AI for Authors: How ChatGPT and Other Tools Can Transform Your Writing & Book Marketing

Are you a fiction author who is struggling to find the time or inspiration to write, edit, or market your book? Have you ever considered using AI tools to assist you through the process?

Look, I am all about helping authors use modern tools to help us streamline and simplify our writing craft and the tasks that we have to do to run our businesses. In today’s digital age, AI powered tools can be a valuable asset to help authors who want to save time and increase efficiency. From market research to book sales, there are a variety of ways in which AI for authors can be used to help transform your writing as well as your book marketing processes.

One of our biggest challenges as authors is being able to understand who our target audience is and what it is they want to read. This is an area where AI tools can be incredibly helpful. With the help of AI tools, authors can get a better picture of who their target audience is, what their reading preferences are, and take a peek at their buying behavior.

ChatGPT, for example, is an AI powered chat bot that can help authors identify their target audience and learn more about them. By asking questions and analyzing data, ChatGPT can identify patterns and provide authors with insights that can help them create content that is going to resonate with their target audience.

As a visual example, when I asked ChatGPT to help me with market research in relation to a high fantasy romance book that is based on Greek mythology, ChatGPT was able to provide some common themes and tropes, communicate various reader expectations within the genre, and share insights into who the target market was for this kind of project, complete with an ideal reader profile.

Another tool that authors have at their disposal is utilizing Amazon’s AI-powered recommendation engine, which unlike ChatGPT has been around for quite a while now. By analyzing buyer patterns and user behavior, Amazon’s recommendation engine or “algorithm” can provide useful information to authors surrounding what readers are actually buying and where their interests lie. This knowledge can help authors tailor their marketing strategies and create content that the readers in the genre are actually interested in.

When paired with another tool like Publisher Rocket, AI tools can actually help authors identify what keywords and search terms that the readers are using to discover and buy books. By analyzing the search data, authors are going to be able to optimize their titles, keywords, descriptions, and ad copy to increase their visibility on platforms such as Amazon and Google.

But overall, AI power tools can be an incredible resource for authors who are looking to gain a better understanding of who their target audience is and what their current interests and desires are. That way they can begin to create books that actually resonate with them. By leveraging AI, authors can basically increase their chances of success in a competitive market.

Along with market research, AI can also be incredibly helpful when it comes to the book development process as well. Whether you’re struggling to come up with plot ideas or character names, AI can help with that too. Tools like ChatGPT, as mentioned earlier, can not only give you recommendations for these things, but also generate complete plot lines based on your input as well. This can be a great starting point for authors who may be feeling a little uninspired or stuck in the writing process.

For example, when I asked ChatGPT to give me five plot line ideas for a high fantasy romance novel based on Greek mythology featuring Medusa, as you can see here, I could have easily taken any one of these plot ideas and used it to further develop and into an outline to get my story started on that very same day.

Speaking of outlining, I’ve actually been playing around with ChatGPT pretty heavily around its outlining capabilities, and I’ve been really blown away with what it’s able to do when it comes to helping figuring out plot points, working out world, building details, and even developing characters. Using ChatGPT as a brainstorming partner, I’ve been able to create an entire outline for a story in a single day. Something that when I do this alone takes me anywhere between one and two weeks. If you’d like to see more of how I have been using ChatGBT to help me plot and outline stories, let me know by typing book development down in the comments below.

Okay, but something else that AI can help you do is the actual writing process itself. Now, sure, you could tell ChatgGPT to write a scene for you, but in my experience, it takes a lot of working with it and giving examples of your writing style and guidance, and even then I found the output to not be so great when it comes to prose. It can however be a good starting place, and as I mentioned before, while it’s plotting assistance is pretty phenomenal, I am not convinced that ChatGPT is going to be able to spit out the next Amazon bestseller anytime soon.

That said, there are other AI tools out there that are designed specifically with fiction writing in mind. Sudowrite, for example, is an AI writing assistant designed specifically to help authors develop their ideas, overcome writer’s block and create their stories. Since Sudowrite uses natural language processing and machine learning algorithms to analyze the text that has been inputted and then generate personalized suggestions for continuing or improving the story, I’ve found the output to be much more higher quality than that of ChatGPT alone, particularly when it comes to writing the first draft of a scene or a chapter.

