In a wide-ranging mainstage interview that opened this year's London Book Fair, Tom Weldon, CEO of Penguin Random House UK, spoke candidly about AI, corporate publishing, literacy rates, and more.

Weldon swiftly attacked the "theft of content" by AI companies and said that use should be transparent, with consent and with compensation, but he nonetheless was confident that "human creativity will not be replaced."

To emphasize his point, Weldon flashed a copy of Don't Steal This Book, published by 10,000 authors who have banded together to protest against content theft by Big Tech.

"We're not anti-AI," Weldon said, "but we are looking to see how we can use it in a responsible way, to remove some of the repetitive tasks from publishing." One possible such use, he noted, would be by using AI to translate Arab books into audio; for a market of 300 million people, there are currently only 7,000 audiobooks available.

He had an equally nuanced view on the National Year of Reading. On the one hand, he said he dislikes hand-wringing over the current "reading crisis," noting that it has been true for many years that 50% of the population had never bought a book in their lives.

"I don't think we have a reading crisis; children's book sales have grown every year for the last 20 years," he said. "Because we all love books so much, we can get a bit preachy."

However, he does view the National Year of Reading as a "fantastic opportunity—it's a catalyst, not an end in itself, but we need to effect structural change." Within that, he said that "PRH has a responsibility to protect the broader ecosystem" and cited the company's successful eight-year "libraries for primaries" campaign which ultimately led to a change in government policy when Chancellor Rachel Reeves pledged to fund a library in every primary school. "That was the work of many people," Weldon said, "but it was led by PRH."

In defense of so-called corporate publishing, Weldon's view is that "big isn't necessarily bad" and that PRH operates through eight autonomous U.K. divisions. Penguin founder Allen Lane, Weldon said, believed that publishers could be both missionary and mercenary—"i.e., that you can make money, be profitable, but also do good in the world."

PRH UK currently has a staff of 2,000 and revenue of £620 million, plus what Weldon described as "a double-digit profit" margin. In terms of sales, 80% is print, 10% e-books and 10% audio. Payments to authors across PRH Worldwide last year totaled $1 billion.