Publishing has always suffered from a paradox: the book, that object of rigor and culture, is often born out of a chaos of poorly formatted Word files, invisible manual interventions, and a tangle of improvised corrections. Days, sometimes weeks, are lost cleaning up what the machine could have prevented.
AutomaticBook was born out of a refusal to accept this state of affairs. It embodies a new vision: to rebuild the book production chain on clear, standardized, open, and sustainable foundations.
AutomaticBook is not blind automation. It is a set of modular tools, each specialized in a precise task, serving human intelligence:
At all times, the editor remains in control: they see what is being done, can correct, validate, and intervene.
AutomaticBook does not eliminate creativity—it frees up the time needed to exercise it. It reduces wasted effort—the labor of cleaning, fixing, patching—and gives room to real editorial work: choosing, reviewing, refining, designing.
In building AutomaticBook, we make a strategic choice: to depend on no closed proprietary technology, to submit our workflow neither to the whims of Word nor to InDesign alone, and to prefer universal standards (Markdown, YAML, EPUB, PDF).
This choice is not merely technical. It is a choice of independence, efficiency, and sustainability.
AutomaticBook is not just a workflow. It is a mode of editorial organization, a manifesto for modern publishing, where technology becomes a lever—not an obstacle—and where every link in the chain is designed to be simple, readable, accessible, and controllable.
It is also the capture of living labor by the deadly gears of machinic labor—let’s be clear.