EXCLUSIVE: That screeching sound you heard Wednesday from international publishers and film rights buyers was an abrupt application of the brakes after a fevered pursuit of the unpublished debut novel Call Me, I’ll Hide the Body.

The novel by [for a complicated set of reasons I have removed the author’s name] sold to Minotaur/Macmillan Publishers for what sources said was a $2.4 million deal for the novel and a follow-up. What has imperiled this novel from following in the footsteps of publishing phenomena from The Horse Whisperer to 50 Shades of Grey and The Hunger Games?

It comes down to the infiltration of AI in the publishing and movie/TV industries.

Basically, questions were raised over whether the author used AI as a tool in the writing of the book. The problem: publishers and movie companies may not be able to register copyright and come away with a clear title chain if there are certain AI elements in the mix. That’s because AI-aided copy is an amalgamation of many other copyrighted works.

From what I’m hearing, this will be an important teaching moment for writers with aspirations to become serious bankable authors. The lesson: stay the hell away from AI.  

I’m told it’s routine for publishers and their reps to ask authors if they used AI, and all parties proceeded in good faith after getting assurances from the author that he did not. That was called into question after the Call Me rights began selling around the world, and movie/TV interest heated up. There are apparently fingerprints, or something that raised the flags of AI censors.

On Thursday, Sandy Hodgman, an independent agent from Hodgman Literary who sells foreign rights for Europa Content, pulled back its submission of the novel to eager international publishers. Here is the email, which Deadline secured:

[The author] produced an incredible manuscript that dazzled us and the top publishing professionals around the world. Unfortunately, we are no longer able to authenticate how the manuscript fully evolved from origin to completion. During the submission process we vetted the manuscript with [the author] for AI and felt trusting in his reassurance that it was written without utilizing AI as a resource in the writing or editorial process. We can no longer substantiate that, and we are withdrawing the book.

This raises so many questions about authorship and what AI means for this industry but those are questions for another day. We regret that our enthusiasm led to this outcome and we apologize to our publishing partners.

UTA and Europa Content had been selling the rights — I’ve learned both are no long involved — and their efforts took off when a huge U.S. offer deal was set in place. After the extraordinary email, everything is up in the air. It might be difficult to get the momentum back, even if proper assurances are in place that the author did all the work himself, with no help from AI. Conceivably, a rights buyer would have no more protection than anyone publishing a work in the public domain. It’s one thing to dust off a classic like The Odyssey, still another when the work is fresh and the rights messy and tangled.

The novel sounds awesomely promising. The protagonist, Femi Johnson, sounds a bit like The Wolf, the “Cleaner” character played in Pulp Fiction by Harvey Keitel. Here, the protagonist trades his “cleaner” origins in Lagos, Nigeria, to pursue a chemistry PhD in Houston. His ability to make bodies disappear brings him opportunities and peril as circumstances lead to employment by a cartel operator.

Stay tuned. This just happened Wednesday, so when there is something to update, we will add any comments.