing’s Oscars, after all—is incredibly rare, and an observer might assume that the biggest and best-resourced publishers like Oxford would dominate compared to the little Akrons of the world. But it’s often the smaller presses that do surprisingly well at the NBAs and similar awards. (There’s perhaps some overlap here with my previous writeup of Percival Everett’s work with tiny University Press of New England.) For me the takeaway is that craft matters—a message that might be worth considering at Oxford.