Episode 202: AI for Authors
Watch now on YouTube!
AI for authors is a controversial topic in most writing circles. But authors can't afford to ignore the benefits AI can provide for writing, book marketing, and more.
In this episode of The Best of Book Marketing Podcast, Lainey and Paulette will dive deep into the world of AI to share easy ways any author can harness the benefits without sacrificing your values.
If you've been curious about AI and how to make sense of it, be sure to join us for this episode!
Episode Resources
Our new Merch store! Yes, Life Gets Lifey Sometimes! - And purchases here are a great way to support the Podcast.
San Miguel de Allende Writer’s Retreat by Lynne Golodner (and our own Substack article about it
Books & Authors Mentioned
Micki Betholet Morency is a Haitian-American author, an advocate for women and children, and she writes with hope to give a voice to the voiceless.
The Island Sisters tells the story of four hard-to-forget friends whose fates are bound together by culture, by history, and most importantly, by a deep, irrevocable friendship. Soon to release, her newest novel, I SHALL Find You explores a mother’s enduring love and a child's journey to uncover her past.
Full Disclosure: We are part of the Amazon affiliate program, which means Lainey earns a tiny commission (maybe enough for a coffee) if you buy something after clicking through from a link on this website.
Episode Sponsors
Write Your Story in the Heart of Mexico!
Lynne Golodner is the Detroit-based author of 12 books, a writing coach and retreat leader, and a marketing expert who guides authors in book marketing and career-building.
Join Lynne’s San Miguel de Allende Writer’s Retreat - January 17-24, 2026
Immerse yourself in the magic of San Miguel de Allende, a UNESCO World Heritage city recently named Best City in the World by Travel & Leisure!
From January 17-24, 2026, join acclaimed writers Lynne Golodner and Christopher Locke for an unforgettable retreat where creativity thrives.
This intimate experience—limited to just 16 writers—features dynamic large and small-group workshops, one-on-one mentoring, and exclusive access to the stunning Casa de la Noche, a historic boutique hotel with art-filled rooms, lush gardens, and inspiring spaces to write. (Room selection is on a first come, first served basis.)
From Lainey & Paulette:
12 Weeks to Book Launch Success - Lainey’s program to help authors successfully launch their book
Join the wait list for 12 Weeks to Book Launch Success
Join Lainey’s list for free book marketing tips and webinars
Paulette’s Indie author coaching - schedule time or email her at info@paulettestout.com
Note: next sections are mostly created by AI for your convenience - so please forgive any typos or inaccuracies!
Summary
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss the use of AI in writing and marketing. They share updates on their recent awards and projects, including Paulette's book rewrite and Lainey's novel "Erasing Grace." They explore AI tools like ProWritingAid, Claude, and Perplexity.ai for tasks such as book blurbs, social media planning, and content creation.
They emphasize the importance of verifying AI-generated information and refining outputs. Lainey also highlights the use of AI for transcription, video editing, and website content. They stress the need for ethical use and transparency when incorporating AI in writing and marketing strategies. Lainey Cameron and Paulette Stout discuss the ease of creating an author website using Canva and GoDaddy, emphasizing the cost-effectiveness and efficiency of the process.
They highlight the use of AI tools like Otter.ai and Opus Clip for podcast production, noting the benefits of transcription services. Paulette advises authors to experiment with AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity, suggesting simple questions to start with. They also mention upcoming episodes on Amazon ads, marketing thrillers, and book cover design, encouraging listeners to engage with their content and support their sponsors.
Outline
Updates and Awards
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron introduce the podcast and the topic of AI for authors.
Lainey Cameron announces that their podcast won two awards: Best Marketing Podcast and Best Co-Host Team at the Positive Change Podcast Awards.
Paulette Stout shares her recent book award wins, including the IPPY and American Writing Women's Fiction Awards.
Paulette discusses her current project, a rewrite of her novel "Love Only Better," and the benefits of rewriting for book marketing.
Paulette and Lainey talk about their writing retreat experiences and the importance of community among writers.
Personal Updates and Community Support
Paulette Stout shares a heartfelt thank you to Lainey Cameron for creating a reel of her award wins on Instagram and TikTok.
Lainey Cameron talks about organizing a writer's retreat in San Miguel, Mexico, in January 2024, and encourages listeners to consider attending.
Lainey announces that she got her rights back to her first novel and is redesigning the cover with an agency called Demandza.
Lainey discusses her current project, "Erasing Grace," and the process of sending it to beta readers.
Lainey shares her recent move to a new house in San Miguel and the excitement of having more space for guests and her office.
AI for Authors: Introduction and Controversies
Paulette Stout explains what AI is and its capabilities, including generative AI and its uses in writing and marketing.
Lainey Cameron outlines the two main controversies surrounding AI: the source of training materials and the potential for plagiarism.
Paulette and Lainey discuss the ethical considerations of using AI for writing and the importance of disclosing AI-generated content.
Paulette emphasizes the potential benefits of AI for writers, such as accessibility and efficiency.
Lainey shares her personal stance on using AI for novel writing and her comfort level with AI-generated content.
AI Tools and Practical Applications
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss various AI tools they use, including ProWritingAid, DepositPhotos, Canva, and Perplexity.ai.
Paulette explains the benefits of using AI for research, outlining, and creating marketing materials.
Lainey shares her experience with using AI for content creation, such as social media posts and blog articles.
Paulette and Lainey discuss the importance of rewriting AI-generated content to ensure originality and avoid plagiarism.
Lainey provides examples of how she uses AI for marketing purposes, such as creating social media posts and website content.
Prompts and Prompt Chaining
Paulette Stout explains the concept of prompts and their importance in getting accurate and useful responses from AI.
Lainey Cameron shares an example of using prompt chaining to rewrite her book's blurb based on reader reviews.
Paulette and Lainey discuss the benefits of using long prompts and the potential pitfalls of AI hallucinations.
Paulette provides tips for creating effective prompts, including specifying the context, tone, and desired output.
Lainey emphasizes the importance of verifying AI-generated information and not taking it as gospel.
AI for Marketing and Social Media
Lainey Cameron discusses how AI can help with marketing plans, including creating target reader profiles and social media calendars.
Paulette Stout shares her experience with using AI to create a social media plan and the benefits of having a structured approach.
Lainey explains how AI can suggest ways to reach specific reader demographics and identify relevant online communities.
Paulette and Lainey discuss the potential of AI for creating inclusive content, such as audio files and transcriptions.
Lainey provides examples of how she uses AI for podcast transcription and video editing to streamline her content creation process.
AI for Book Blurbs and Content Creation
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss the use of AI for writing book blurbs and the importance of providing context and specific instructions.
Lainey shares her experience with using AI to rewrite her book's blurb based on reader reviews and the importance of verifying the information.
Paulette explains how AI can help with creating content for different mediums, such as audio and video.
Lainey provides an example of using AI to create a podcast based on a chapter of her husband's memoir.
Paulette and Lainey emphasize the importance of refining AI-generated content to ensure it aligns with the author's vision and style.
AI for Research and Content Generation
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss the use of AI for research, such as finding book comps and generating market analysis.
Lainey shares her experience with using AI to analyze Amazon categories and generate market research.
Paulette explains how AI can help with content generation, such as creating lists and generating ideas for blog posts and articles.
Lainey discusses the importance of setting truthfulness settings on AI platforms to avoid hallucinations and ensure accuracy.
Paulette and Lainey emphasize the potential of AI for creating diverse and inclusive content that reaches a wider audience.
AI for Writing and Editing
Paulette Stout and Lainey Cameron discuss the use of AI for writing and editing, including drafting and revising content.
Lainey shares her experience with using AI to create content for her podcast and the benefits of having a structured approach.
Paulette explains how AI can help with editing and refining content, such as identifying repetitive words and improving sentence structure.
Lainey discusses the importance of using AI as a tool to enhance the writing process rather than replacing human creativity.
Paulette and Lainey emphasize the need for authors to maintain control over their content and ensure it aligns with their vision and style.
AI for Accessibility and Inclusion
Paulette Stout introduces the concept of using AI for creating accessible and inclusive content, such as audio files and transcriptions.
Lainey Cameron shares an example of using AI to create a podcast based on a chapter of her husband's memoir.
Paulette explains how AI can help with making content available to different audiences, such as those with visual impairments.
Lainey discusses the potential of AI for creating diverse and inclusive content that reaches a wider audience.
Paulette and Lainey emphasize the importance of using AI to enhance accessibility and inclusion in the writing and publishing process.
Creating a Website with Canva, GoDaddy and Claude
Lainey Cameron explains how she used Canva to create a website template for her imprint, Colibri Press, in less than 15 minutes.
She mentions the ease of connecting her domain name from GoDaddy to the Canva site with a single click.
Lainey highlights the cost-effectiveness of maintaining the website, noting only the domain name costs around $15 to $20 per year.
She emphasizes the convenience and speed of setting up the website, which was previously a time-consuming process.
Leveraging Tools for Marketing and Podcast Production
Paulette Stout discusses the various tools available that simplify marketing and platform building, referencing their first podcast episode on publishing on a budget.
