Tag Archives: AI

Dealing with Digital Anger: When AI Gets it Wrong

Posted on by
3

1,873 words
10 minutes read time

Last week I had a shock when I went on Facebook. I had a notification that said they removed a photo due to explicit content regarding a minor. The picture was from eleven years ago, and knowing that, I can guess what it was: a picture of my daughter on our bed snuggling one of our cats. Harmless. I would never put anything online that had the potential to hurt either of my kids, and the accusation, from nothing more than a Facebook bot, upset me a great deal. I felt dirty and gross, and honestly, confused because that picture had been up for eleven years.

It didn’t help that this came after TikTok decided a couple of my carousels were made with AI, and in a fit of anger, I deleted both of my profiles. It wasn’t the accusation, not really, but those two carousels performed worse than most of my others and I assumed that was the reason. I wasn’t going to put time into making content for a platform that was going to accuse me of doing something I wasn’t doing and then punish me for it by shadow-banning my carousels and videos and suppressing my account. Especially since whenever I scrolled I saw lots of AI content with a ton of likes–so you know those videos and carousels were being shown. Maybe I was too sensitive and had a knee-jerk reaction, but I had also gone a few rounds with them before with a different account. I had my videos and slides taken down for going against community guidelines when I would post steamy scenes, but then I’d see other authors post much steamier than what I was and not only get away with it, their posts were pushed to the “for you” page.

Then, if that wasn’t enough, I was scrolling Instagram, and my boosted post showed up, but the description wasn’t what I had written to go along with the graphic. I had forgotten to turn off the AI option to rewrite my description, and while that version wasn’t too messed up, it didn’t sound like me. Going forward I’ll turn it off, but it was an irritating lesson all the same.

I wasn’t able to let go of Facebook flagging my photo for a long time, and writing this post after the fact is probably a good indicator I still haven’t. I’m more upset about the loss of my TikTok account since for once I was having a bit of fun creating content, and I was getting likes and saves of my carousels. It’s disappointing not to be able to use a platform a lot of authors are using to push their books, and the hypocrisy behind why I can’t or why I won’t will rub me raw for a long time. I could have appealed–not doing so probably just seemed like an admission of guilt–but I also know from experience that once TikTok starts eyeing your account, it’s almost impossible to get them to leave you alone. So, for my mental health, I gave up.

Incidents like this aren’t going to go away. In fact, as AI usage ramps up, things like this will continue to be a common occurrence. Fighting it seems like a wasted effort, like bailing out a sinking boat with a spoon, so what can we do to at least not hang on to things that are beyond our control?

Get out if/when you can, and if not, be prepared to fight
There are certain things that get shut down that you may not want to live without, like your Facebook Author Page that you run ads off of, or your Amazon KDP account, if we’re being drastic but still realistic. Accounts like that are shut down simply because bots make a mistake and when it comes to Meta and Amazon, talking to a human to get things resolved is almost impossible. Some never win against Facebook and some only win against Amazon if they have an advocate like a representative from the Alliance of Independent Authors reaching out on their behalf. Sometimes it’s not easy to walk away, but it’s better for your mental health, like me deleting my TikTok accounts. I didn’t want to. I really didn’t because I was in the mindset to try to use that as a real way to reach readers, but I wasn’t going to put up with a platform that undermined all my work, especially when what they were accusing me of wasn’t true.

If you decide to fight, having a plan will help. Figure out who you can reach out to, be it someone at Alli or an IP lawyer. If you decide to walk, make peace with it the best you can. TikTok’s hypocrisy will rub me the wrong way for a long time. I just need to get into the groove of posting somewhere else, like IG, which doesn’t seem like it has such arbitrary guidelines to follow.

Remember that it isn’t your fault
This is a big one with me and that Facebook accusation. I would never post anything that would hurt my kids and knowing they took down a photo because of something like that will make me feel icky for a very long time. I know that there’s no way possible for a human to look at the amount of content that gets posted every day, not to mention all the content that has accumulated over the years, but that doesn’t make it better. And the hypocrisy here too, makes it sting because we all know Zuckerberg was at Trump’s inauguration, and Trump has a questionable reputation at best.

No matter what platform is giving you a hard time, there’s a 99.9% chance that what happened isn’t the result of what you did. (There are always going to be people trying to game the system, and unfortunately, when things like this happen to people who haven’t done anything wrong, they’re collateral damage.)

Don’t let AI hurt your feelings or make you feel bad. There are plenty of real people who will do that for you.

Find alternatives
Fortunately, there are a lot of places to hang out online. I don’t need Facebook. In fact, after that happened, I was tempted to take the app off my phone. I rarely post on my personal page and only post on my FB author page a couple times a week, if that. The only thing I would lose not posting there anymore would be the ability to run ads, but I could still do that if I didn’t scrap my account altogether. Instagram is a good alternative to TikTok and there are other places that I could post to that I never have before like Pinterest. I’ve heard Lemon8 is popular but they’re owned by the same people who own TikTok so I’d probably end up with the same problems. Best not to repeat any of that. But finding one platform that you like that you can commit to will take some of the sting away of having to avoid others.

