08/24/2026
A publisher just killed a $2.4 million book deal because nobody could prove a human wrote it. Wait, what?
Literary agents pulled the deal because they couldn't authenticate how the manuscript came together, and it wasn't a quality complaint or a legal problem. It was a trust problem, the first case like it I've seen, and I doubt it's the last.
This isn't really about plagiarism anymore. It's about proving you wrote the thing at all, and that question isn't staying with novelists.
Ghostwritten memoirs, business books built from a keynote, "as told to" projects, all of it is headed for the same test.
If you're working on a book right now:
save your drafts, your notes, your voice memos, your messy first attempts. The stuff that used to feel like clutter is becoming your proof.
If you've written a book, or you're working on one now, do you have anything that proves it's yours?
by Jaime Nolan, CEO of NSA, 8/24/2026