Lainey Cameron mentions the use of transcripts for the podcast, which helps in creating other content and saves time.
She lists the paid services they use, such as Otter.ai for transcription and Opus Clip for video editing, to streamline their workflow.
Paulette Stout thanks their sponsors for supporting the podcast and covering some of the costs.
Addressing Concerns and Encouraging Experimentation with AI
Lainey Cameron and Paulette Stout discuss the potential dangers and misconceptions about using AI tools like ChatGPT and Claude.
Paulette advises being smart, verifying results, and rewriting outputs when using AI for drafting.
She shares her experience of learning from experts at Microsoft about their Gen AI agent, Copilot, and emphasizes that even experts are still learning.
Paulette draws a parallel to the shift from typewriters to computers, suggesting that AI is a natural evolution in technology.
Homework Assignment: Trying AI Tools
Lainey Cameron assigns homework to listeners, encouraging them to set up a free account on AI tools like Perplexity, Claude, or ChatGPT and ask a question.
She reassures listeners that asking a question won't harm anything and is a simple way to get started with AI tools.
Paulette Stout suggests asking questions about ideal readers or book marketing strategies as potential prompts.
Lainey mentions that more information about their retreat can be found on their website and offers to email the details to listeners.
Upcoming Episodes and Closing Remarks
Lainey Cameron provides a sneak peek into upcoming episodes, including topics on Amazon ads, marketing thrillers, and book cover design.
She hints at featuring some of her favorite authors in future episodes.
Paulette Stout mentions that the episode on book cover design will be recorded on a Sunday night due to the guest's time zone.
Both hosts thank their audience for joining and encourage them to support their sponsors and purchase merchandise to help offset production costs.
Transcript
Paulette Stout 0:01
Hello, hello, fine people of the world. Welcome to the Best of Book Marketing Podcast. I am Paulette stout, and this is the incomparable Lainey Cameron, who is getting us live on Instagram. And we are so happy to have you with us today to talk about AI for authors. You know, it's a very kind of scary topic. It's a very controversial topic in writing spaces, and we just thought it was an important subject for us to bring to you and kind of share our perspectives, and you can, as always, make your own choices and do what's right for you. So we we can start with some updates. Since I've been blah blah blahing, I don't know if you want me to go.
Lainey Cameron 0:42
We have such cool news. So like, forgive us here, because we're probably gonna go four or five minutes with the updates, because we have really cool stuff to share. I'll start with before we go into our personal updates, the podcast, this podcast, won its first award. In fact, twice. It won two different awards, which we're celebrating.
Paulette Stout 1:00
I missed the second one? What was the second one?
Lainey Cameron 1:02
Right? Well it was the Positive change Podcast Awards. And we won best marketing podcast and co-host team, you and I got best co-hosts. And that one just makes me smile so much so. And also the fact that it's positive change awards, Speak Up Talk Radio, but like they recognize podcasts that are out there trying to help other people, and I feel like that is what we're here for. We're here to help our fellow authors and to be recognized that we're a great team, and we feel like we're a great team, and we're having so much fun doing this. It just was, yeah, it meant a lot to us. So we won two different categories from the positive change awards, Podcast Awards, so that's our first announcement.
Paulette Stout 1:43
Yay for us.
Lainey Cameron 1:45
Okay, Paulette, what's going on with you, other than Um, is there an award you haven't won with your book in the last three weeks?
Paulette Stout 1:51
Yes, there was. There were three. I didn't play. We talked about this in our book, in our episode on writing awards. Episode 105, but Book Awards are part of my marketing strategy. I do apply for a lot of them, so I'm very happy. Since our last episode, I think I've won three or two. I'm not sure on my new book, what we give away? Shameless plug, as always, it's a book marketing podcast, and that was really cool. So to win in have I won an IPPY one, American writingwomen's fiction awards, and I'm just really excited that the book is resonating with readers and with with judges, and it just helps, especially as an independent author, kind of attest to that third party validation of the quality and stuff.
Paulette Stout 2:39
So besides that, I'm just, you know, kind of at the end of my first rewrite draft of love only better my first novel. And I'm just really so happy that I went this route. And I think it's going to be a little bit of a supercharged engine for my book marketing to have, like a really confident in my first book. So that's gonna, you know, I'll turn that marketing engine on later this year, once the book is out, but the second edition. But I think it's a good thing to think about if you write in a series to you know, think is that book as good as it can be, and is are you getting the read through that you want from your other from your other books?
Paulette Stout 3:17
Also had an amazing writing retreat with some local friends here in the New England area. And it's just such a nice to be in person with fellow writers who kind of understand what you're going through. They get your vibe, they understand the pain, and then you can kind of talk about collaborations and having that community. We talk about that, especially in the age of AI, as we're going to talk about today. I just did want to also give a huge shout out to Lainey, who did something really beautiful the other day that, just like made me a little teary when I saw it. She made a reel on Instagram and Tiktok, and she took my post that announced my award wins, and she made it into one really amazing video with music. And it's just that's community y'all, that's what caring looks like. And I just wanted to publicly thank Lainey, because it just really meant so much.
Lainey Cameron 4:08
And, oh, thank you. And, yeah, like, sometimes you see an opportunity to do something for another writer, and you're like, Should I do it? Not do it? Do it. Like, why not like, like, they're gonna appreciate it. They're gonna see that you you appreciate them their work, what they're doing for the community.
Lainey Cameron 4:23
And I'll just say a quick note on retreats, because I agree, retreats are phenomenal. And our sponsor is organizing. Our sponsor is Lynne Golodner, and she is organizing a retreat here, where I am in San Miguel, in January next year. So if you've been thinking that you might want to treat yourself to a writer's retreat. That's an amazing one to go look at. We've got all the information on our website, on all of our blog, all of our posts on sub stack, but I can only recommend coming to San Miguel. It is magical. Some people believe that there's crystals under the city, and that's why it has so much creative energy. I'm not necessarily that person, but I will tell you that it has an amazing vibe. And the, the place where the retreats taking place is just gorgeous, the guest house, and the itinerary, and it includes so many things. So if you're thinking about a retreat, that's really a good one. It's January 26 and they're down to their last one or two spots at this point in time. So
Lainey Cameron 5:14
cool. I guess I'll, I'll do my update,
Paulette Stout 5:16
Go ahead. Go up your update.
Lainey Cameron 5:19
Okay, so my updates, other than the podcast award, which super excited about, and all of paulette's awards super excited about, I got my rights back to my first novel that came out five years ago from my publisher, which is this one. And I'm going to show you the cover if you're on the video version of the podcast, because it's the last time you'll see it. I am in the middle of redesigning with an agency the cover for this book, and it's going to look really, really different. I already have a great analysis of why this isn't the perfect cover for the book. It's very soft, it's very soft, focused, it's very friendshipy vibe. We're going to go with something much more hard hitting, much more bold, much more capturing the feminist themes. I got the first drafts yesterday. So as we go, we will share, I'll show you, I'll share a little of that process.
Lainey Cameron 6:02
And actually, the agency that I decided to work with, Demonza, they're coming on the podcast in September, and we're going to talk about, how do you design the best cover for your book? And I will happily share all the inside details of the process, having just gone through it myself. So it's going to be kind of fun. So very excited about that. I am formatting it in vellum. I'm going to self publish it. I'm working on my keywords, my Amazon categories, all the things it takes to self publish your novel. I'll be doing Amazon ads for the first month that it goes live. So very, very excited. Probably it will be the second half of July, is my guess, by the time it goes live, when we get the cover and everything. But as soon as I get a final cover, I'll put it up on pre order as an e book. And just super exciting.
Lainey Cameron 6:41
Simultaneously, I am still working on my second novel, which is called erasing grace. It's about an adventure travel Instagrammer with a dark secret past. And yeah, it's fun one, and that book is actually going to go out to beta readers by the second half of July, so I'm on track to send it out to my beta readers. Paulette is going to be one. Thank you, Paulette. I've got a few people signed up, lined up, and it's kind of nice, because knowing that they're waiting and makes me want to get it done. And so I'm kind of in in the beginnings of, like, getting this version done, that it will go out to betas. And I think that's everything for me, except that I moved house to a new place. We got a new house in San Miguel, which is a little bit bigger that has guest space. Just very exciting for me to be able to have more have my office, and also have space for guests to come stay, because right now we have to give up our offices, which is not ideal. So very excited. We moved in this week. It's mayhem, Total Mayhem right now, but it'll come down in a little bit. So let's get into our artificial intelligence for authors, because we have lots of strong opinions on this. No, no, no, we have one more thing before we go. Sorry, I told you. We had so much cool stuff. We have talked forever about how we use the term life is lifey, and for like, six plus months, we've said we're going to make shirts. We're going to make merch and palettes like, done it. She did it. She made merch. So do a quick show and tell. Show us the merch. Yeah, it's available on the store.
