Method · The Editorial Stack

How a book is made here.

Every book published by Subversion Press passes through the same eight-step editorial stack. Conceived and directed by humans, the machine drafts, and humans verify and decide at every step that matters.

Step 01

Topic selection

Humans pick the question. The question is the only thing that can't be automated, because it depends on whether anyone needs the answer.

Step 02

Outline and architecture

Humans write the structural plan. Chapter logic, argument flow, intended reader, intended length. This is the editorial spine. AI fills in around it; it doesn't decide it.

Step 03

Generation

A language model produces the draft. We use GPT-4, Claude, or Gemini depending on the book. The model gets the outline and a tight prompt per chapter — typically 1,500 to 3,000 words at a time.

Step 04

Editorial pass

Humans read every chapter. We rewrite for voice consistency, remove model-typical tics, tighten arguments, cut filler, add concrete examples where the model defaults to abstraction.

Step 05

Fact-checking

Every named person, every cited study, every statistic, every historical claim is verified against a primary source. Models hallucinate. The humans catch.

Step 06

Cover, layout, ISBN

Standard publishing operations. Cover designed by humans using AI tools as input. Layout for print and ebook. Own ISBN through MVB.

Step 07

Persona attribution

The author named on the cover may be a real human, in which case the name is real, or an AI persona created by Subversion Press for a specific genre. Where it's a persona, we say so. No reader should ever be unsure.

Step 08

Publication

Direct to Amazon (KDP) and Books on Demand for the German market. Distributed under the Subversion Press imprint. Sold at standard trade prices, not as cheap AI content.

What a publisher does, when the machine writes, is most of what a publisher always did. Decide what is worth publishing.