Or figure out what you can live without…it might surprise you
Once I got over the anger of having my carousels tagged as AI, getting rid of TikTok didn’t seem so bad. Even though I was getting good at it, making carousels took time. Not only did I have to make the graphics in Canva, but I also had to pull the snippets. Not having to do that anymore was actually a blessing in disguise and took off a lot of pressure I didn’t know was there. I was trying to build an account from scratch and every post save and like encouraged me, but in both good and bad ways. You start to build momentum and don’t want that to stop. I was able to blame TikTok for stepping away instead of myself, but whether it’s a valid excuse or not, it was a relief. I know I said above it felt like a loss when I deleted it, but I can always turn my carousels into Reels. I just haven’t taken the time to do that yet.

You may decide not to post on social media at all, and that’s fine too. Finding different ways to get your book seen, like running ads and buying promos, can fill in some of that gap, but AI is everywhere and it may take some testing to see if you’re jumping from the pan into the fire. I haven’t run FB ads for a while, but I hear turning off the AI components is getting harder and harder to do. Instagram is still easy when you boost a post. Find the toggle on the right and turn it off.

Screenshot of Instagram boosted ad page. Enhanced ad toggle is on the right (pink arrow).

Whatever you do, take care of yourself
When it comes right down to your choices, you have to do what’s best for you. When the universe closes a door it opens a window, or something like that, and maybe something that feels like the end of the world actually opens you up to other possibilities. I used to really miss Twitter, but I don’t anymore. There are a lot of nice people on Threads, and getting away from the toxic environment was good for my mental health in the long run.

Will Facebook ever take down another photo? Maybe. I have a lot of pictures of my daughter when she was small cuddling on our cats. How Facebook decides what’s explicit, I have no idea, but it could happen again. I’ve had my FB account for seventeen years and I might just take ten minutes every day and start deleting albums from around that time. No one is going to go back and look at those pictures anyway, so there wouldn’t be a big loss in getting rid of them. They give you an option to download before you delete, so that’s always something you can do too, if you think you need to purge some old content there. It sucks you have to do it at all, but since I’ve become an author I’ve started to very carefully weigh what I put online anyway.

You can’t control the bots, the mistakes, or the algorithms. But you can control where you go next. AI is here to stay, so take precautions, take care of yourself, and if you let him push you around, let him push you somewhere better.

As part of my “favorite things” segment, I’m highlighting romance author Jennifer Probst’s nonfiction books and her Substack. I love the down-to-earth way she thinks about writing and publishing. I have to admit, I’m a bit behind and I only read the first one, but the other two are on my list, and I read her Substack whenever she publishes a new one. You can find the links below (they are not affiliate links.)

graphic of Jennifer's book covers. l-r: write naked, write true, write free. background is a peach color

Write Naked: A Bestseller’s Secrets to Writing Romance & Navigating the Path to Success
https://www.amazon.com/Write-Naked-Bestsellers-Secrets-Navigating-ebook/dp/B01N16FESI

Write True: A Bestseller’s Guide to Writing Craft and Achieving Success in the Romance Industry 
https://www.amazon.com/Write-True-Bestsellers-Achieving-Industry-ebook/dp/B08FLGFLL5

Write Free: Personal Essays on Craft, Career, and the Writing Life
https://www.amazon.com/Write-Free-Personal-Essays-Writing-ebook/dp/B0G1D358TW

If you want to subscribe to her Substack, you can do it here: https://substack.com/@jenniferprobst

Thanks for reading! See you next week!

Written Word Media’s 2025 Trends: Part Two

Posted on by
Reply

2,028 words
11 minutes read time

If you’re just finding the blog and/or missed the first five trends I wrote about that are in Written Word Media’s blog post, you can find that post here: Written Word Media’s 2025 Publishing Trends: Part One. And if you want to read Written Word Media’s blog post yourself, you can find it here: https://www.writtenwordmedia.com/the-top-10-publishing-trends-for-2025/

Let’s jump right in to the trends.

Trend number six: Trad and Indie Converge in Due Course
We already see this happening in different ways, so I would imagine this will keep going. Publishers snapping up indies who are doing well to exploit the audiences they’ve already built, trad authors publishing titles on the side themselves, the Big Five using print on demand technology. Publishing is getting mixed up more than it ever has been, and that won’t stop as authors and publishers alike look for the best ways to find an audience, save money on printing and distribution, and keep as many royalties as they can.

I think what this means for indies is that as long as you put out a good book that has a good cover and has been edited, it’s not going to matter if you published the book yourself. The stigma that used to come from self-publishing is gone. Trad authors who publish on the side to either add extra books to their publishing schedule or publish books that their agent didn’t sell, or whatever the reason is, they have a loyal audience who buys all their books and it doesn’t matter if it was trad-pubbed or not. Indies don’t have that convenience of an already-made audience, so that’s one thing we have to take upon ourselves, but everything else is pretty much the same, especially when we read every day about a traditionally published book that needs more editing. If you want to read about traditional publishers using print-on-demand equipment, Jane Friedman wrote a blog post about it and you can read it here: https://janefriedman.com/dont-demonize-print-on-demand/

Trend number seven: AI Tools Become More Mainstream
I think anyone who really believes this isn’t tapped into the way a lot of authors feel. I get that being on Threads and seeing the hate AI evokes isn’t an accurate sampling of authors everywhere, but just knowing that there is a portion of authors out there who won’t use AI no matter what makes this prediction shaky at best.