Paulette Stout 8:03
We have merch. We have the coffee mug. Life gets lifey Sometimes. They all say, life gets like you sometimes. And if there's other things you want, I'm sure it's let us know. I have a little notebook. I've been loving this notebook. It's got kind of like a box lines on the inside, and I've been using it for some personal things in the books, even though long hams, we have t shirts, we have water bottles, we have, you know, socks, we've got a tote bag. We've got a hat. I think we have a hat, not sure. Anyway, it is everything that you buy. It'll just, it'll get made and sent right to you. And it's, there's different shipping in different shipping in different countries. So if you're not in the United States, there should be a shipping location that's near you. And also, you know, whatever little proceeds we get will help support the funding of the podcast. This isn't free. You know, we're paying out of pocket for this. This is not something we're doing to get rich. So if you want to support the podcast, you want to get some good merch. You know, hop over to our site on four square. You can access it through our sub stack account, and you'll also link it in the podcast notes,
Lainey Cameron 9:10
yay. Okay, artificial intelligence now, okay, let's do it. So Paulette, why don't you kick us off? Just for those who are still going like I see it in the headlines everywhere. What is it? Again?
Paulette Stout 9:24
Right? So, just in super, super simple terms, artificial intelligence is basically a computer programs that are made to think like people, and what they do is they can execute different requests based on questions you ask. You say, Do this, please. And the computer goes and does it, whether that's creating prompts, creating pictures, creating text, and, you know, computer code, some companies are using it, but, you know, there's lots of different things that can it. Can generate, you know, called generative AI, which is generative artificial intelligence, and that's mostly what we're going to be talking about today. Is generative AI, the. Lots of different AI, it's been around for decades, so it's not new, and it's, I know it's controversial in some circles, but there are just a lot of really good, legitimate reasons to use it, and not all platforms have gotten their code for the training illegitimately. A lot of them are making deals with like news outlets and book publishers, and there's a lot of, you know, good content out there that it's been based on, so you don't have to feel like you're illegitimate giving it a chance.
Lainey Cameron 10:25
Yeah, and I think there's, like, from my perspective, two big areas of controversy that come up. One is, where did the training materials come from for the AI that you're using? And there's lots of different AI options out there. We're going to talk about some of them. So how did it get trained? And did they did they come about materials that trained it legitimately, as in, they paid to license those materials, or did they rip off books and not pay anybody? Which has been the big controversy. The other thing is, very often with AIS, this is not absolute, but very often with AIS, you don't know the source of the writing, and so when you ask it to write something, you don't know if it's taking writing from some other person and using it, or where it got that. And so that's where the other big controversy is, and we're going to talk about, well, how do you manage around that? Right? There are ways to manage around that, but that's the other thing that's kind of controversial still, I think, from my perspective, is not knowing the source. And that's not always the case when you're doing research. Some of the platforms will actually show you all the sources, some of them don't, which makes you suspicious of like, well, can I trust this information? And so that's kind of, from my perspective, the two big controversial things. And, you know, the the other thing is, is this idea of like, is it fair to write using AI, right? Is it cheating, right? And that's kind of a third little level of controversy. And we'll try and talk through all of these. And let's start with just for us, what we think, what platforms we use, and our take on, kind of what we think is okay and not okay, just personally, what we've decided to do.
Paulette Stout 11:54
And do you want to lead us off there? Paulette, yeah, sure. I mean, I, you know, I am not using artificial intelligence to draft my books, and you know, that is not an okay practice. I work for a software company, and we have our own AI guidelines, and that is not okay by anybody's standard. So you know, we are all aligned on that. What you can do is to use it for research purposes. You can use it for outlining. You can use it for drafting copy for marketing purposes. You can do it for creating images. So for things, you know, I write a lot of multicultural characters and interracial characters, and I just can't even find stock photography that is, you know, ethnic people that look like my people. So, you know, in a way, it's giving me an opportunity to access marketing materials that I couldn't otherwise access. It's also a really great tool for people who have different, you know, neurodiverse or different challenges, and it's making writing accessible to people who sometimes can't just sit and look at a keyboard. You can voice a prompt into something and do something so it's, you know, you need to think about the opportunities that it's opening up for people who couldn't necessarily access writing and, you know, give them their own, you know, medical situation as well.
Lainey Cameron 13:15
Yeah, and I'm in a similar place in that. First off, I'm 10, I tend to be an early adopter. So I tend to be the person who's willing to go try stuff out before, before it's easy, before it's proven. I'm not the very earliest adopter. I don't want the version that's gonna fail on me halfway through that's still beta, but I am kind of on the early end of the curve. So I will tell you that for me, I do not use AI from writing my novels either. Now a lot of writers do, and I'm not judging, okay, so I am not gonna say you're bad for doing that. I'm just saying for me personally, right now, I don't feel like I can get over the plagiarism thing of not knowing whether I'm plagiarizing someone's work, and it's not gonna tell me, by the way, this line was taken from another writer or modified or learned from this other place. And so for me personally, I just don't feel comfortable using something if I can't be 100% sure I'm not plagiarism. Percent sure I'm not plagiarizing, and I can't, right now, with any of the eyes, be 100% sure that I'm not plagiarizing something that is, you know, the same lane as another author with one lane, one word changed. I have no way to know that, right? Like I could start Googling lines, it's gonna be really hard. So for me personally, I don't use it to write my novels, but I use it to write a lot of other things. I use it to take our content from the podcast. So it's taking our transcript, which is our conversation, and then create things based on that. And I feel very comfortable doing that, because a it's public information. So I'm not uploading my book to an AI in the sky that I don't know what it's doing with it, right? That's another issue that comes up. So it's public information that AI could go find that transcript, live on the web, on our website, at best of bookmarketing.com and so I don't feel like I'm giving it information it couldn't get anyway.
Lainey Cameron 14:46
And then I'll ask it to create social media posts, captions, create blog posts. I use it to create carousels for social media, tips, articles, all kinds of stuff, based on our original content. And I feel perfectly. Fine about that. I don't feel like I'm doing anything that is ethically wrong there. Feel people feel free to disagree with me, but because it's our content to start with, I don't I don't worry about that. And it's public content is the other thing. So that's what I use it for. I use it a lot for the marketing of my own books as I'm republishing this one, I'm actually going to talk you through some of the prompts and have some of the exact ways that I'm using it as I republish my book, to rewrite some of my materials, some of my marketing materials, like getting to new taglines and copy and helping with the new cover, lots of different ways I'm using AI as I go through that process. So I think that might be interesting to people
Paulette Stout 15:32
as well. Yeah, for sure. And I think just one thing to keep in mind, as you are using AI for drafting, you really should make it a practice to rewrite almost every sentence, like it's good for start. But you know, lot of the different algorithms can tell, like, if you've copied it from someplace, and then if you don't change the content, you can go upload it to you know, if you're an indie author, Amazon, you give it to your publisher, and they'll do checks, and they could find that some of the copy was taken from someplace else. So even if you do use AI for drafting initial drafts of your work, you really should plan on making it substantially yours thereafter.
Lainey Cameron 16:12
Yeah, completely agree. And you also have to disclose it. If you upload a book to Amazon that's written using AI, you have to disclose it, including if the cover is done using AI graphics. So just be aware that that's something you're going to something you're going to have to disclose at this point. And I think that's good that companies like Amazon are insisting on that. So what platforms do we use? What's the main platform you use today? Paulette?
Paulette Stout 16:33
There's a few. So, I mean, for the last many years, I've been using Pro writing aid, and that, to me, is just a fantastic, you know, companion when you're writing, you know, if you listen to Joanna Penn, she always talks about the AI assisted artist and author, and that's kind of the approach I take, which is, it's helping me make my books better. It's helping me find, oh, I've started the three last three sentences with the same word, or I found the word pop. For some reason, I'm very into the word pop. You know, just word repetition. You haven't used enough sensory words. All different things, you know, lots of different things.
Paulette Stout 17:08
So I really love promoting aid from an image generation. There's, I'm really using two places. One is deposit photos, which is a stock photography library, and they have, like, an unlimited query system within their, um, their packages of, you know, buy so many images or whatever, and you get like these unlimited prompts. Um, also in Canva, you can do image generations. There's just a credit based system, and you'll see that in a bunch of places that the AI image generation is based on credits. So, um, so kind of use both of those. But then for just research and, you know, some mild outlining and bulleting. And, you know, I use it in my work every day. Perplexity.ai, takes it's trained on all the major models on Google, on, you know, open AI on Claude, it's got all of them in it. So it's like a one stop shop to get the best goodness of a whole bunch of different ones. So that's really my favorite, just for general AI queries, things.
Lainey Cameron 18:09
And for me, I'm using a lot of different tools that use AI. So I'm also using Pro writing it profusely, providing it is great for me, because I have this ability to write like sentences that go for a whole paragraph that are like, I don't know, like, 150 word sentences, and because it made sense to me, right? And so pro writing aid is really good at saying, like, this is the ridiculously sticky sentence, lady, how about you rewrite? And then it gives me options and says, How about rewriting it this way or that way, or splitting it into five? Like, so I use it to flag, and then I sometimes take suggestions. Most of the time I go like, yeah, no, let me rewrite that myself. But it helps flag them, because I don't notice when I write something that's incredibly convoluted and has like five thoughts in a row, I'm just that's how I think, I guess, like, probably a little bit of ADD, to be honest, and I just think in like multiples, and so yeah, it like, made sense to me on the page, and it's gonna make no sense to anybody else at all. They're like this, then that, then that, then that, then that, oh God.
