Vellum Added an Optional AI Feature. A Pile-On Killed It in a Day.

An optional feature lasted about a day.

One day.

Vellum announced Automation on November 4, 2026. By November 5, version 4.2.1 had stripped it back out. Nobody had to use it, nobody was charged for it, and nothing in the app changed for anyone who left it alone. It still didn’t survive a weekend of angry posts.

I’ve never used Vellum. It’s a Mac program, and I’ve never needed it. But I’ve watched this pattern enough times to know what it means when a small software company folds this fast, and it isn’t good news for authors on either side of the AI argument.

What was Vellum Automation?

Vellum is the formatting app a lot of self-published authors swear by. Two Pixar veterans, Brad West and Brad Andalman, launched it in December 2013, and it turns a manuscript into ebook and print files without the author touching a line of code.

Vellum’s email to its customers says Automation came out of requests from longtime users with big catalogs. Some of them have dozens or even hundreds of books, including translations and special editions. They wanted help with the repetitive work: updating back matter, making the same fix across many books and building box sets.

Vellum didn’t build AI into the app, and its email is clear about that. Automation gave authors a way to connect an outside assistant they already used, so it could do those chores inside Vellum. If you didn’t connect one, nothing happened.

Why would anybody want that? A backlist is a lot of upkeep. Every book carries an author bio, a list of your other titles, a newsletter link and maybe a preview of the next book. Publish one new book and every one of those lists is out of date. Change your newsletter provider and every link is broken.

One author in the thread said it took about eight hours of front and back matter updates across a whole catalog and turned them into minutes. Anybody with a long backlist knows exactly how tedious that job is. You open book after book, change the same paragraph, export, upload and do it again.

Why did Vellum remove its Automation feature?

Because people yelled.

Most of the yelling happened on Threads.

Vellum’s email said as much. The company had read the emails, the Threads posts and, in its words, “a plethora of 🤮 emojis.” It said it had underestimated how strongly many authors would object to Vellum working with AI assistants at all. Then it removed the feature in 4.2.1 and told everyone to check for updates.

The email also pointed out that Vellum is three people. They build the app, answer the support email and read the feedback. I believe them, and I understand how it feels when a few hundred strangers decide you’ve betrayed them overnight. A pile-on is miserable, and a tiny company has no PR department to absorb it.

But understanding it doesn’t make it right. They didn’t remove a risk. They removed a choice. Every author who wanted that feature just lost it, so that people who were never going to touch it could feel they’d won something.

Vellum’s decision was short-sighted

I think Vellum kowtowed to a mob, and I think it’ll cost them.

I use AI every day, but that isn’t why I say it. I spent years running computer operations for a living, and I know what happens to a team that lets the angriest outsiders decide what ships. The roadmap stops belonging to the people who pay for it.

Look at who lost. The people who asked for Automation were longtime paying customers with big backlists, the exact authors a formatting company most wants to keep. Several of them said in that thread they were done. One said she was handing her files to an AI assistant to format from now on. Another said she’d been a Vellum champion for years and was moving on. A third said she’d code her own formatting app. Is that the outcome Vellum wanted?

Now look at who won. The loudest voices against the feature were posting on Threads. How many of them own Vellum? How many will buy it because Automation is gone? Nobody knows, and that’s the problem. A company that changes course every time a crowd shows up is letting people who aren’t its customers run the product.

And it sets a precedent. Every small software company that serves authors just watched a three-person team fold in one day. Which of them will try an AI feature next? Which of them will even say out loud that their users are asking for one? The quiet lesson is that the angriest corner of the internet gets a veto, and the people who pay don’t.

There’s an irony here, too, and one author in the thread put a number on it. Vellum itself is automation. It does in minutes what authors once paid a human formatter somewhere around $100 to $200 a book to do. Nobody piled on Vellum for that in 2013. Why is connecting an assistant to it suddenly a moral line?

