July, 2026

At Flame Tree we are currently investigating what appears to be a dismaying case of both author fraud and the use of AI in the writing of short stories for some of our recent collections. We choose stories for publication in good faith, with the commitment of a co-ordinated team of readers. When a story makes its way through several rounds of reading to reach the final selection we are proud to issue a license which contains declarations of liability both by us as the publisher and by the author themselves. Such licenses include obligations by all parties not to use AI. And when an author signs, we have to trust that the author is who they say they are, that their name, bank account and email address are true and accurate.

Our collections are expensive books to make. They are intended to be beautiful vehicles for wonderful writing, to highlight the voice and character of both new and established writers. Clearly if an individual submits AI stories under multiple identities / email addresses / bank accounts this is a cynical breach of trust, and with the rapid pace of change our internal processes need to develop further to combat the problem. This will mean a tightening of our submission process, earlier declarations of liability regarding AI use and identity, and deeper employment of AI detection tools.

In the meantime, we will not let any such individuals undermine the power of the other voices in our collections. However, we are not in the business of harassing or vilifying authors, so we will not name and shame, but we will reprint the books with replacement stories, once that new selection has been made. 

Finally, we are an independent publisher with the explicit aim of supporting creative human writers and artists, and we are determined to continue on that path.

Thank you and best wishes,

Nick

Publisher, Flame Tree Publishing

Download our statement here