Paulette Stout 19:04
And so the whole episode on ProWritingAid, we've got to get someone on from there. Yeah, we should.
Lainey Cameron 19:11
We should just start the AI function, where it rewrites your sentences to something more comprehensible. Is brilliant. I very rarely take exactly what it suggests, but it shows it's kind of unlocks your brain, because you you write something the way made sense, that made sense to you, and then you can't get out of that train track, because that's what you thought it was supposed to be, and then having a computer saying, but here's five other ways you could have done it. It just unlocks that gets you off the train track and lets you go, oh yeah, I didn't have to do it that way. I could have written it more clearly or simply, or started the other way around with the sentence. And so that really helps me. I find that helps me phenomenally pro writing it and some of the other things I use.
Lainey Cameron 19:45
I use various apps. We can talk more about these. I use a transcription app called otter AI. I use Opus clip for video editing. I use Canva. I mostly don't use the image generation yet in Canva, I've tried it a few times, but I just did. Create an entire website in Canva in 15 minutes, which we'll talk about later, which is kind of amazing, and for actual like research and asking questions, Claude is the platform that I've been using. I find that Claude and chatgpt are somewhat similar. I think chatgpt Does a slightly better job of learning learning tone as you go is one of the things that I've noticed just based on watching what other authors have done, too. Claude, I like because Claude is very good for analytics, and it's very good at analyzing and market research and that kind of thing.
Lainey Cameron 20:31
I feel like that's a strength. It's really good for writing really punchy copy as well, kind of marketing copy, chat, GPT, I just think does a slightly bit better job of learning tone. I I saw an example recently of a fantasy author who's been talking to it only in fantasy terms, and now it responds to everything with like, Yes, oh my Dark Overlord. I mean, it's just it's totally taken on the tone of fantasy and become a fantasy AI for that author. And so I think you can definitely Train, train chat GPT to take on a specific tone and only talk to you and produce results against that tone. And that can have value if you're writing in a specific genre and you want, you know, you want, for example, your social media posts to have that tone of, you know, dark fantasy every time you write something, for example. So, so anyway, I think those are some good examples, and we'll get into real good specifics as we go through. And I'm going to actually share some of the prompts that I use on cloud, and some of the prompts I've used recently to do research. So let's go from there to a good segue. What the heck is a prompt? And are there different types of prompts? And this one's yours. Paulette, why don't you take this one? Yeah,
Paulette Stout 21:33
so prompt is basically a question, and there's lots of different ways to frame the question when you're in one of these tools. So there's a I was, I use it, like I said, I use AI a lot of work. I was at Microsoft last week with the co pilot team, and we were having a meeting. And I just want to, like, express to everybody, they're still figuring stuff out too. Like, there's stuff that I'm like, How do I do this? And they're like, yep, don't know. Let's figure it out together. So don't feel like you're too late to get on the AI train, because if the people at Microsoft are still figuring out, then you you got You're fine, you're fine to do it. So in terms of how you question ask the question, you want to make sure that the question isn't too short, because then you'll just get a really vague answer that may not be exactly what you're looking for. If you do a really long question, it's kind of like giving someone directions verbally.
Paulette Stout 22:28
When you're driving, take it right here, then take a left there, then go to the thing the other place, at the tree, make a left like after a while, the tool will get a little confused, and it'll just kind of do what it wants, and you may not get exactly what you want. So there are a few things to keep in mind when you give up when you create a prompt. One is the context. What is, you know, what is the target audience that you are, you know, trying to approach like I am writing a copy for people who enjoy historical romance of the Regency period, you know. And you know, just giving them the context of who you're trying to attract, what is the style you want? It, happy, sad, tone, serious, you know, you can say how long you want it. I want one paragraph. I want five words. I want two words, you know, be really specific about kind of the output you're hoping to get from it. Give me a list of 10 places my book could be set that has a castle and, like, a nuclear plant, you know, like whatever, you know, it'll just kind of like lists of things is great so, and some are better at learning over time from the prompts.
Paulette Stout 23:31
So like, sometimes that, you know, if you have a subscription, or if, even if you have a free account, you know, they'll keep the stuff in there. And sometimes you, like Lainey was saying about the, you know, the speaking pattern, they'll learn some of your styles, your requests, and then your prompts will get better over time, because it'll kind of get it and be able to anticipate what you're looking for.
Lainey Cameron 23:49
And I pay for more capacity, so I pay $20 a month for the I don't know if it's called Pro version of clause, and it's super worth it to me, because I don't want to be limited on how much I can upload to it. And so with the pro version, I can upload a lot of data to it, and it really helps, right?
Paulette Stout 24:03
And then another piece of like prompts are, you have the question, but then you're also able to upload files. So if you say, if you upload a picture, write me a description of this place, you know, if you can, you know, go up the other way, you know, you know. Tell me what this place looks like that I've ever been to. What are the sounds in the morning at this location, you know, because you've never traveled there before, you know. So there are things like that that you can give to it, that doesn't have to be they can also create images, if you want to make make me a word cloud of all my reviews so I can see what are the main themes that you know readers are saying, and then I'll kind of know what's my vibe, and I can use those in my marketing ads. So there's lots of ways that you can input content into your question to make the answer come out as you want.
Lainey Cameron 24:52
I just did exactly what you're saying well, kind of I was in my opening scene in my second book. It takes place at the Meteora monastery in. Greece, and for the life of me, I couldn't work out how to describe the color of the walls of the monastery. So I'm looking at all these photos on Google, right? And I'm like, how do you describe that? And I asked cloud, I'm like, can you give me 30 different ways to describe the color of the walls of the Meteora monastery? And it just unlocked it for me, got me off of pink, like I couldn't get beyond pink. I'm like, it doesn't fit. Pink doesn't fit with what I'm writing. But it's, I don't know how else to describe it, and so it just kind of sometimes, kind of sometimes just brainstorming, getting you off your track really helps. And so I don't know if I actually used exactly any of the ones that gave me, but it gave me so many different variations that it was like, no longer pink, if that helps.
Paulette Stout 25:33
Yes, yes. So just one really quick thing among problems before we go on to the next topic. Is it? It is a computer, and so try to not include pleasantries please and thank you, because Funny enough, please and thank you will confuse the computer, and it will also take extra processing time to analyze what the please and what the thank you means. So just leave any kind of civil conversation out of your prompts so you can get more what you need and save maybe a greener plot prompt.
Lainey Cameron 26:08
Ican't, I'm sorry. I'm trying Paulette. I saw this in the notes for the episode, and I'm like, Yep, I say please and thank you. Every single line I do it, I just, I cannot do it. It's just, I'm British. We're, you know, I also say sorry. I have apologized to the AI, so I need to work on this. I'm not very good at this.
Paulette Stout 26:27
Yes, yes, you do.
Lainey Cameron 26:31
It's just a computer. It's just our slave, like, it just works for us. But, yeah, no, I say please and thank you. Sorry all the time. So I will, I will try harder. So let's talk about prompts. And I would more in detail types of prompts. And I would love to give an example of one of these. Do you want me to take this one that's kind of different? Okay, so, so actually, I didn't know some of these names for these. So actually, zero prompt. I take it back. Paulette, you tell us, tell us, and then I'll give mine.
Paulette Stout 27:00
Ok, these are some of the these are from Microsoft. They have some prompting tools, and I'll see if I can get the deck and, like, link it in the show notes of that. Like it just like a little PowerPoint deck on prompting. And they have, like, different categories for prompts. What is a zero prompt? So that would be, you know, maybe you just put a link in, or maybe you add a document or a picture or just something, or you use, sometimes your algorithms. There are pre loaded prompts in there. So it's kind of using one of those that you're actually not really writing a question at all. Doesn't work in all cases. But that's just one type of prompt that I think
Lainey Cameron 27:29
I have an example of this. So just yesterday, I was using publishing rocket. Publisher rocket to look at categories on Amazon, and you can go into actually, Kindle spy, I take it back. Kindle spy in your browser, okay, and I'm using both of those tools,
Paulette Stout 27:48
OG software. Girl, yeah.
Lainey Cameron 27:50
Kindle Spy, and you're in a category on an Amazon page in this piece of software, and then you can click to get a market analysis of that category, and it automatically launches chat GBT with a pre written prompt that says this category, these books write this kind of market analysis. So it's like a prompt that's already done for you, and you just click it and it launches it into chat GPT and gives you the answer. So I think that would maybe be an example of that.
Paulette Stout 28:15
Yeah, for sure. Yes, that's a good one. So prompt chaining, um Lainey is going to take you through this was basically starting with one question, and then when you get the response, you you kind of layer in more details and more refinement. So it's kind of like baking. You're using a recipe from a cookbook. You do the first step, then you're the second step, then you do the third step, and it just kind of gets closer and closer to where you want. But each step is really specific and precise.
