{"id":6995,"date":"2026-04-16T15:21:02","date_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:21:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/?p=6995"},"modified":"2026-04-16T15:21:02","modified_gmt":"2026-04-16T15:21:02","slug":"mia-ballard-shy-girl-and-ai-in-publishing-w-jane-friedman-a-peoples-guide-to-publishing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/mia-ballard-shy-girl-and-ai-in-publishing-w-jane-friedman-a-peoples-guide-to-publishing\/","title":{"rendered":"Mia Ballard, Shy Girl, and AI in Publishing, w\/ Jane Friedman | A People&#8217;s Guide to Publishing"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>If you&#8217;re keeping up with publishing news at all, you&#8217;ve undoubtedly heard about the &#8220;Shy Girl&#8221; controversy, where Mia Ballard&#8217;s book was pulled by the publisher after claims it was written by AI. More and more stories like this are hitting the feeds all the time, from authors to book reviewers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What does this mean for the industry, and are AI detectors even reliable? Jane Friedman of The Bottom Line is back on the pod this week with Joe and Elly to talk about the AI buzz! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Want more industry insights from Jane? Check out The Bottom Line at <a href=\"https:\/\/janefriedman.com\/\">https:\/\/janefriedman.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prefer an audio experience?\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/linktr.ee\/microcosm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Listen to the episode on your favorite podcast app<\/a>.<br>Get the\u00a0<em>People\u2019s Guide to Publishing<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/catalog\/books\/3663\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>, and the workbook\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/catalog\/zines\/10031\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>!<br>Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm?\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/confirmsubscription.com\/h\/r\/0EABB2040D281C9C\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you&#8217;re keeping up with publishing news at all, you&#8217;ve undoubtedly heard about the &#8220;Shy Girl&#8221; controversy, where Mia Ballard&#8217;s book was pulled by the publisher after claims it was written by AI. More and more stories like this are hitting the feeds all the time, from authors to book reviewers. What does this mean&#8230;  <a class=\"excerpt-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/mia-ballard-shy-girl-and-ai-in-publishing-w-jane-friedman-a-peoples-guide-to-publishing\/\" title=\"Read Mia Ballard, Shy Girl, and AI in Publishing, w\/ Jane Friedman | A People&#8217;s Guide to Publishing\">Read more &raquo;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[14,12,383,11,26],"class_list":["post-6995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blogifesto","tag-books","tag-business-of-publishing","tag-current-events","tag-interviews","tag-podcast"],"my_excerpt":"<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>If you're keeping up with publishing news at all, you've undoubtedly heard about the \"Shy Girl\" controversy, where Mia Ballard's book was pulled by the publisher after claims it was written by AI. More and more stories like this are hitting the feeds all the time, from authors to book reviewers. <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>What does this mean for the industry, and are AI detectors even reliable? Jane Friedman of The Bottom Line is back on the pod this week with Joe and Elly to talk about the AI buzz! <\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Want more industry insights from Jane? Check out The Bottom Line at <a href=\"https:\/\/janefriedman.com\/\">https:\/\/janefriedman.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->\n\n<!-- wp:paragraph -->\n<p>Prefer an audio experience?\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/linktr.ee\/microcosm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Listen to the episode on your favorite podcast app<\/a>.<br>Get the\u00a0<em>People\u2019s Guide to Publishing<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/catalog\/books\/3663\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>, and the workbook\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/catalog\/zines\/10031\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>!<br>Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm?\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/confirmsubscription.com\/h\/r\/0EABB2040D281C9C\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>!<\/p>\n<!-- \/wp:paragraph -->","my_excerpt_rendered":"\n<p>If you&#8217;re keeping up with publishing news at all, you&#8217;ve undoubtedly heard about the &#8220;Shy Girl&#8221; controversy, where Mia Ballard&#8217;s book was pulled by the publisher after claims it was written by AI. More and more stories like this are hitting the feeds all the time, from authors to book reviewers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What does this mean for the industry, and are AI detectors even reliable? Jane Friedman of The Bottom Line is back on the pod this week with Joe and Elly to talk about the AI buzz! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Want more industry insights from Jane? Check out The Bottom Line at <a href=\"https:\/\/janefriedman.com\/\">https:\/\/janefriedman.com\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Prefer an audio experience?\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/linktr.ee\/microcosm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Listen to the episode on your favorite podcast app<\/a>.<br>Get the\u00a0<em>People\u2019s Guide to Publishing<\/em>\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/catalog\/books\/3663\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>, and the workbook\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/catalog\/zines\/10031\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">here<\/a>!<br>Want to stay up to date on new podcast episodes and happenings at Microcosm?\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/confirmsubscription.com\/h\/r\/0EABB2040D281C9C\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Subscribe to our newsletter<\/a>!<\/p>\n","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6995","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6995"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6995\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6996,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6995\/revisions\/6996"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/microcosmpublishing.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}