As I discussed in my blog post about KC Crowne, I do understand that Al can be used for different things. WWM’s article also talked about non-fiction uses, such as “social media posting, to advertising, email, sales fulfillment, or tax management” and I think if authors start embracing Al in bigger numbers, that will be all they’ll use it for, because, here’s the thing. Writers actually like to write. We want to plot our stories, we want to come up with backstories, we want to delve into our characters’ feelings and emotions so we can evoke those feelings and emotions in our readers. If we turn to Al for any part of that creative process, why are we writing then? Like with KC wanting to relate to her readers, how can she do that when she won’t take the time to get to know her own characters and write her own work?

People who predict the controversy of using AI will go away don’t have their fingers on the pulse of what a lot of authors feel. We also want people to get paid for their work, which is why I would never ask Al to create a picture for me. Almost every single thing you want can be found on a stock photo site, and if you can’t find it there, hire an artist, and maybe she’ll be able to pay her internet bill with the fee you’re paying her.

Readers may not care if you use AI to write, or to make your books’ covers, or to make Facebook ads as long as their enjoyment of a book they read isn’t impacted. Which means that whether you use AI or not, your main goal when writing and packaging your book should be to deliver a good product that will keep readers coming back for more.

Trend number eight: AI Unlocks Licensing and IP Innovation
I think this trend will only work for the authors who can pay to do it correctly. A long time ago on Twitter I saw someone who said she was using AI to translate her English language books to German and then she was publishing them. She wasn’t using a German-speaking real live human to double-check Al’s work, and I think that is a big mistake. Al doesn’t understand nuance and context, and there’s a reason why the phrase “lost in translation” exists. But, paying a proofreader, any kind, costs money, and using AI is supposed to help us get around that, right? So yeah, she might have had more IP in her hands, but God only knows what she was selling her German readers. Maybe it isn’t that bad, but who’s going to know unless she starts getting bad reviews? By then, it’s too late.

AI narration is getting better and better every day, but I haven’t heard anything recently about the quality of KDP’s audiobook program. It made waves when it first came out, many authors cursing it to the depths of hell, others embracing it as an affordable way to finally have their books in audio format. When I found out that duo narration, preferred when writing dual POVs, wasn’t available, I lost interest in it anyway. I’ve always figured audiobooks will be out of my reach as I can’t afford production, and I kind of left it there. Considering a determined reader can figure out how to have a book read to them on their device, it may not matter much. If AI narration is getting better, so is text-to-voice and the experience for a reader that’s not too picky will be just fine.

I think the bottom line on AI and IP is that yeah, Al can help you put together translations and audio books and art for special editions, but it’s up to you to make sure the quality is there (no one wants to see a model who has six fingers on each hand and has three legs). Al can make mistakes, (just look at Grammarly and how often they recommend commas you don’t need) and going without a human to check and make sure what he’s doing is okay is a risk I wouldn’t want to take with my audience. Listen, I’ve edited for authors who have trusted Grammarly, and it’s harder to edit a manuscript like that than if they would have just handed me a rough draft. Grammarly and other editing software is not perfect so always use with caution.

You might end up with a lot of IP if you use AI to get ahead, but if it’s trash, it’s not worth much.

Trend number nine: Audiobook Accessibility Expands in 2025
We already talked about this a bit, but it will be up to authors who want to use AI narration and readers who want to listen to it. When it comes to AI, it isn’t just about availability and quality, it’s also about what you feel is best for you, your book business, and audience. Not everyone wants to support AI. Maybe we want to support true voice actors who depend on their jobs to make a living. Maybe readers would also like to support humans. Once you put out enough audio books, you’ll find an audience who will support either (or maybe even both). Maybe you’ll find a system where you hire narrators for full-length books but use AI for novellas, or maybe you write only shorts and AI is good enough for your needs. As access expands, it doesn’t mean authors will use it. And if authors us it, it doesn’t mean readers want to listen to it. So while this trend is true, it will expand, because why wouldn’t it, authors can choose not to create with it and readers can choose not to consume it.

Trend number ten: POD Goes Mainstream
We talked a little bit about this already, and it didn’t even occur to me that I’ve purchased a book from a trad author and her paperback book came printed by KDP (there was the time, date, and location stamp in the back). I was wondering what the heck and if she’d been dropped by her publisher and had gotten her rights back. It makes sense for publishers to use POD as it takes up less space than keeping stock and they don’t have to worry about titles going out of print. But as Drew Broussard in Jane’s blog post I linked to above says, there’s just a little lesser quality with a POD print than a book that came from a print run. You’re not going to get the embossed letters or fancy textures, you even run the risk of getting the wrong book between the covers, so I’m guessing that publishers will decide which title will get the POD treatment based on how big the audience still is and how old the book is.

This also could be why it takes so dang long to get author copies. Obviously the more authors who depend on POD the busier the equipment is, and that means planning ahead months if you need to order author copies. Especially since the more authors who use the equipment the more taxed they are and you don’t know if your books will come in good condition and you need to put in a replacement order.