Paulette Stout 28:39
So the computer really knows what you're asking. It can give you a really good result, and it's result, and it's a nice way for you to get really specific and honed into your unique question, you know, without the kind of meandering, odd answers that you can sometimes get with the third example, which is a mega prompt. It is one prompt that is kind of long. It can be like 1000s of characters, and it's basically act as a, you know, a editor at a big publishing house who is looking to acquire, you know, this type of genre, you know, tell me the 15 things that this book should have and, you know, make it appealing to, you know, the European and Asian markets. And you just kind of keep going, going on and give me an answer that's in a list and also has good answers. You know, it's just like a very long prompt. It's very specific. But sometimes the computer gets a little bit crazy, lost along the way, and it'll give you something you're like, you know, that's not even what I asked y'all, you know. So prompt chaining, I think for our audience of this show is probably going to be the way to go.
Lainey Cameron 29:45
Yeah, and so I'm going to give you an example of prompt, a real example from the last month of me using prompt chaining. And it sounds complicated, prompt chaining sounds like really fancy, but it's not. But before I go there, let me make one more comment on one danger point with AI. So when I did. That analysis. I started in the software called Kindle spy, and basically clicked on, analyze this category, and it wrote, like a little market analysis using chat GPT, and said, like, for example, I was looking at contemporary women's fiction, and it said, here are the attributes of best selling books in contemporary women's fiction. Here's what you want to have in the book. Here's what readers appreciate. Here's some examples of best selling titles. And then it said, here's a potential title and plot outline of a book that you could write in this genre.
Lainey Cameron 30:26
Okay, well, you are not the only person that's giving that potential title and plot outline to, believe me, everybody else who analyzed that same category got something very similar or exactly the same from that that chat GPT prompt. So I do think that's also a danger point, right? Like originality. Assume that if it's giving you a specific idea, like an idea for a book, that it has given it to other people as well. And if you write that book, you may be one of 50 people writing the same book right now. So just something to think about there, right? Like it just, it was a red flag for me when it came up with that. I didn't ask for it, just gave it to me at the end of this query. And I was like, What interesting anyway, let's do a change query. So I, like I said, I am redoing my book, the exit strategy, and I am trying to work out how to redo the cover. I'm also trying to work out how to redo the back copy, cover copy, because I feel like I now know more about my reader five years later, and I have 300 odd reviews. So my thought was, well, can I learn what readers liked in the book and rewrite the blurb based on what people really liked about the book? Right? Because I was guessing five years ago when the book came out. I'd only had BETA readers.
Lainey Cameron 31:29
Now I have real readers. What could I do with that? So here's what I did. I went to Amazon and I created PDFs of all of my reviews. So page by page, you can up. Unfortunately, you can't do one page with all of them, but page by page. Think it took like eight or nine pages, and I just created a PDF of each one. I went print, print to PDF. So now I had nine files with all of the text copy of all of my reviews on Amazon. And so I uploaded that to Claude, which is the AI that I use the most, and the the prompt that I gave it, I said, I am going to upload a series of PDFs with current reviews. I would like you I'd already explained what the exit strategy is, okay. I would like you to know. I would like to know what are the novel's greatest strengths based on these reviews, what do readers most appreciate? Oh, look, I didn't say please. Good. Good job. So, and then it came back and it said, these are the things that readers like. And it gave me like 10 points, and said, these are the 10 things that readers like most about this book. And then I put a second query, and I said, I'm going to upload the current book description based on this I would like you to recommend how you would change or rewrite this description based on what readers most enjoy about this book.
Lainey Cameron 32:37
So take what you just told me in prompt one, which is why readers like it, and tell me against this book description, what you would change to get those things into it more clearly. And so it rewrote the book description for me based on that. That's not going to be the final one I go with, but it was pretty damn interesting to see how I could change it, to get it more to talk to what ideal readers like. And then I asked it, can you propose some alternate hooks to replace this line, and it had a specific hook line. And I said, I want you to try some different ones. Give me 30 ultimate alternate hooks. And it gave me 30 alternate hooks. And then I said, I don't like that. Try this structure instead. And I tried, like a three point structure for the hook. And said, here's an example. And I had it write me a bunch of hooks based on the three point structure. And then I said, I was getting very specific at this point, can you try and bring in the idea that it's not just the husband they take down, but the whole ecosystem of sexism in Silicon Valley? Please don't use the word ecosystem. So and it rewrote the hook again, and give me another 10 versions, and none of these are probably exactly what it'll end up going with, but they were pretty damn close, and I would have spent days doing that myself, and I did that entire exercise, as you can see, through a series of prompts, very human language. And I think I did the whole exercise in 15 or 20 minutes, right?
Paulette Stout 33:49
And a few refinements that I could suggest to you in this prompting, just as we're as the first time. Seeing them is that you could also give it the length that you want and how many words you can also give it the tone. You can say, write the hook to appeal to this audience. You know, to, you know, if there are specific plot points that your readers, like, you know, really element, you know, highlight those like you just said, you know, you talked about the ecosystem. So, like, Lainey was already doing that. And, you know, we're saying, I'm going to upload, you would just say, analyze this. You know, it just makes it a little clearer for the for the computer to understand what you need. And it's not going to waste analyzing. I'm going to upload so you don't, and it's because, when you write a prompt, sometimes, especially if it's longer, the words at the beginning of the prompt get more weight, and the words at the end get more weight, and the ones in the middle a little lost. So you want those first few words to be really precise to get you going in the right direction.
Lainey Cameron 34:50
Great. So I need to have you come and coach me on my prompts. Because I'm like, Well, I'm here.
Paulette Stout 34:56
No, this is like, I've learned all this just because I have, like, I'm up to my eye. Balls in AI every day at work.
Lainey Cameron 35:03
So okay, so would you want to talk a little bit more about long prompts? So you said, these can be tricky because you don't always get back exactly what you wanted. But can you, can you talk through an example of how you do a long prompt?
Paulette Stout 35:14
Yeah, and this is kind of the anatomy of, you know, what you some what you get. So like I said here, act as if you are an agent and a public house. You give it a goal, like a role, you know. So from a long part you want to talk about goal. What do you want? Give me a list of three types of butterflies that are going to be in the Amazon so, and what color their their petals, their wings are, you know, if you're writing a book, and you need to do a butterfly, you know, contact, you know, what is the purpose? Who is the audience? And, like I just said, you know, act as a publishing house. And you want to know, it gives the it gives the computer a role to play in this little scenario you're making. And then it kind of pulls from its vast stores of information, things that are relevant to the audience that you're trying to focus on expectations, you know, give it. What are you actually asking for?
Paulette Stout 36:04
You know, Lainey was saying, I want a book for, you know, I want this paragraph. I want a hook that's this many words, you know, what do you if there's an order you want things in, how long or short? How many paragraphs do you want? A picture? Do you want to you know? What is the tone of it? Make this a funny thing, you know, sometimes I'm doing things for work and things sound super serious. I'm like, please make this appealing to sales people at a sales conference and or motivational, or, you know, dramatic, or, you know, give it the tone of the information that you're getting that you'd like to get out of the prompt, and then that will just help you get so basically, the long prompt would be a sequence of all of these instructions and separate paragraphs, I mean, separate sentences. And, you know the tool, like I use, Copal dot work that goes up to, I think, 8000 characters. And that's an agent you can make you can make prompts pretty long. You can make attachments, like Lainey was saying, also, I have heard that when you make attachments that have words in them, that word documents work better than PDFs. So if there's an opportunity to create a Word document or, like, download something from Google docs in in Word, I mean, that's just, that's a co pilot ecosystem thing. It may not be the same for Claude. I know you use Claude but that was something that I think, that they just build their software to work with their products, and a PDF is typically like an Adobe product, and Microsoft's a competitor. So I think that sometimes the companies make things work better with their stuff. So that could just be one of those copilot ecosystem things.
Lainey Cameron 37:39
Yeah, I mean, I do like, when I can, I will just copy, like, when I'm doing the transcripts of our episodes, when I can, I'll just copy the text directly into the query, versus uploading it as a PDF. But like, in the in that case where it was all the reviews, like I wasn't going to do the extra work to go, take the text and put it into a Word document in order to upload, it was way easier for me to use the PDFs. But yeah, you can also just copy the text directly into the prompt, and the formatting really doesn't matter,
Paulette Stout 38:04
right? And then, over time, I'm just gonna say he's gonna shoot me. If you get more sophisticated with these things, you can build agents. And if you can do the same thing over and over and over, you can just make an agent, and you push a button and it'll just, you know, you upload the new reviews, and it'll give you the new analysis. So if there's an analysis that you think you're gonna be doing many times over, it's worth just following some easy steps to make what they call an agent, and then that will just kind of it'll answer the questions basically like a menu. You know, you've already told it what you want. You just have to click the button.
