Visitors to the London Book Fair this week may have stumbled across a curious new title that contains no plot, no chapters, and not a single line of prose. Nearly 10,000 authors have joined forces to publish an intentionally blank book called Don’t Steal This Book. Apart from a long list of contributing names, its pages are empty. The silence on those pages is deliberate, serving as a visual protest against how artificial intelligence systems are trained.

The project unites prominent writers such as Kazuo Ishiguro, Philippa Gregory, Richard Osman, and Jeanette Winterson with thousands of others who argue that their work has been absorbed into AI datasets without permission. They say the blank pages represent what literature risks becoming if creative work continues to be treated as raw material for machine learning rather than protected intellectual property deserving consent and compensation.

Their protest lands at a pivotal moment. The UK government is preparing to release an economic assessment of proposed copyright reforms that could allow AI companies to train on copyrighted books without paying the authors behind them. Writers warn that such changes would erode their livelihoods and weaken the diversity of voices that sustain the publishing ecosystem.

The London Book Fair provides a high‑visibility platform for the campaign. Copies of Don’t Steal This Book are being handed directly to industry professionals and policymakers, ensuring the message reaches those who influence the future of copyright and creative rights.