Everyone says don’t write to trends, write the book you want to write because trends change too quickly to keep up. That’s not true, and Billionaire romance is proof of that. Everyone said that was a trend, that “mommy porn” was a passing phase, but it’s going on fifteen years since EL James published her Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy and Billionaire romance is still one of the top selling romance subgenres, though lately Mafia is giving it a run for its money. Trends take a long time to actually lose favor with readers, even if it feels like it happens overnight. These trends WWM talked about won’t fade because that’s just the direction publishing is going right now. AI won’t go away because too many people find value in using it, even if practices like using it to write or narrate books some find too abhorrent to do.

2025 will be like all the others, authors writing good books and trying to get them seen to build an audience of their 1000 true fans. Sometimes I think the publishing industry is glutted with too many books, but then I remember that readers can read a book a day and demand probably matches supply, even if we look at the thousands of books published every month and it doesn’t feel like it. Personally, I don’t think ramping your publishing schedule will help any. If someone doesn’t know you’ve written a book, they wont know you’ve written two. Being that the top marketing advice right now is to write the next book, advice I have passed along and believe in, I think we should still be writing with intent, trying to level up our craft each time we write, always trying to write a book better than our last.

The fact is, it’s difficult finding an audience, but the trick now is to not give up. Do what you have to do to stay interested and engaged and not lose heart. I’ve started to enjoy working on LOSS AND DAMAGES again, and I get excited talking about the next book I’m going to write. I like thinking about the future and the books I want to write, having material planned for well into 2027. I don’t know what life has in store for me, but I’m pretty sure writing is more than a passing trend.

Take care of yourselves this year, and in the meantime, I’ll you next week!

KC Crowne and the Case of the AI Prompt

Posted on by
6

1,796 words
10 minutes read time

https://chatgpt.com/

I guess everyone is talking about KC Crowne’s AI faux pas now, and with AI being a hot button in author circles anyway, we might be talking about this for a long time.

Last week, a romance author published a book in their mafia romance series and I assume went about their business. It wasn’t long after an AI prompt was caught in the beginning of the book, signaling to everyone that they were using AI to help them write their books.

Screenshot of Kindle Screen. Black background. White text. Yellow highlights. Text reads: Thought for 13 seconds Certainly! Here's an enhanced version of your pas-sage, making Elena more relatable and injecting additional humor while providing a brief, sexy description of Grigori. Changes are highlighted in bold for clarity Relief washes over me the instant I see Grigori standing in the open doorway. I don't think I've ever felt such intense joy upon seeing that cold, unreadable face. Even amidst the chaos, Grigori radiates an undeniable magnetism-his tall, athletic build and smoldering brown eyes effortlessly draw attention. His dark hair is perfectly tousled, and his strong jawline adds to his commanding presence.
I first heard about it here: https://www.threads.net/@bookish_meltdowns/post/DE20DvBSYqb

I’m not going to rake them over the coals for using AI. The fact is a lot of authors do and will continue to do so. Using AI is a choice, and it’s one authors make every day. I don’t use Al to help me write my books, but I do use him to help me with ad copy and just the other day I fed him my blurb to help me think of mini-tropes for an arrow graphic. I bounce blog ideas off him, for this blog and for my author newsletter, though mostly for that one I ask him for blog title ideas to help with my open rate. In my mind, he just takes the place of a friend who doesn’t have time to brainstorm. Not everyone is hanging around their phones and sometimes you can’t wait for feedback. My so-so attitude would probably get me canceled by authors who are so whole-heartedly against AI that they won’t even talk about it. I think there’s a time and a place for Al (for any man, really, haha), and for every author that’s going to be different. Some authors use him as an editor because they can’t afford a human, some, like KC, use him to plump up scenes (though I doubt a machine can create relatable characters. That seems redundant when even the author couldn’t make her characters as three dimensional as she wanted.). Some authors are like me and use him to think of ad copy and whatever else, leaving the actual writing of the books in their own hands. Like a stalker, Al isn’t going away. Resistance is futile.

What I wanted to talk about is a couple of things that have come up since readers found that AI prompt. One of the most frequent I’ve seen is, Why didn’t an editor catch it? I don’t know this author, don’t know what their editing process is like. They could have a million beta readers, editors, whatever, but I think what everyone wanted to do was accuse them of not using an editor at all. I doubt that a bestselling author like KC Crowne forgoes an editor, and the simplest explanation I can come up with is they were responding to feedback (a flat scene from the looks of it) and asked Al to help plump up that scene. Not every author asks their editors to look over changes, hoping that they aren’t editing in typos as they fix other things. They probably got Al’s help, copy and pasted, and away they went. They might have been in a hurry if they were working against a preorder deadline, and we all know mistakes can be made when you’re rushed. I’m not excusing them at all, I’ve published books with typos (that publishing anticipation never goes away and being in a hurry to upload your files to KDP can position you to make a lot of mistakes), but I can understand it happening. So that’s why I think that AI prompt was missed. That author was the last to look at it before they uploaded the files.

Another thing that was called into question was the number of positive reviews that book had that didn’t mention the AI prompt. A lot of those reviews came from Booksprout, and because I use that site to get reviews, I feel compelled to defend those reviewers. Booksprout reviewers want to help you, and for the most part, they will leave four and five star reviews. If they have an issue with a book, they tell you in private feedback. I’ve put a lot of books up for review, and the only review that was “critical” that I’ve gotten was for Give & Take, the first book in my Lost & Found trilogy. She admitted she wasn’t the target audience and she said the same in private feedback. She also mentioned she didn’t think Jack had enough emotional growth. I thanked her for her time and explained that his character arc was still developed in the next two books if she wanted to read them. She never responded and I didn’t push the issue.