Lainey Cameron 38:35
Cool. So we're gonna do a little sponsor break here, but when we come back, we're going to get more into very specifically, how do we use the the different AIS, different tools for different parts of our marketing mix here and our marketing plans. And I'll also give you a few more examples of prompts, and Paulette will tell me how I can get better with them, apparently, which I love, um, because I don't do this as my day job, right? I'm learning like everybody else here. So okay, so let's just talk about our sponsor. So like we said at the beginning, if you're thinking of treating yourself to an investment in your writing, your craft and also your motivation and building community, there is an amazing retreat happening. It's sponsored by Lynn golodner. It is here where I am, in San Miguel de Allende, which is one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Very safe, very fun, beautiful. You don't need transport. You just walk around the town. Very colorful. By the time this happens next January, you will not be in the rainy season, which is what it is right now. It's pouring with rain outside right now, and you get so much in this retreat. So it's limited to just 16 writers, which I really like. And you're basically taking over this little hotel called quesadilla noche, which is beautiful. It's a guest house. It has tons of little writing spaces inside it, like there must be at least 10 different little writing spaces in different rooms and areas where you can write. But you also get workshops. You get small and large group workshops. You get one on one mentoring. You get a welcome dinner, a final night celebration dinner. You get a reading and dinner with a New York Time Best. Selling New York Times, best selling authors, including on Mexican times, Tony Cohen, who I have not yet met. I hope I get to meet him a guided visit to the breathtaking city of Guanajuato. I love that.
Lainey Cameron 40:11
I'm reading. I'm reading the things you get here. Guanajuato is gorgeous. It is one of the most pretty cut cities in the world. It's like all colored. Go google it. You just got to see it. It's, it's, it's as pretty as San Miguel, but different just fantastic. If anyone needs a rooftop bar recommendation, I have a great rooftop bar I can recommend while you're there. You also get a half day at the hot springs included. You get a Mexican cooking class. You dine on rooftops with rooftop restaurants. You get one on one writing and structure time and the excursions and airport transfers and hotel are all included, in addition to all the writing stuff. So it's kind of cool that you get everything included, like basically you just have to get yourself to the airport and get to San Miguel those two nearby airports that are an hour and a half from this time, do not fly to Mexico City if you can avoid it. It's four hours away.
Lainey Cameron 40:57
But there's two airports an hour and a half from here. Once you get yourself to those airports, everything else is taken care of. It's like, it's like, perfect. You don't you need to worry about it. They pick you up in the airport. They got your meals, you got your hotel, you got all your writing stuff, you got your retreat. I mean, it looks amazing, and all these excursions too. So I kind of want to do it, but then I live here, so that would be weird, right?
Paulette Stout 41:14
Yeah, probably, I know. I know, right?
Lainey Cameron 41:19
I will be there. I will get to meet everybody who is at the retreat. I'm arranging my travel around it at the second half of the retreat. My son's actually getting married during this retreat, believe it or not. So I will be in California for that, but I will be back for the second half of the treat, and I really want to meet the 16 writers who are going to be there. So check it out. It's really fabulous. We'll put in the show notes. We'll put it on the website as well. You can find it in our sub stack. There's a great article with more details. So let's get back into AI.
Paulette Stout 41:43
Yes, so we're talking about using AI to find book comps. Now, this has been something that I've struggled with. Everyone struggles with this. So we'll each go through one of this. Lainey is going to get us started going through how she used it for book rounds. And then I'll use it. I'll share how I did it, but yeah, if you want to take us away, yeah.
Lainey Cameron 42:03
And we had really different experiences with this, and this is a really good example of hallucination. So if anyone doesn't know what hallucination is, here's how I describe it. Is the AI wants to please you. So if it can't find an answer, it will just make shit up. Okay, we're already getting explicit, so I'm gonna say yes. So yeah, it like, it's like it really wants to please, and there's no book that meets the description, so it's just gonna make it up. And the best example of this, maybe, is that recent article in what was it the Chicago times, where the writer, who was a journalist, basically asked the AI, tell me some number of good books coming out this summer, and every single book was from a known author, but it was a made up title and a made up book description. And this journalist did not even sanity check by going to Goodreads to make sure that the books existed. And so he published this article with 10 plus made up books.
Lainey Cameron 42:55
The AI completely hallucinated the entire set of books, and they all sound incredible and wonderful, and I wanted to read them, but it was GARBAGE. And so this is your risk with something like comps, is you can actually set variables on the AIS for truthfulness. I have not tried doing this in Claude, and clearly I need to. So here's the prompt I went with, and I'll tell you the results I got. So I asked Claude, can you suggest some women's fiction novels that are similar in tone to the exit strategy by Lainey Cameron, and may appeal to the same readers. And I got a list. I think I asked for 10. I got a list, and I think 40% so four out of 10 were made up. They were not true books. The AI made up the books, and then I asked it, because I was verifying each one on Goodreads and looking at finding the author's website, etc. And that's one of the lessons here, is you really need to verify, okay? And then I asked it, but these books, I can't find them, do they exist?
Lainey Cameron 43:49
And it said, No, I'm sorry, they don't exist. Let me give you some different examples. They were also made up. We went through this four times, and all four times when I said, this doesn't exist, and it gave me a new example. Some of the new examples were also made up. So without modifying the settings on Cloud, I actually found it impossible to get a full list that was 100% true based on fact. So I think there's probably, like I said, Set, a way to modify the truthfulness settings. I haven't tried that yet, but I think this is where a different platform, like the one you use pollette, use per i always get complexity or plexity. Keep wanting to call it purpose, purpose against anyway, perplexity. I think this is where perplexity, that shows the sources, is going to be much better than something like Claude for this. So why don't you explain what you did and how it works for you?
Paulette Stout 44:34
Yeah, so just for folks who don't know Perplexity.ai, is a tool that you it uses OpenAI, it uses Google, Gemini uses Claude. It uses a lot of different platforms. So when you get the answer, it's getting the benefit of all of those together. And the free one is pretty good. And I, you know, I have a business one too for my job. But like. Free one is like good. So what I did is, I say, I looked up myself. I said, Tell me about the author, Paulette stout. And then it get a whole thing on who I am, and that kind of like level sets the prompt in me. And then I was a give me 10 authors who are like Paulette stout. And if there's a keyword, like, for me, it talks about having that mix between kind of like romance and, you know, kind of like from the headlines theme, social justice stuff, you know, that kind of mix like, who have that? And then it gives me the things and those authors I ended up taking and putting into an Amazon ad to target those authors.
Paulette Stout 45:42
You can also do that on Facebook. You can also do that on BookBub. So you can use these not only just for kind of figuring out your categories and keywords and things like that and your ideal audience, but you can also use it for, you know, marketing specifics, because sometimes it's like, Who do I target, and how do I come up with the keywords? And this is a great way to do that perplexity also sources everything. It will give you every single source. So then you can kind of go and look and see if the information they said was right, because it will hallucinate. It will tell you something. And then if you click through, I did a search, it said something. I knew it wasn't quite right, so I checked the source, and the source actually said the opposite. So then I the second chain prompt was like, is that right? Is that true? Did you make a mistake, or you didn't give me the full question? Can you finish your question like you can have a conversation with it, with the prompts pointing out mistakes, or why did you choose that answer for me. In this case, you know, you can ask it questions, and it'll kind of give you some background on the reasoning it used to get to that then you can kind of feel more comfortable with the answer to
Lainey Cameron 46:51
Exactly, exactly. So don't just take anything from an AI as gospel and assume it's right, because you're you're going to end up like this guy who wrote the Chicago Times article who looked like an absolute idiot.
Paulette Stout 47:02
I mean, just just the biggest ass. Who does that? Who does that?
Lainey Cameron 47:08
Who doesn't even double check something that a computer generated like come on anyway. No. So what about book blurbs? I know when we had Jesse on, you got to go watch that episode. Fabulous Jesse Caniff, whose book book book blurb magic is her firm, and she she writes blurbs for authors and helps you modify your blurb. And she was pretty anti AI for blurbs, right? Having AI write your blurb, she was not done with that. But what do you think, Paulette,
Paulette Stout 47:34
I think that, you know, I've definitely used it. And you know, there were aspects of the Burbank, you know, you you get the answer. You can upload your current blurb. You can upload, like, a synopsis, you know, if you're really ballsy, you can upload the whole book, you know, if you have a private files, I know, like Joanna Penn always uploads your own books, you know, give me a book blurb for this book, you know.
Paulette Stout 47:59
And so there's lots of different ways to approach it. I think it can be really helpful, because writing a long form novel or a non fiction book or a memoir is very different than running snappy marketing copy. I mean, we have backgrounds in marketing, so it's a little we have that the instinctual way of framing, being concise, getting to the point, you know, starting with the top information up first, and that kind of averted pyramid of hierarchy. But not everyone is comfortable with that. So I really think if you struggle with book blurbs, then, you know, give it a chance and see if you like it. You know, can sometimes, oh, I didn't think of that. And it can be a prompt for you to refine. You should always refine whatever you get out of the prompt.
Lainey Cameron 48:39
Yeah, I think you have to consider what you're starting with, right? So it's only going to be as good as what you give it, right? So if you say, here's the title of the book and here's what it's about in a sentence, and I write me a blurb, it can't, because it doesn't know the plot, it doesn't know the tone, it doesn't so you have to really think about, like, well, what are you going to give it that's going to let it write you a good blurb, right? So like, right? In the example I gave earlier, I gave it all of my reviews.
