Booktalking - All about Shy Girl and whether AI in publishing is more like plutonium or salt

May 6, 2026

Hosts Michael Tamblyn and Nathan Maharaj dove deep on the controversy around the book Shy Girl, which was cancelled by its publisher who alleged it was largely AI-generated.

Links on Shy Girl:

• The video from January 2026 that seems to have led to Shy Girl's cancellation: i'm pretty sure this book is ai slop - YouTube
• Publishing news journalist Alexandra Alter on the controversy over the cancellation of Shy Girl: A.I. Is Writing Fiction. Publishers Are Unprepared. - The New York Times
• Publishing industry analyst Thad McIlroy on what NYT omitted from their piece: I Broke the Year’s Biggest Literary Story. The New York Times Took the Credit | The Walrus
• Two very "inside baseball" overviews of what happened:
  • The New Publishing Standard's deep dive on Shy Girl
  • Publisher’s Weekly industry analysis
• What might be the last extant page on any of Hachette's sites about the book: Shy Girl: Read the femgore revenge novel that EVERYONE is talking about! by Mia Ballard - Books - Hachette Australia

Other links from this episode:

• Why AI detection is hard People who frequently use ChatGPT for writing tasks are accurate and robust detectors of AI-generated text - ACL Anthology (mistakenly attributed to MIT in the episode)
• Past episodes of this show that touched on the use of AI in book publishing:
  • Michael bets on "AI Sally Rooney" (from October 2024)
  • Anna Gomez enlisted AI for research assistance when writing a romance road trip (November 2024)
  • Sean Michaels wrote a book about AI and art by using AI for parts of it (November 2023)

More author interviews at kobo.com/conversation

Find past Booktalking episodes here