What Self-Publishing Taught Me About AI

The dog in the photo accompanying this post appears to have appointed itself Chief Gatekeeper. 

Every industry has them. Publishing has agents. Academia has tenure committees. Bookstores have buyers. Social media has influencers. And now the writing world has people conducting purity tests on AI.

I’ve spent much of my career bumping into various forms of gatekeeping, which is why a conversation in Milan twenty-five years ago came rushing back to me yesterday. 

I was attending an international women’s conference in Milan when a group of us headed out for drinks after the event. Among us was Michael Kimmel, a well-known feminist sociology professor and author from NYU whose work I admired, so I was looking forward to hearing what he had to say.

As we walked, I overheard him ask who I was.

“Oh, that’s Robin Pascoe,” someone replied. “She’s written a number of popular books for expat families.”

“Who’s her publisher?” he asked.

“She self-publishes.”

And then came the look.

You know the one.

In the space of a few seconds, I stopped being a fellow author and became a self-publisher. Never mind that my books were already helping thousands of families navigate international moves and major life transitions. None of that seemed to matter. What mattered was that I hadn’t been chosen.

Fast forward twenty-five years.

After speaking at a local elementary school yesterday, I accompanied my daughter into a bookstore to introduce her new children’s book, Lucy Loves Nature. It’s beautifully produced, thoughtfully written and illustrated, and exactly the sort of local project independent bookstores claim to champion. The first question wasn’t about the story, the illustrations, or the children it might reach.

It was: “Is it self-published?”

Not asked with curiosity. It was asked in that tone that suggests we’re not discussing a business model. We’re discussing legitimacy.

That exchange took me straight back to Milan because I’ve heard some version of that question for most of my professional life. When I started self-publishing, the assumption was that real writers got chosen. They found agents, landed publishers, received validation from the right people and entered through the proper doors. The rest of us were viewed with suspicion, as though we had somehow skipped a sacred step in the process.

The funny thing is that while some people were debating whether I qualified as a “real” author, readers were busy buying my books and recommending them to their friends. They seemed remarkably uninterested in my publishing model. What they cared about was whether the book helped.

And that’s what eventually made me question the whole premise.

Who exactly are we writing for?

My expat books were never written for literary critics or prize committees. They were written for people trying to solve real problems. The woman sitting alone in a new country wondering how she was going to rebuild a life from scratch. The family struggling with culture shock. The trailing spouse trying to figure out where she belonged. Those readers didn’t care who published the book. They cared whether it helped them make sense of their lives.

Now we’re replaying the same script with AI.

Writers who openly use AI tools are increasingly subjected to their own purity tests. The language is familiar: it’s not real writing, it shouldn’t count, it isn’t legitimate. Once again, the focus is on the process rather than the outcome. Once again, we’re debating who gets to call themselves a writer.

I’ve seen this movie before.

Every time a new tool democratizes access, someone decides that standards are under attack. Every time more people gain the ability to create, publish, or reach an audience directly, the gatekeepers start talking about quality and authenticity. Sometimes those concerns are sincere. Sometimes they’re not. But beneath them often lies a simpler fear: if people no longer need the gate, what happens to the gatekeeper?

Meanwhile, readers carry on doing what readers have always done. They read what interests them. They share what resonates. They recommend what helps.

Yesterday I watched my daughter walk into that bookstore carrying a book designed to help children understand and appreciate the natural world around them. Twenty-five years after Milan, I found myself watching the same movie with different actors. Different label. Same raised eyebrow. Same suspicion.

The industry’s purity tests have changed over the years, but the underlying question hasn’t. We still spend an extraordinary amount of time worrying about who has been chosen and not nearly enough time asking whether the work itself is accomplishing something worthwhile.

My daughter’s book will help children discover the world around them. Not one of those children will care whether it was traditionally published, hybrid published (which it happened to be), self-published, or created with the assistance of a team of woodland fairies. They will care whether it sparked their curiosity. Whether it taught them something. Whether it made them notice a bird, a tree, or a stream they might otherwise have ignored.

That’s impact.

Everything else is branding.

I thought Professor Kimmel’s look in Milan all those years ago was telling me I didn’t belong. Now I think he was asking the wrong question. The important question was never who published the book.

The important question was whether it mattered to the people who read it.

And if AI or self-publishing helps more people create work that matters to the people who read it, then readers—and not gatekeepers—will decide what deserves to last.