Lainey Cameron 49:03
That was a lot of data, right? A lot of information, and therefore it was able to absorb and act and analyze based on all that information. If I did that for my new book, what's coming up? Unless I gave it the whole book, which I would be nervous about, unless I knew I was using, let's say, Gemini, which I think Google. Gemini doesn't share it. You You're in your own sandbox. Unless I was using some platform that was in its own sandbox, I wouldn't feel comfortable uploading my whole novel in progress, right? To have it write the blurb, I need to know that that is not going beyond my little sandbox of the internet. So and so I'd probably have to think about which platform I was using, but unless I gave it the book, what's it going off? Right? Is it just rewriting the blurb I wrote? Well, in that case, it's not going to be able to get very far away because it doesn't have more data. It doesn't have more data to go off. So it's only as good as the information you give it, right?
Paulette Stout 49:46
So, and just to build on that, so if you give it, let's say you have a current blurb that you don't like. You can say, Can you write this blurb to be more exciting and compelling to readers of you know, the. Epic fantasy, you know, or whatever the genre is, you know, I would just make sure that the they have the context of who is this supposed to appeal to. And then I like three paragraphs like it to be, I think Jesse was really trying to get her verbs, I think under like 170 words, if I recall, yeah, I had two. I've had two sessions with her, I think it was around there, you know, then, plus the log line. So, yeah, so just, I want this in four paragraphs. I want this in dual POV I have, you know, or three POVs or four POVs, you know, what's the best way to structure this? You know, you can say, also a question. I have a book with four point of view characters, what is the best approach for me to take in the book blurb, and they'll say, oh, you should focus on these characters. Okay, so then when you do the book, so write me a book where the focus is on these two characters and their journeys, and ends with a really punchy line that makes people want to read it, you know? So the more context you can give to the prompt, the better results you're going to get.
Lainey Cameron 50:58
Yeah, and I think it would work well with a synopsis as well. If you have a synopsis, I know a lot of writers hate writing synopsis, so, but, like, you don't have to give it your whole book. You could give it a synopsis, which is also, if your book is out kind of public information, right? Like, like a synopsis is not, I don't know, so, yeah, I'd still, I I'd have to really think about putting the whole book of an unpublished book, and I feel, I'd feel awkward unless, for sure, wasn't doing it, yeah? But I think other people do, so it's just you know each other, yeah?
Paulette Stout 51:24
Because I think what Joanna Penn has mentioned on her podcast, the creative pen if you haven't heard it, is she write this in the style of Joanna Penn, you know, so she can then start creating content in the style of herself, you know. But it is also like, who else is getting that information? You're 100% you have to make sure that that's locked down and not being used to train the models, yeah.
Lainey Cameron 51:48
And we almost called this episode ethical AI for others. And to me, that's an example of where you cross the line. So if I was to say, Write this in the style of Chris and Hannah, I feel like that is not ethical, because that that AI has taken all of Kristen Hannah's novels and has used them, and I was regurgitating that to write in that style for me. And actually, that's another example of an author got caught doing that recently, where the prompt showed up in the middle of the book, where they had asked the AI to write in the style of another author, and it became a whole thing. Oh, so yeah, that is not ethical. I'm not done.
Paulette Stout 52:25
Yeah, but what you can do is say my book is x, x, x, please write a book blurb that's four paragraphs and one po people that will appeal to readers of Kristen Hannah. That's okay. You don't want to copy her work, but you can try to appeal to her audience. And there's a very big distinction between that. Yeah, exactly.
Paulette Stout 52:53
So the next little thing, it's the coolest thing ever. My job won't pay for it, so we haven't have it yet, but we there's a program from Google called notebook LLM, and it is embedded in a few other programs. I can't tell you what it will take written text and create, like, an NPR worthy interview in like three seconds with like two voices, with like, you know, the whole smooth like, you can choose voices and things, but it's just super cool. So if there's something you wanted to do, it's like, oh, here's an interview, a Q and A that you did with somebody. You can upload that and make it an audio file. Make it a conversation. You know of if you want to take a Q and A you did with a, with an with an outlet, a lot of us do written Q and A's just off to promote our books, maybe you can take that, make an audio file and have another format for that. It's not only gives you more content to use, it's also more inclusive for people who you know are visually impaired, they can enjoy that in a different way. So there's lots of more inclusive ways you can think of using AI to bring your message to more readers.
Lainey Cameron 53:55
Yeah, my husband, I think this is the no notebook LLM is the Google one? Is that the Yeah, yes, it's in Google.
Paulette Stout 54:00
I think you might need to have some other Google account to get that one, but you can, you'd have to look into that.
Lainey Cameron 54:06
So my husband, I don't think he'd mind me sharing this, wrote the first chapter of a memoir I've been encouraging forever, because he has the most fascinating story of his, like childhood on a commune and traveling all around South America, all kinds of cool stuff. So he wrote the first chapter, and he gave it to notebook LLM, and it created a podcast describing not just this memoir, but describing the moment in time and what was happening in the 1970s and how this related to the Gen general commune movement, and how it was the same or different. It was freaking amazing, amazing. Like, like, NPR style podcast conversation for like, 20 or 30 minutes based on one chapter, blew my mind. Blew my mind. Yeah?
Paulette Stout 54:44
So there's a lot of opportunity there for not beyond written and visual, into audio and other, you know, times of medium. So I just wanted to kind of throw that out there. Don't have a lot to say because I don't have access to right now, but there's lots of cool things like Lainey was just saying, yeah, so, so.
Lainey Cameron 54:59
To talk a little bit about marketing plans, and then I want to show you some of the different tools that I use. Just talk about some of the different tools I use. So the biggest thing it can do is give you a lot of information about your target reader. So if you can identify a couple of comps, if you can have a little bit of an idea of your target reader, it can give you very detailed profiles, right? So even just starting with a category like contemporary women's fiction, and you say, write, write me. A target reader profile of who the likely reader of this category is. It's going to give you age group, emotions, potential, occupations. I mean, it's giving you a ton of data and comps, like we talked about finding comps for marketing purposes, like for advertising, for example. It also is great for social media plans.
Lainey Cameron 55:40
You can say, I'm this kind of author. I want to focus on this kind of thing and write me a 30 day calendar of social media. And then you take that and it says, like, on day one, do a reel talking about your inspiration. On day two, do a post talking about such and such. It's not necessarily that you're going to take exactly everything it said. It's not going to write it for you, but it's so much easier to start with a calendar. Where it says, Do this on day one, and this one day two, and this one day three, that just sit there every day going, Oh, what do I put on social media today? And so it's still you, it's still uniquely you. You're still creating the content at the end of the day, but you're going against a calendar that it created in 10 seconds flat, as opposed to trying to come up with it all in your head and schedule it and think about it. I think, I think you've used this right, Paulette,
Paulette Stout 56:23
I have and my actually, the prompt I did, I had it outputted for me in a table. So it did give me this Pro. It gave me the text for the post, it gave me the suggested hashtags, and it gave me suggestions for imagery. So, and that was all included in my prompt. And then it, like, outputted a table, and, you know, so I started using that, and some of them are, like, super specific. It was gonna take me a long time to make the images, so I didn't, kind of like do it, but it was a nice exercise, because it's something a lot of us struggle with, to be consistent on social media, to build our following, and just also be intentional about the audience. And I think that that's something I probably will be doing more, because right now, I'm really full now, I'm really focusing my Tiktok account on readers. So that's a little something, because, like, my Instagram is a little hot mess, like, I post every damn thing and whatever I post for the podcast, I post my reading. I post for like, if I'm out for a walk, you know. So it's a little bit more of just, like, where I hang. But I was trying to be more intentional with my Tiktok, so I definitely will be, I think creating a plan a little more intentional to, like, attract readers. And I think that can probably help me do that.
Lainey Cameron 57:27
Yeah, the other thing I've done is ask it for ideas of ways to reach a particular type of reader. So when I'm helping authors with their marketing plans, sometimes they'll have a very unique niche audience, and I'll be, like, bracking my brain going, like, where do those people hang out in the world? How do we find those people who are really into fantasy based in Iowa? And I'll actually ask that question, and it will say, well, here's some Facebook groups and here's some places that you might find those readers.
Lainey Cameron 57:53
So that's really helpful as a way to think about places where those people, once you've done the profile and you know who you're trying to find and what the genre on the book is, where are these people hanging out? And how do I go find them? So that's really helpful as well. And then some of the tools that I use, we talked earlier about pro writing aid, I use otter.ai for transcription. So for example, this video, after we're done, I will go upload it to otter.ai and it will transcribe the entire episode for me, and that's what ends up on our webpage. Now, I wouldn't even bother to try and do that myself, right? I'm not going to sit there transcribing the Don episode by hand, so that's phenomenal. And then I take that transcription and I put it in Claude, and I say, here's the transcription of the episode. Create 30 social media posts for me. I want five that are carousels that have tips. I want five that are quotes from the episode, that are punchy quotes, and make the rest anything you want.