There was a middle path, and commenters in that thread named several versions of it. Vellum could have shipped Automation switched off, so nobody saw it unless they went looking. It could have made it a separate download for the authors who asked. It could have let anybody who wanted it email for access and kept it out of everyone else’s way. Any of those would have answered the complaint about Vellum forcing AI on people, because it never did. Vellum picked none of them. It gave up, and it gave up fast.

This keeps happening to anybody who touches AI in publishing

Vellum isn’t the first company to find out how fast a crowd can move, and it won’t be the last.

I’ve written about a book festival’s AI cover ban that turned into a stranger calling an author disgusting, and about publishers cancelling books over AI on thin evidence. The pattern is the same every time. Somebody announces something with AI anywhere near it, a crowd decides it’s a betrayal, and the people involved fold before anybody has looked at what was announced.

What makes Vellum different is the target. It wasn’t a writer this time. It was a tool, and the people hurt were customers who never said a word on Threads. You can’t see them in the pile-on, because they were busy formatting their books.

What should a small software company do when a crowd turns on a feature?

Slow down.

A day isn’t long enough to know anything, and an inbox full of vomit emojis isn’t a customer survey.

If you run a small company and your inbox fills up with angry email, ask who’s writing. Are they customers, and have they used the feature? Did they read what it does? A pile-on feels like everybody. It’s a few hundred people who saw the same post.

Then ask the customers who didn’t write. Send a short survey to the people who own your product. You’ll hear from the quiet majority, and what they say will surprise you. One author in that thread said the supportive emails were there, and the angry crowd was just louder. I believe it. Quiet customers don’t post, they work.

And if a feature is optional, keep it optional. Ship it switched off, explain it in one paragraph and let people choose. A company that removes a choice to please people who’d never make it doesn’t calm anybody down. It just teaches the next crowd that yelling works.

The pro-AI crowd didn’t behave much better

I’ve written this whole series about how people treat each other, so I’m not giving the other side a pass.

The thread where I found this was full of authors who wanted the feature, and plenty of them were furious. That’s fair. But some of them called the people who objected harpies, purity-culture crybabies, asshats and Luddites. One said they were “shrieking out of ignorance.” That’s the same contempt they’re complaining about, aimed in the other direction.

I understand the anger. These are people who run real publishing businesses, some with dozens of books, and they just watched a tool they paid for take away something that would have saved them days of work, because strangers who don’t share their problem made enough noise. That’s maddening. I’d be angry too, and I am, on their behalf. But anger is a reason to email the company and to say the decision was wrong. It isn’t a reason to call people names.

Being right about the decision doesn’t give anybody license to sneer. The authors who didn’t want Automation had every right to say so and to email Vellum. Where they went wrong was flooding a three-person company with vomit emojis until it buckled. The fix for that isn’t a pile-on in reverse.

What should authors with big backlists do now?

Don’t panic.

Just don’t build your whole operation on one company’s goodwill, because this week proved how quickly that goodwill can change direction.

Make a master file for your back matter: your bio, your book list, your newsletter link and your links to retailers. When something changes, change it there first. Then you’ll know exactly what has to go into every book, and you won’t have to hunt for it.

Keep your manuscripts and your front and back matter in files you control, outside any one app’s project format. If a tool drops a feature you rely on, or drops you, you can move. Several authors in that thread were already testing other ways to format, including handing the job to an AI assistant. That only works if your source files are clean.

Tell the companies you pay what you want from them. Vellum heard from the angry crowd first and loudest. Several authors in that thread said they’d emailed afterward asking for the feature back, and that’s how a small company learns there’s another side. If you want a feature, say so before the pile-on. Afterward is too late.

The AI and writing hub covers how AI fits into writing and publishing, and the Dogpile series collects the other pile-ons. If you’re choosing tools for your next book, my rundown of the software novelists use covers formatting apps, and my book coaching service can help you plan the rest. Don’t build a business on a tool a crowd can take away in a day.

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