Agents say editors are using AI for rejection letters
Wired reports Hachette, HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster staff are using AI tools in-house, with agents flagging a pattern in rejection emails
Here's the detail that'll make you re-read every rejection you've ever gotten. Agents told Wired they've been comparing notes and finding the same AI fingerprints — that "not this, but that" construction, the rule of three — across emails from different editors on different books. Nobody's confirmed a policy here, just agents spotting a pattern. But a pattern spotted by the people who read hundreds of these letters for a living is worth taking seriously.
Why it matters to you: If some of your rejections are coming from an editor who leaned on an LLM to write them, the "feedback" in that email may be worth less than you think.
This story ran in the Coral Wire edition of Thu, Oct 15 2026, when the Coral Index stood at 20/100 (Storm warning).
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- Publishers Use AI for Marketing Copy, Rejection Letterslunch.publishersmarketplace.com
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