I don’t know if KC’s reviewers on Booksprout caught the prompt. I don’t know if they told the author. I don’t know if they told the author and they didn’t read their feedback. I don’t always read or respond to my feedback. A lot of it is them catching typos, and if they reach out, I’ll thank them for telling me and that’s it. It’s kind of a hands-off site. Authors stay on our side and readers stay on their side. Except for a couple of readers who have reached out in other ways, I don’t communicate with my reviewers and most of the time it seems like they want it that way.

So when we ask why their Booksprout reviewers didn’t catch it, we don’t know they didn’t. The author, or her PA, could have not looked at the site after she uploaded her book on there, or maybe she was locked into preorder edits and couldn’t fix it right when it was discovered. That doesn’t seem to be the case, though maybe. I don’t know the publishing timeline. God knows how many readers it went out to if she had it on preorder and she had to wait to fix the mistake. Because we don’t know the whole story, I wouldn’t judge the reviewers on Booksprout, and I will continue to use that site for reviews with Loss and Damages. Like with any kind of social media or anything that has a measurable ROI, you get out of it what you put into it, and over the years I have met some lovely readers who pick up all my books.

I doubt this will be the last time we’ll see something like this happen. Authors are using AI and like someone said on Threads, we will read books that have been edited, co-written, or written by AI and edited by the author afterward, without knowing. It’s interesting because I was reading Written Word Media’s 2025 trends, and their first trend was that readers will be building loyal audiences and their seventh trend was that AI will become more mainstream. I’m going to talk more about all the trends next week (that was supposed to be my blog post for today) but I think authors who want to build loyal audiences and who use AI are going to have to work harder and smarter to connect with people. KC Crowne alienated a lot of people authors. Whether there will consequences remains to be seen. The one big difference between an author like me getting blog ideas and an author like KC who uses it to plump up scenes and make characters more relatable is that I don’t ask Al to feel. He’s a machine and regurgitates what he learned from other people and scrapes the web for information that’s already out there. He’s not going to be able to write about a man’s fear a woman doesn’t love him anymore, or a woman’s happiness when the man she loves asks her to marry him.

If anyone judges KC for anything at all, it should be for the fact that if they’re having trouble writing relatable characters, that’s a craft issue and nothing they should be looking to take shortcuts on. I only mentioned this because she posted an apology on Facebook:

Screenshot of Facebook message PA Amanda Hello everyone. This is KC Crowne using my PA's fb. Firstly, I want to say to that I understand your frustrations. To think that an author that you have enjoyed reading has Al generated books is understandably a cause for concern. I can assure everyone that all my books are written by me. I've been writing my books before Al came about. I've recently started the practice of using Al to make very minor edits. To be honest, I'm still learning about how to best use Al to make my reader's experience better but I can assure you that keeping my original voice strong is of utmost importance. I hope you can understand that enhancing the reader's experience is my ultimate goal. The last thing I would want is for my books to not be competitive in the market. Finally, I take full responsibility for the error in the file.

I don’t know how they think asking Al to help them will result in enhancing a reader’s experience. Only an author can do that, digging into backstory, emotional wounds, and stakes. They have to get to know their characters, what motivates them, what they love and what they hate. I don’t know if they’re spending time with their characters, letting their stories marinate. They say the best writing happens in the shower and while you’re washing dishes and this is absolutely true. If they’re writing quickly, perhaps slowing down and sitting with their characters would help. That author makes thousands a month on their books, and I can’t imagine the pressure that would create. The need to keep that going because they probably have people on their team they pay along with their own living expenses, but like I said in a previous blog post, turning to AI is not the answer. At least, not an answer to that particular question.

Another author’s thread I happened to see said using AI is lazy and authors shouldn’t do it. I was a little offended, as lazy is the last thing I am. It also insults authors who use a program like ProWritingAid when they can’t afford an editor. Is it lazy to ask Al for newsletter subject lines? Is it lazy to ask him for help naming a character? There is a line between not doing the work at all and working smarter. 75% of the time I use Al as a search engine, and he’s very quick at scraping the web for what I want to know. Is it lazy of me not to do a real Google search and comb through articles? I write all my own books. I do my own covers in Canva using stock from DepositPhotos. I know they have started adding pictures done with AI, and when I’m doing a search, I filter them out.

Whether an author wants to use AI or not isn’t for me to judge, but if they’re using AI for character development and making a scene richer, then maybe they need to step back and figure out why they’re writing, or still writing, in the first place. A machine can’t relate to people.

KC Crowne is lucky this TikTok BS came along. It will help bury their mistake and in a couple of months when they rebrand and rerelease that book (I would assume that’s what they’re going to do–why waste a good book?) everyone will have forgotten what happened until the next author who gets caught using AI comes along.

So, the outcome of this mystery? Slow down, enjoy the process, and read your proof!

Al might not be human, but you are, and we all make mistakes.

Until next time!

