If the author of this article just finished the book the publisher would have just published it without much fuss and probably without any significant changes.

The author had all the leverage regarding content. It’s not like the publisher could actually incorporate what they were asking for with AI, they still need an author to do that and it was a totally new subject at the time. Their demands were empty.

I don’t think the author would have finished the book if it was self-published. They clearly didn’t want to write a book that badly.

Not to say that finishing a whole-ass book is easy, I’m certainly not going to pretend that’s the case.

I’ve lately been trying to finish more side project type things in my life because these dead ends themselves feel empty to me. I am trying to set scope reasonably and then just finish even if it’s painful or there’s no confetti-style payout and nobody else cares.