Horror novel Shy Girl cancelled by publisher Hachette over suspected AI use

NEW YORK – Hachette Book Group, one of the largest publishers in the United States, pulled a forthcoming horror novel on March 19 in a decision that followed widespread allegations online that the author relied heavily on artificial intelligence to write the book.

On March 19, a day after The New York Times approached Hachette citing evidence that the novel appeared to be AI-generated, the company said it was pulling the book from publication. By that afternoon, the novel was removed from Amazon and Hachette’s website.

Hachette told the Times that its Orbit imprint decided not to publish Shy Girl, which was due out in the US this spring, after conducting a thorough and lengthy review of the text. Hachette said it will also discontinue the book in the United Kingdom, where it was published last autumn and has sold 1,800 print copies, according to NielsenIQ BookData.

“Hachette remains committed to protecting original creative expression and storytelling,” a Hachette spokesperson said, adding that the publisher requires all submissions to be original to the authors and asks authors to disclose to the company whether they are using AI during the writing process.

Shy Girl’s author Mia Ballard, who, according to her author bio, writes poetry and lives in Northern California, has very little social media presence. In an e-mail to the Times, she denied using AI to write Shy Girl, contending that an acquaintance she hired to edit the self-published version of the novel had used AI.

Shy Girl, about a desperate young woman who is held hostage by a man she met online and forced to live as his pet, was self-published in February 2025.

The cancellation of the novel reveals the challenges the book world is navigating as the adoption of AI becomes more widespread and as traditional publishers increasingly look to self-published books as a pipeline for hits, particularly in genre fiction.

Publishers have maintained a firm line against AI-generated text and images, and require authors to attest that their work is original in their publishing contracts. But few have clear policies or measures to prevent users from writing with AI.

“This is the proof positive of what many of us have considered an issue, that this will happen, and now it has happened,” Mr Thad McIlroy, a publishing industry consultant, said of the controversy around Shy Girl.

Readers and many writers remain ferociously opposed to the use of the technology for writing, which they regard as cheating or a form of theft – and AI-generated writing is not always easy to spot.

Shy Girl received some rave reviews when it was self-published, eventually drawing more than 4,900 ratings on Goodreads, and averaging 3.52 stars.

Still, the tide turned as more readers began flagging what they surmised was AI slop, slamming the book for its generic and confusing metaphors and repetitive phrasing.

“Really bad,” one reader wrote in a one-star review. “Pretty sure this was AI-generated.” NYTIMES