{"id":50822,"date":"2026-05-20T14:31:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:31:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/barnes-noble-ceo-is-fine-with-stocking-ai-written-books-if-theyre-labeled-the-internet-had-thoughts\/"},"modified":"2026-05-20T14:31:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-20T14:31:11","slug":"barnes-noble-ceo-is-fine-with-stocking-ai-written-books-if-theyre-labeled-the-internet-had-thoughts","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/usa\/barnes-noble-ceo-is-fine-with-stocking-ai-written-books-if-theyre-labeled-the-internet-had-thoughts\/","title":{"rendered":"Barnes &amp; Noble CEO is fine with stocking AI-written books \u2014 if they&#8217;re labeled. The internet had thoughts."},"content":{"rendered":"<figure><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i.insider.com\/6a0d9d9bbe2e5e1daf890d37?format=jpeg\" alt=\"Barnes &amp; Noble CEO James Daunt speaks inside a Waterstones store.\"\/><figcaption>Barnes &amp; Noble CEO James Daunt is also the managing director of British bookseller Waterstones, where he is pictured.<\/p>\n<p>Li Ying\/Xinhua via Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<ul>\n<li>Barnes &amp; Noble CEO James Daunt said he has &quot;no problem&quot; stocking AI-written books.<\/li>\n<li>However, this is only as long as there&#039;s consumer demand and the book is labeled as written by AI.<\/li>\n<li>Some users online have expressed anger at his suggestion, while others view it as realistic.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>You may pick up a book in the future and see a label that says it&#039;s been written by AI. Barnes &amp; Noble&#039;s CEO is OK with that.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;I actually have no problem selling any book as long as it doesn&#039;t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn&#039;t,&quot; Barnes &amp; Noble CEO James Daunt said on a &quot;Today&quot; show segment on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;So as long as an AI-written book says it&#039;s an AI-written book and doesn&#039;t pretend to be something else and isn&#039;t ripping off somebody else, as long as that&#039;s clearly stated and the customer wants to buy it, then we will stock them.&quot;<\/p>\n<p>As concerns around AI grow. Daunt&#039;s words have hit a nerve for some online. Book communities on TikTok, Reddit, and X have criticized the idea of stocking AI-written books, even when they are labeled as such.<\/p>\n<p>Barnes &amp; Noble did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n<p>Users said they were concerned about AI-written books using up space that could be filled instead by indie authors, and said they believe AI-written books are akin to plagiarism because they&#039;re generated from existing work.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>  @mjdeloybooks <\/p>\n<p>Buckle up because I have thoughts #barnesandnoble #ai #aibooks #indiebooks <\/p>\n<p> \u266c original sound &#8211; mjdeloybooks  <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This isn&#039;t the first time the topic of AI-generated books has generated heat online.<\/p>\n<p>When an author, Tim Boucher, wrote an article in The Information in September 2024 with the title &quot;I&#039;m an author who proudly uses AI to write my books,&quot; he received a lot of backlash online.<\/p>\n<p>Boucher previously told Business Insider that he believes the accusations of fraud or plagiarism fail to acknowledge that he&#039;s transparent about his use of AI, and that he is trying to open a new form of storytelling.<\/p>\n<p>Alan Finkel, CEO of Proudly Human, an organization that verifies and labels human-created content, stressed the importance of a trust mark to prove the author is human. <\/p>\n<p>&quot;Our appreciation of creative work is especially tied to its provenance, which in the literary world is held, quite rightly, in high esteem. Authentic human connection is what&#039;s at stake with the insurgence of AI-generated books, music, art, and videos,&quot; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Not everyone disagrees with Daunt&#039;s words, however. Some online commenters point out it&#039;s simply a &#039;customer is always right&#039; situation.<\/p>\n<p>&quot;He clearly says only if there is high demand he would stock it. It&#039;s literally the customer&#039;s power to not ask for it,&quot; one user on Reddit wrote.<\/p>\n<p>As well as cost-cutting measures and a push to make each store have its own personality, part of CEO James Daunt&#039;s strategy for Barnes &amp; Noble has been to lean into online trends.<\/p>\n<p>It&#039;s working. He has spearheaded Barnes &amp; Noble&#039;s turnaround, with the bookseller planning to open 60 more locations this year.<\/p>\n<p>Read the original article on Business Insider<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Barnes &amp; Noble CEO James Daunt is also the managing director of British bookseller Waterstones, where he is pictured. Li Ying\/Xinhua via Getty Images Barnes &amp; Noble CEO James Daunt said he has &quot;no problem&quot; stocking AI-written books. However, this is only as long as there&#039;s consumer demand and the book is labeled as written [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50823,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-50822","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-usa"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50822","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50822"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50822\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50823"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50822"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50822"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/agooka.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50822"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}