Another (Manic) Monday

Posted on by
Reply

Words: 2307
Time to read: 12 minutes (Sorry!)

I guess I used the wrong M word.

It seems odd that Mondays come around so fast. My weekends are Monday through Wednesday, then boom, I’m working the rest of the week wondering why I only got through half a chapter. Last week was different as my daughter started her first job and we were getting used to her schedule. Because I wasn’t feeling well for the past four years, she’s eighteen and doesn’t have her driver’s license yet. I take responsibility for that, never feeling good enough to drive with her, and I had to give her rides. So, being in the car on the days I have off will take some time away–I just need to use the time I do have better.

On Wednesday, I went to Best Buy and bought a new Mac. My T was driving me insane and I wanted to replace my computer before it gave out completely. Now that I don’t have to push on the keys so hard to type, I’m hoping some of my carpal tunnel pain will go away, too. My arms would ache after a long typing session, so replacing my old laptop (it was seven years old!) was a must. It’s a little smaller than the one I had before, so I regret getting another MacBook Air and not the Pro, but the images are sharper so maybe that will make up for it. I saved the receipt they emailed me under my 2024 Book Spend as I fully intend to give it to my tax guy as a writing expense.

That leaves me with only one more thing to do when it comes to adulting, and that’s to make an appointment for new glasses. I’ve been putting it off because I’m so sick of doctors, but like finally spending the money on a new computer, I think I’ll like having new glasses since they’re two years old and more scratched up than my furniture (I used to have three cats). I think once I get that taken care of I won’t have to adult for the rest of the year. I’m still trying to find some normalcy when it comes to how I feel. I rarely drink anymore, and that’s helped a lot. I still get nauseated sometimes and overall just feel “off” but that’s probably due to hormones more than anything else, and I’m already on birth control to keep my ovaries steady. Since there’s not much more I can do about that, I have to take each day as it comes and if I’m feeling good, enjoy, and if I’m feeling not so good, stay home and rest. At almost fifty, I could be worse off, so I’m trying to be grateful for what I have.

As far as writing is concerned, I’m trying to get through edits of my old third person series. I’m in the middle of book three (of four), and while I can honestly say I’m enjoying the stories, either my writing style has changed or I just got that much better, but it seems almost every sentence needs some kind of tweaking. I’m taking out a lot that slows down the pace, on a paragraph/sentence level, and then adding more words to plump up scenes here and there and finish conversations where the characters just seem to sputter out. I mean, when someone says, “Have a nice day,” someone else doesn’t just get up and walk away without saying anything back or at least acknowledging it in some way. It was a weird thing I held on to all the way until last year. But while I can say I’m enjoying the stories because I haven’t read them in so long, it’s a freaking pain in the butt and a project I honestly didn’t think would need so much time and work. So, I’m dragging my feet, but knowing it has to be done, and the only thing keeping me going is the fact that these books are going to sound SO GOOD when I’m finished. Could be for nothing–does anyone read third person anymore? I have no idea, but it will be interesting to see what they do with new covers and a little ad money thrown at them. That may be my experiment for 2025.

Book two of my King’s Crossing series will be out this month, on the 28th, I think, and I’m getting some good feedback on Booksprout already. I have a couple preorders for it, literally, two the last time I looked, but I didn’t put them up for preorders for people to actually do it, anyway, so that’s fine. Just passing along the information that my preorders are there, Amazon hasn’t messed with them (yet), and they look good on my Amazon author page.

What am I going to do for the rest of the year? Well, get my old series done ASAP. I’d like to promote it in December if at all possible, and then I’m going dive into a standalone that I wrote a couple years ago. I read through it once since I wrote it and made some notes on what needs to be fixed. Add more chemistry between the characters, fix a few inconsistencies, that kind of thing. I have him wearing jeans when he would never wear jeans–he’s just not the type. Now that I know most (hopefully all) of my writing ticks, like overusing words like “with” and “where” “for” and “from” and dialogue fading off into the sunset, I’ll be able to whip that book into shape pretty easily (as easily as 109k words can get whipped into shape). Don’t know if I’ll find a beta reader for it or not. I love my coworker and value her time but in the end she doesn’t give me the real feedback I need to make the story better. After working with someone who backed out of reading my trilogy last year (when I had given her so much of my time, too), I kind of soured on working with anyone, as detrimental to my career as that may be. I don’t think too many people really admit that they write, package, and publish their books all their own because being a one-stop-shop has a bad reputation, and rightly so. It takes a village to raise a child, and it also takes a village to publish a book. Too bad sometimes my village resembles more of a ghost town these days. Not a whole lot you can do about it either, especially since paying for services doesn’t mean you’re going to get what you pay for, or anything at all.

I sound like I’m whining, but I think it’s a reality for a lot of authors now. We can try to make connections and friends, but the sad truth is, people are too busy. Too busy with life, too busy working on their own stuff, too busy with the friends they already have. I should probably be grateful I can do so much on my own because I know there are authors who can’t and I feel sorry for anyone who has to wade through the scammers and the people who aren’t qualified to offer the services they offer to find real help. Anyway, so that’s what I’ll be doing for the last three months of the year, besides living it up on my birthday on Thanksgiving Day. My ex-husband said he’d come over and cook dinner so I wouldn’t have to, so I may just end up sitting around drinking Prosecco and eating chips and dip. I’ll definitely have stuff to celebrate, like my King’s Crossing series finally out into the world, my old series hopefully done by then, saying goodbye to all my undiagnosed health issues. 2024 was rollercoaster and I threw up a few times, but maybe I can get off this crazy ride in 2025. I would welcome solid ground under my feet.