Lainey Cameron 58:45
And it'll come up with 30 different posts with captions and hashtags and an idea of what the image should be for each one. And then I pick the ones that I like. I don't use them all. I pick the ones that I like, but it's pre written the caption for me, and it's all off of the transcript that I uploaded. So that's an example of how I use it for the podcast. I also, for the podcast, use a video editing app called Opus clip. If you notice our format here, we're recording on YouTube, and we're recording horizontal right we use a platform called stream yard right now, and it's in horizontal format. But if any of you go look at our Instagram account, we have reels that are vertical format. And how does that happen? Does Lainey sit there and move the thing around and edit the damn video? Oh, hell no, I don't have time for that. I have this platform I use called Opus clip. I upload this video after we're done here, and it automatically suggests 30 odd small, less than 32nd reels, and rearranges the video to put it in vertical, real format for me, and puts the text, the captions on it. And then all I do is pick the ones I want, download them and use them on the social media and upload them to Instagram. So that's amazing in terms of, if I sometimes you wouldn't even do like, like, I would never do that, sit and edit the video and make it into vertical reels like F that. I No one got time for that. So that's really helpful. And it also suggests, what are the catch? What are the. A like, the bits that people will relate to the most, the short snippets that are going to be most interesting for people. And it actually says, like, this is why this snippet is more interesting than that snippet. It gives a rating out of 100 which is kind of helpful. And sometimes I disagree, but yeah, so those are some of the tools I use.
Lainey Cameron 1:00:17
I also, oh, I started talking about the website, so I just did a website for my publishing imprint. It's called the Colibri press. Colibri means hummingbird in Spanish. And I went to Claude, and I said, Claude, I have a new publishing imprint for my books. It's going to publish books by Lainey Cameron, author, write me the copy for copy for the website, the Colibri press. And in one minute, I had the copy. I went over to Canva, and I said, Canva give me a template for a website for an author that writes women's fiction in this genre, and Canva gave me a template. And then I put the copy in the template. I chose an image. I already had a domain name sitting for a while at GoDaddy, and it was a one click connect on Canva to get that domain name onto my Canva site. And so I went from having no website for my imprint to having a website for my imprint using Claude and Canva in I joke, not 15 minutes I had the website up and running up my domain name blew my mind.
Lainey Cameron 1:01:14
I know how long it used to take to do that. If anyone wants to see it's the colibripress.com it's not a site I'm going to be driving people to I just wanted something that if people went to my Amazon page and they saw my imprint, and they said, Who is the Colibri press, and they Googled it, that it would actually show up and be a thing free website. I already have, Canvas. I'm not paying for it. Pretty much. The only thing I'm paying for is the domain name, which is like 15, $20 a year. So that was amazing to me, like that. That that actually blew my mind how easy it was.
Paulette Stout 1:01:43
I think that there's so many tools up there that make that can make our life easier. Can make, you know, really quality marketing platform, building pieces very easy to do ourselves. And you know, we've, you know, one of our first episodes of this podcast was all about, you know, publishing on a budget. And this is exactly an example of that, of doing things that you already have in the subscriptions you already own, or in free versions, and making the most of them. And the other piece I want to say about this is you can see all the work lady does to make this podcast really amazing. So you go. Girl, Beth.
Lainey Cameron 1:02:20
Beth Bliss is watching us here, and Beth was saying that that she uses the transcript. And I do think the transcripts helpful, because not everybody wants to watch a whole video, right? Sometimes you just want to write the essentials. And it helps me, because I create other content off of it. So yeah, but that's an example of like, we do pay for things for the podcast. So like, otter.ai is a paid service that I use for transcription. Opus clip is a paid service that I use for the video stuff. So it saves a lot of time. Yeah, exactly, the hosting of the website. So buy some buy some fun words, yeah.
Paulette Stout 1:02:52
Help a girl out. Help a sister girl out.
Lainey Cameron 1:02:54
And thank you to our sponsors. We really appreciate our sponsors. That's what that does, also, is some of those costs. So Well, we are getting to the end of our episode here. I think we've talked about some of the danger points and some of the like hallucinations. Is there, is there anything we haven't talked about relative to, like, the dangers that you think we should mention?
Paulette Stout 1:03:14
I don't think so. I just think, you know, be smart. You know, verify your results, um, rewrite the outputs if you're using it for drafting and just, you know, go experiment. Don't be afraid of it. Even the experts are still learning. Like I said, I was at Microsoft for like, six hours last week, and I was asking them all kinds of questions about copilot, which is their Gen AI agent, kind of their equivalent of, you know, chat, GPT. And they're like, yep, don't know. So you know, they're the experts are still learning, so you're not too late. It's totally fine to give it a try. It's like, you know, when I went to college, I was so excited to get a typewriter for my freshman year in college, and I got there, and my roommate had this thing called a personal computer. Then she had a Commodore, and then the guy across the hall had this thing called a Macintosh computer. And it was like, Oh, my God, I don't have to retype my paper every time. I can just print it out, you know? So it's like, there are technologies that just shift how the world works, and this is one of those. So, you know, we can all have our own moral kind of convictions about this, but, you know, I'm not going back to typewriter, but I'm not a worse person, because I use a computer than a typewriter, you know. And I think this is one of those, you know, use it or don't use it, but if you'd want to use it, you should feel confident that there are good ways to do it, yeah,
Lainey Cameron 1:04:38
And if you've never tried. So I noticed there's a couple of people in the comments like Micki is saying, Micki has fabulous books. I'm gonna mess up Micki Beth Foley, everyone else, Micki yeah, Micki, Micki's books are fabulous. I love them to death. They they have great characters. The groups of characters, I love them to death. I'll put the link in the episode page so you can. Check those out. But Micki was admitting that she hasn't started yet and hasn't used these. And I'm going to give you Micki and everybody a little bit of homework here, which is, I want you to go to one of these three. AIS, either perplexity, Claude or ChatGPT, okay, set up your account. We don't care which one you do. We talked about some pros and cons. Okay, go. Set up a free account. And I want you to ask a question. That's it. Ask a question. Any question you want to ask you will not blow up the internet. Nothing bad will happen. And that's just as simple as it is. So think about a question you've always wanted to know. Who are my ideal readers? Where should I go market my books? Is my book? Blurb? Any good, whatever you want,
Paulette Stout 1:05:36
What do? Who is myself, author and what and what do readers say about this person's books? That's a great question to ask. Perfect that was my first verbosity question.
Lainey Cameron 1:05:48
Thre you go, so there's your question, there's your prompt as well. So tell me, tell me about name of your homework. Y'all, there you go. So super simple. You won't blow up the internet, I promise. And then Micky was also asking, Where can we get more information about the retreat?. So if you go to our website, bestofbookmarketing.com, go to the episode page for this episode. All the information and links for the retreats are right there. And I will also email you the information Micky.
Paulette Stout 1:06:11
And if you're like wanting to go with the next 10 minutes, it'll you can go to last episode 201, with Heidi, and the link should be there too.
Lainey Cameron 1:06:21
It is the both this episode and the last episode. You have all the all the links for the sponsor. It's a little bit further down the page.
Paulette Stout 1:06:27
There's only a few spots left. So go, yeah, just a few spots left.
Lainey Cameron 1:06:32
And so with that, I think we're going to wrap up. This has been a fun conversation. It went longer than I thought. We had a lot to say on this topic, and just a little insight on some upcoming episodes. We're working out the timing, but we are working on an episode on Amazon ads, because we did Facebook ads last month. Great episode, if you haven't listened to it. We're going to do an episode on Amazon ads. We're going to do an episode on how to market thrillers. And we're open to doing other genre specific episodes, but I'm excited about the people we have lined up for this one. I'm not telling you yet, but it's some of my favorite authors. Um, we are going to do an episode, like we said, on book cover design. I believe that's our September episode.
Paulette Stout 1:07:08
September episode now, just interrupted quickly. That's going to be on a Sunday night, because the the guest is in Australia or New Zealand, I can't remember which, so it'll be on a Sunday night. So I know our episodes are moving around, so just follow socials, and you'll always know when our episode is going to be live if you want to join us live and kind of ask questions of our guests too.
Lainey Cameron 1:07:29
Yeah, yeah. So that was going to be fun, because I will actually share, I'll check they're okay with it, but I think I'll share some of the drafts along the way. So if you do the video version, you can even see some of the versions we went through for the exit strategy, because by then the new cover will be done and out. And after I get off this today, I'm actually going to be getting Colette's opinion on the first draft. So I have the first draft. You can't see them yet, but we're very close to it's going to be coming out within a month. So great.
Paulette Stout 1:07:55
Well, thank you, as always, for joining us. Look for our overs on YouTube and soon on all podcast platforms. Go to our website. Support our sponsors, please. And if you're open to it, go buy some life gets lifey merch. It'll help us offset the cost of putting this podcast together.
Lainey Cameron 1:08:14
Cheers, everybody.
Paulette Stout 1:08:16
Thank you. Beth. Byee!