Negative reviews are almost a guarantee during an author’s career—and just as inevitable is the disappointment they bring with them. Although some in the industry frame one-star reviews as a rite of passage for newer authors, reading an unhappy reader’s thoughts on your book or watching your book’s average star rating go down still stings.

Recently, however, some negative reviews have damaged more than just the author’s pride. Last month, Hachette Book Group canceled the US publication of Mia Ballard’s debut Horror novel, Shy Girl, after the New York Times reported reviewers had suggested Ballard used AI to write it. Hachette Book Group also halted the book’s distribution in the UK. Since the controversy, Ballard has denied using AI to write the book, which was originally self-published. However, she has said a friend who helped edit the book before it was self-published may have used AI during the process.

Reviewers concluded Ballard had used AI to write her book after running the text through an AI detection program, though such programs have repeatedly been proven faulty. Currently, there’s no reliable way for authors to prove their books were made without AI. 

The Authors Guild in the US and the Society of Authors in the UK are hoping to change that. 

Together, the author organizations created the “Human Authored” certification program, allowing authors to label their books as human written and include their titles in a database of other certified books. The Authors Guild launched a beta version of its certification program for Guild members in January 2025. Last month, it expanded the program to allow any US-based author to certify their work, as well as to allow US-based publishers to purchase certifications in bulk. 

The response from authors to the program has been “overwhelming,” said Authors Guild CEO Mary Rasenberger in a press release. “By opening this program to all authors nationwide, we’re empowering writers to take control of their professional identity and offering peace of mind for readers who want to support human authors and experience genuine human storytelling.”

What ‘Human Authored’ Entails

The Guild’s certification program allows authors and publishers who register their works to use the Human Authored certification mark on the cover of the book; in connection with the book on a retail site, the author’s website, or social media; or on any marketing materials, as well as on the book’s copyright page, which the Guild recommends. 

In addition, registered works will be included in the Authors Guild’s database at https://go.authorsguild.org/human-authored-search.

According to the Guild’s guidelines, authors may only register their works if the text was written entirely by one or more human beings and AI use in the project was minimal. The guidelines permit the use of AI in research, brainstorming, or outlining; with spelling and grammar checkers; in creating auxiliary parts of a book, such as tables of contents or indices; and for “any purposes other than generating text.” 

The Case for Certification

Ballard’s situation in the Shy Girl controversy is extreme, though she’s not the only author who has faced accusations of AI use. When Sarah Beran, a YA Fantasy and Urban Fantasy author, received a one-star review of one of her books recently, she asked her husband to read it and tell her what it said. “I normally try only to read four and five stars,” she says, but she was working on marketing materials at the time and wanted to look at her Amazon ranking. When she realized the reader had suggested she had used ChatGPT to write the book, she was frustrated. 

“Goodreads is one thing because there’s not sales attached to it,” Beran says. “But to have that up there on Amazon, where people are looking for reviews and trying to decide if they want to buy it, and then also just the accusation that something that I poured my heart and soul into feels like it was written by a computer, was not fun.”

Beran says she tries to avoid using AI as much as she can, even in her marketing materials and social media graphics. She believes a process for certifying that a book was written by a human could benefit both readers and authors.

“There’s always the readers that, you know, they’re going to read a book, and they don’t care if it was AI or not,” she says. “But if there is an established way of saying, ‘Hey, no, this author has been certified, has gone through … that approval process to say, no, I don’t use AI, and this is an outside source and not just me that’s saying it’—I think that could be helpful.”

Not all authors agree. The Human Authored certification is largely an honor system; the Authors Guild hopes that the multi-step process for applying for certification and the fee for non-Guild members will act as a deterrent for anyone falsely certifying their work, Rasenberger said in an interview with Publishers Weekly. Additionally, “the Guild will take measures to ensure that the mark is used in the US only by those who are properly licensed to use it and that it is only used for books for which the text was written by a human,” according to the Guild’s press release. Publishing expert Jane Friedman doesn’t think this is enough. 

“Rather than worrying about scammers taking advantage of this Authors Guild certification, I worry about legitimate authors who may not be entirely honest about their AI use,” she wrote in her blog, suggesting authors who use AI may think their use of the tools is acceptable under the certification guidelines. She also doesn’t think the certification will matter much to readers—though she also noted that her copyeditor, who is an avid reader, said she would find value in such a program.

Certification may not be enough for some readers to trust that a book was made with AI; accusations such as the one Beran received will probably continue. She advises authors in her situation that “making a stink about it … can be just as harmful as letting it slide.” 

“It’s hard,” she says. “For me, after talking with people that I trusted and [who] had less emotional stake in it than I did, it was mostly just, ‘Well, it’s there, but you have to let your work speak for itself.’ Obviously, if other people can see that it’s not [made with AI], then it’s just one voice in the crowd, and hopefully people will ignore them.”

How to Submit

Authors who are interested in registering their works for the Human Authored certification can do so for free if they are Authors Guild members, or for a $10 fee per title if they are non-members. All authors must sign a license agreement to use the certification mark, and non-members must also complete a third-party identity verification process. 

To register a multi-author work, each author must sign the license agreement separately and pay the $10 fee if not a member of the Guild. 

Registration through the Authors Guild is limited to books published in the US. 

For more information or to register your works for certification through the Authors Guild, visit https://authorsguild.org/human-authored. Members of the Society of Authors in the UK may also register their works for free at https://humanauthored.co.uk.