My Goodreads giveaway is losing steam, but as the days go on and more giveaways are added to the list, that’s to be expected. An author is supposed to do their own promotion after all, but I already tapped out my FB author page, my Instagram, and my newsletter. All I can do now is boost a post here and there, so I might do that before the giveaway ends on the 25th.

I think my newsletter signups are getting sick of me as I lost ten in the past week, and I only had a 29% open rate for my most recent newsletter. That’s not great, but since I’m treating it more like a blog than a newsletter and posting more for the public consumption of it, I guess I’ll have to expect people who signed up to react to the shift in vibe and opt out. That’s fine, maybe a little counterproductive since I want people to sign up rather than unsubscribe, but my sales have also dropped which means fewer people signing up from my books’ back matter. I’m not sure what to do about it at this point because it sounds like a lot of us are struggling. The best thing for me at the moment is just to keep my eyes on the end of the year. I would be really disappointed in myself if I didn’t finish editing my series. I was the one who started it in the first place and doing the relaunch over the holidays would be perfect.

That’s about all I have for this week, but I’ll leave you with a warning. You know I keep my opinions on AI to myself. I’m careful how I use it and use it very little. I like to brainstorm with Al about blog subject lines or hooky tag lines for ads because I’m bad at that, but I’ve never used it to generate photos or write for me. I’ve never written a blog post with it, never used it to edit my books. Mostly because I’m not interested–the things Al does I can do myself, and an AI photo generator doesn’t offer anything you can’t find on DepositPhotos. But if you do use it to generate pictures for a blog post, aesthetics, ads, social media graphics, or for your book covers, or if you use ChatGPT to edit for you or write portions of your books, you need to be careful because not everyone is going to be so blasé about it. There are witch hunts online, a lot of it on Threads, some in FB groups, and there’s a list going around of authors who use it. I don’t condone this list (like my lovely governor says, Mind Your Own Damn Business) and don’t know any of the authors on it, so far, but all it takes is one person to add your name and that will never go away. (Screenshots are forever, my friend.) That’s not the kind of word of mouth you want.

I know the writing community is small, I know that in comparison the reading community is a thousand times larger and maybe you don’t care what other authors think of you so long as readers like your books. That’s okay. I don’t bow down to the author community, but I have been ganged up on on Twitter, and it’s brutal on your mental health. There’s also a list of authors going around who are against AI, but I didn’t put my name on it. I started adding a disclaimer to the copyright pages of my books saying I don’t use AI for my book creation, and I’ll continue to add that, but I do it for myself and my readers. I’ve never done something just because someone else has told me to, and I don’t expect you to stay away from AI if you like using it just because I said so. But if you keep your ear to the ground, you’ll know this subject is hot and it would be bad to land on the wrong side.

I use this blog to pass around information I hear and hopefully help you make informed choices about your own book business. I’ve been on social media for a long time and this AI hate is on a level I’ve never seen before. It’s best to stay away from it or don’t announce it if you’re using it (though that can be for naught as people are pretty good at spotting it). I personally don’t care either way, this blog is a safe place for everyone, but I would be remiss if I didn’t at least mention it because like I said, this is a level of hate I’ve never seen before and the mob mentality oftentimes leaves me speechless.

I hope you have a good week, and I’ll see what kind of progress I can make on my series. Hoping to get book three done would be asking way too much, but if I could get close, I would be very happy.

Until next time!

Playing with ChatGPT (An AI writer)

Posted on by
1

Last night I was playing around with the ChatGPT that everyone is talking about (https://chat.openai.com/auth/login). You have to create an account, but that’s not a big deal. I was curious about it, since I’ve seen references to it everywhere, and you probably have, too. No matter your thoughts on using AI generated artwork for book covers or books written exclusively from AI generated text, AI is here to stay, and in some ways, it can make your life a bit easier.

When I was playing with it, I was trying to brainstorm the next two books in my rockstar trilogy. Al, as I will call him now since AI in certain fonts looks like Al to me anyway, won’t talk about death, and that was a big problem. The whole trilogy centers around the tragic death of a bandmate, and brainstorming with someone who won’t/can’t/refuses to talk about death and dying ended our conversation before it even began. So that was one reason why chatting with Al was unhelpful. Another reason I found it hard to talk to him is while he must have all the information in the whole world at his fingertips, his responses were generic and filled with qualifications. Al isn’t allowed to have real thoughts and opinions, so if you ask him something like, “Do you think Martha is a pretty woman’s name?” he’ll say:

“As an AI language model, I don’t have personal opinions. However, the perception of names, including Martha, as pretty or not is subjective and can vary depending on cultural and individual preferences.”

