Using Generative AI
Since you may already be familiar with ChatGPT—I gave you ten tips for writing better prompts last year—here are some ways to use it for marketing, recommended by Book Launchers in a blog post for IngramSpark. Try uploading your manuscript and asking the AI to create articles, podcast scripts, or other content. Although at first glance it seems like this would be more useful for nonfiction writers, authors of fiction could also upload portions of their manuscript and test the AI’s ability to write blurb variations or rewrite a scene from an alternate point-of-view for use as a newsletter bonus or other reader magnet. The blog author includes the caveat that you’ll still want to edit the output, but since the AI starts with something you’ve already created, the content should be stronger. Other suggestions include asking your AI for more content ideas and asking for ways to market your book. Book Launchers also recommends asking your AI to do research on influencers, bookstores, or libraries for you. You can get ChatGPT or Jasper to generate a list of YouTube channels or blogs that relate to your book’s topic or genre, quickly providing you a list of people to contact for potential collaborations or networking.
Beyond Content
In December 2023, Lisa Harkness, Kelsey Robinson, Eli Stein, and Winnie Wu published an article, "How generative AI can boost consumer marketing," for strategy and management consulting firm McKinsey & Company. They identified the following examples as ways AI "has the potential to deliver value quickly": personalization of marketing campaigns, unstructured customer data analysis, process automation, and opportunity identification and idea generation. Ironically, all four AI initiatives are used by large retailers like Michaels, Stitch Fix, and Mattel to humanize users’ experiences with their online stores and deepen engagement.
The authors recommend limiting AI tools to these specific purposes because "attempting to incorporate too many different [generative] AI initiatives in the hope that something sticks can end up being costly, diffuse, and difficult to track, making it hard to incorporate whatever lessons are generated across the launches."
AI Tools for Authors
With so many possibilities available, and more on the horizon, it can be challenging to know where to begin. Authors just starting to explore how AI might serve their business may want to choose one or two systems that have already proven themselves in the indie author community.
Zapier
Zapier provides integrations for web applications that use automated workflows. For example, Zapier can pair with Google Docs, Trello, Slack, Asana, and Airtable databases, as well as ChatGPT and Writer, another generative AI platform. Authors can input data into a Google form and use Zapier to pass that information to ChatGPT for content generation. Zapier can then transfer the formatted results to Google Docs to be edited. Zapier bills monthly at four levels, depending on the number of tasks you think you’ll need, ranging from a $19.99 starter plan to $69 for teams. The free plan features a visual editor and unlimited two-step zaps.
Custom GPTs
If you start with one of Open AI’s custom GPTs, you can feed the AI a PDF of previous blog posts, or even your manuscript, and get results that mimic your tone and voice. In her experience, only about 20 percent of the resulting blog content needs to be revised. This allows you to create blogs, social media posts, and newsletter content trained on your writing alone.
Shimmr
Shimmr.ai is a UK-based marketing company that uses AI to automate advertising specifically for authors. Using the publisher’s EPUB file, its AI develops ads, book descriptions, keywords, and author bios, selects placements to reach the ideal reader, and directs traffic to your sales platform. Shimmr is open to any genre, fiction or nonfiction. Although authors can choose to stop or remove ads at any point, they are deployed automatically after a review of the first round. Shimmr’s FAQ section assures partners that "The ePUB is used to create our ads but does not become part of the training set of the LLM." The service is priced at a flat $75 per month, per title in an annual subscription. The CEO, Nadim Sadek, has also published a book on how publishing can embrace AI, titled Shimmer, Don’t Shake.