AI in the Publishing Supply Chain: Services, Solutions, and Innovation

As part of BISG’s AI and the Book Publishing Industry webinar series, this session focuses on the organizations building, supplying, and supporting the tools and services that enable AI across the publishing ecosystem. From technology providers and production partners to marketing agencies, distributors, and platform vendors, industry partners play a critical role in shaping how AI is implemented in practice—and how quickly innovation reaches the market.

Drawing on original data from BISG’s 2025 survey of more than 500+ North American book industry professionals, this webinar explores how service providers and vendors are developing AI-enabled offerings, where adoption is accelerating, and how their perspectives differ from those of publishers, libraries, and other stakeholders. 

Attendees will gain insight into the capabilities partners are delivering today—from editorial and production support to discoverability, localization, and reader engagement—as well as the operational and ethical questions emerging alongside them.

The presentation will highlight early patterns of adoption, initial reactions from the vendor community, evolving client expectations, and areas where service providers’ approaches diverge from other sectors in the publishing supply chain. It will also examine how AI is reshaping core services such as editing and design workflows, audiobook production, targeted marketing, metadata optimization, translation, and personalized reader outreach.

What you’ll learn:

• How AI is transforming publishing services, production workflows, and marketing capabilities
• Where service providers are investing in AI—and where clients remain cautious
• Emerging use cases across editing, design, audiobook creation, translation, discoverability, and reader engagement
• Key concerns around copyright, licensing, transparency, and data protection
• How vendor innovation is influencing adoption across the broader publishing ecosystem
• What information the industry needs next to implement AI responsibly and effectively

Whether you are a technology provider, publishing services firm, distributor, platform partner, or publishing professional evaluating external solutions, this session offers a data-driven look at how AI is reshaping the services that power the modern book industry—and what that means for the future of collaboration across the supply chain.