Rakuten Kobo rejects nearly half of self-published submissions citing AI
Technology
Rakuten Kobo just shut the door on nearly half of its self-published book submissions in 2025, mostly because of worries about AI-generated content.
Out of all the rejections, about 80% were flagged as likely written by AI.
The company says it's getting harder to tell what's real and what's not.
Michael Tamblyn admits detection tools failing
Kobo CEO Michael Tamblyn admits the company's usual systems can't handle the surge in machine-written manuscripts, with detection tools often missing the mark.
As more people use AI to churn out books, sometimes even scraping 10 thousand apple pie recipes from the web, the number of self-published fiction titles is rising fast.
Tamblyn stresses that being open about how AI is used matters.