What a wishy-washy response! I asked him to help me with names for my characters and asked him what secrets would tear up a couple. His answers were flat and unimaginative. I decided to flip from fiction to nonfiction, which is where people say it helps the most with blogging, copywriting, etc, and I asked Al, how do you market a book? He said:

“Marketing a book can be a complex and multi-faceted process, but there are several strategies that can be effective in promoting your book and reaching your target audience. Some of these strategies include:

  1. Building an author platform: This can involve creating a website, social media presence, and email list to engage with fans and promote your book.
  2. Networking with other authors and industry professionals: Attend book fairs, join writing organizations, and connect with others in the publishing industry to build relationships and gain exposure.
  3. Utilizing book review sites and blogs: Reach out to book bloggers and review sites to request reviews of your book. Positive reviews can help increase visibility and credibility.
  4. Hosting events and book signings: Consider hosting a launch party, book signing, or other event to generate buzz and connect with fans.
  5. Offering special promotions and deals: Offer limited-time discounts or giveaways to incentivize people to purchase your book.
  6. Leveraging traditional media: Consider reaching out to local newspapers, radio stations, or TV shows to secure media coverage and promote your book.
  7. Paid advertising: Consider investing in paid advertising, such as online ads, Facebook ads, or Goodreads ads, to reach a larger audience and drive sales.

Marketing a book is a continuous process, and success will often require a combination of these strategies, as well as creativity and persistence. The key is to have a clear understanding of your target audience and what will resonate with them, and to continually test and refine your approach over time.”

That actually doesn’t sound too bad, and in reality, does offer some advice that you can follow, but marketing a book is pretty cut and dried and Al didn’t say anything I didn’t already know. I asked him how important a book cover is, and he said:

“Book covers play a crucial role in book marketing, as they are often the first thing a potential reader sees and can impact their decision to purchase the book. A well-designed book cover can convey the tone and theme of the book, grab the reader’s attention, and create a memorable visual representation of the book. However, a poorly designed cover may discourage readers from purchasing the book, even if its content is of high quality. It’s important for publishers and authors to invest in a well-designed book cover as it can have a significant impact on the book’s overall success.”

That’s not really a surprise either, and I guess where I’m going with this is, Al isn’t going to give you any out of the box answers to black and white questions. He lacks the creativity to do so. I asked him how to build a newsletter, and he said:

“Building a successful newsletter requires careful planning and a strong understanding of your target audience. Here are some steps to help you build a successful newsletter:

  1. Define your goals: What do you want to achieve with your newsletter? Do you want to promote your business, share industry news, or build relationships with your subscribers?
  2. Determine your target audience: Who do you want to reach with your newsletter? What are their interests and needs? This will help you tailor your content to them and ensure that your newsletter is relevant and engaging.
  3. Choose a platform: There are many email marketing platforms available, such as Mailchimp, Constant Contact, or Aweber, that make it easy to create and manage a newsletter. Choose a platform that fits your needs and budget.
  4. Create compelling content: The content of your newsletter is critical to its success. Make sure it’s relevant, valuable, and engaging to your target audience. Use a mix of text, images, and multimedia to keep things interesting.
  5. Optimize for mobile: Many people read emails on their smartphones, so make sure your newsletter is optimized for mobile devices. Keep your layout simple, use large font sizes, and include clear call-to-actions.
  6. Build your subscriber list: Encourage people to sign up for your newsletter by offering incentives, such as exclusive content or special offers. Make it easy for people to subscribe by including clear sign-up forms on your website and in your email signature.
  7. Test and refine: Continuously test and refine your newsletter to ensure that it’s meeting your goals and resonating with your target audience. Pay attention to metrics such as open rates, click-through rates, and conversion rates to gauge its success.

Building a successful newsletter takes time and effort, but it can be a powerful way to build relationships with your audience and promote your business or brand. By following these steps, you’ll be well on your way to creating a newsletter that resonates with your audience and achieves your goals.”

It was a fun experiment, but don’t be afraid I’m going to turn this blog into AI generated content. Al isn’t publishing, he isn’t writing newsletters, he’s not trying to sell books running FB and Amazon ads. One of the best ways to connect with your readers, be it a blog post, a tweet, or a whole damned book, is to offer experiences, feelings, and emotions. Al isn’t experiencing anything and can’t connect with anyone that way.

I could use Al for inspiration, maybe ask him to help me come up with lyrics for a couple of songs that are expected to go with a rockstar romance, but at this point, copyright and legalities of using AI generated content is fuzzy and I don’t want to land in hot water by using and selling something that isn’t technically “mine.” I would never feed Al my blurb and ask him to come up with ad copy or hooks. I prefer to keep my own IP to myself for now, even that means I look like an untrusting idiot.

Al might be great at coming up with a plot–a billionaire moves to his hometown after a personal tragedy and he falls in love with a florist, but because Al doesn’t have feelings, he’ll never be able to help with the story–the real reason why a couple can’t be together. That was what I was trying to get at last night, but he’ll never be able to give me that. I’ll have to figure out my own characters’ backstories and their emotional wounds keeping them from being together.

Can Al come in handy? Maybe if you’re pressed for time and just want to copy and paste content into a blog post. The samples above aren’t empty–they provide actionable steps that an author can follow to build a newsletter or market your book, but it’s the personal experiences of authors who share what works for them and what doesn’t that will build a real audience full of real humans looking to connect with who you are as a person and what you have to share that can help them with their own endeavors.

If you try it, let me know what you think! Thanks for reading today and have a great week!