Editor’s Letter: More than Two Sides to the Story

At IAM, we have always prided ourselves on our ability to dissect and disseminate technology information for authors. From the beginning, we’ve understood the importance of having the right tools for your business and knowing how to use them. So it felt only right for us to dedicate an issue to breaking down the newest—and possibly most controversial—set of tools in our community. 

As I started this letter, I thought initially about sharing my own ideas about artificial intelligence, but I realize now that writing them wouldn’t add anything meaningful to the conversation. Instead, I’ll share a saying I learned from one of my journalism professors that has gone through my head time and again as we’ve been crafting this issue: There are often more than two sides to every story. 

We recognized early in reporting this issue that people’s opinions on AI are complex and varied, and we didn’t want to invalidate any of them with our reporting. Instead, we wanted to seek understanding, so we spoke to people from different corners of the publishing world about how they feel about AI and why, and we shared a poll on our social media channels that asked those same questions to the community at large. We wanted to provide you, our readers, with information that could help inform your opinions, so we created an extra fact-checking step in our production process to ensure our articles were as accurate and up-to-date as possible. We created a list of resources that we hope will provide even more accurate information about AI beyond our reporting here, because we recognize that the technology is progressing quickly, and aspects of our writing may not be relevant for long. 

In essence, we tried to honor the various sides to the evolving story of AI as best we could—while still correcting misunderstanding and misinformation. We work in the book business, after all. Understanding stories, and telling them well, is kind of our thing.

Nicole Schroeder

Editor in Chief