AI tools like this can help you save time and energy when it comes to the writing process so that you have more focus on the creative aspects of actually writing your manuscript rather than those technical details. Of course, it’s important to remember that AI should be used as a tool to enhance your writing rather than replace it all together. Ultimately, it’s the writer’s voice and style that is what is going to make a story unique and engaging for the readers. But by using AI to help you streamline that process and even give you some inspiration of fresh ideas, they can really help you reach your full potential as an author when it comes to getting through that first draft.

Now, once you’ve written your book, AI assistance doesn’t stop there. Once you’ve got your first draft in your hand, it’s time to take that and revise it. Now, revising and editing can usually be a time consuming and tedious process depending on how many issues you have pop up, how skilled of a writer you are, and how long your book is. But as I mentioned in my last video all about editing, there are actually many different AI powered tools that can help you streamline and simplify the self-editing process.

For example, Grammarly is an AI powered tool that is widely used and recommended for catching spelling and grammar mistakes. It’s available as a browser extension, a desktop app, and even a mobile app. It’s easy to use and can save you a lot of time and frustration when it comes to editing your book.

ProWritingAid on the other hand, is another AI generated tool that not only helps you catch grammar and spelling mistakes, but also provide some suggestions for improving your manuscript. It can help you look for things like overused words, weak sentence structure, and more. It’s also available as a browser extension, desktop app, and online tool.

Autocrit is my favorite editing tool, and it is designed specifically for fiction writers in mind. It can analyze your writing for pacing dialogue and other areas of your fiction writing and help identify areas where you might need to make some improvements, and it can even offer suggestions for how to put those improvements in place.

While using these AI powered tools can definitely help you save time and energy. When it comes to the self-editing process, they are not replacements for human editors, and I always recommend that you get other human eyeballs on your manuscript or a professional’s help before you publish your book. They can, however, help catch errors and recommend improvements that you might have otherwise missed on your own, so give them a try and see what you think.

Finally, the use of AI tools isn’t just limited to the writing of your book. You can even use AI to help you when it comes to marketing and book sales. Here are some of my favorite ways to use AI for marketing:

1. Number one is with content creation. Social media and email marketing are essential for modern day authors looking to build a sustainable business, but it can be time consuming and overwhelming, especially for time strapped authors. 
   •  One of ChatGPT’s strengths, I found, is helping with brainstorming the different types of content that you can create to market your book on social media and through email. For example, I’ve had ChatGPT generate a variety of different content prompts for various online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Reels.
   • And it can even outline a complete marketing strategy for your books with the help of some strategically placed prompts.
   • Similarly, ChatGPT can even help you draft the first version of your email newsletter in a fraction of the time that it would maybe normally otherwise take you to write that newsletter.
2. The other way is with marketing copy, and by this I mean things like book blurbs, advertising copy taglines, and other promotional type posts. While you might not be able to use the outputs word for word, it does help you provide a starting place and automating the process of creating marketing materials while also providing some copy tips and making sure that what you are creating is going to be optimized for engagement and conversion.

But with all of these benefits, it’s also important to consider the ethics of using AI for writing. Some critics argue that AI generated content lacks that human touch and emotional depth that readers crave in the market, and I can agree with this to an extent. Simply plugging in some prompts into an AI bot, having it spit out an entire manuscript and then going and trying to sell that manuscript as is, is not benefiting anyone.

There are others out there that even worry about the potential of AI writing completely replacing us human authors. And while I believe that these worries are valid, I believe that AI can be a powerful tool for enhancing human creativity and not replacing it. By using AI to generate ideas, refine our writing style, and help us reach our target audience we can focus on what we humans do best, which is creating compelling stories that our readers are going to enjoy.

So fellow authors out there, don’t be afraid of AI with tools like ChatGPT and the others I’ve mentioned here, you can really enhance your writing and your systems and processes that you are doing in your author business in ways that you’ve never previously thought possible. But as you do that, remember to approach AI with caution and thoughtfulness as there is definitely the likelihood of AI tool abuse within the industry since it is such a brand new concept

So tell me, have you ever considered experimenting with AI tools to aid in your writing or book marketing? And if you have, I’d love to hear your experience with it. Let me know down in the comments below.

Also, if you’re a writer looking for more guidance throughout the entire self-publishing process, then definitely go and checck out the post below because there I walk you through my entire Zero to Published Framework. You’ll walk away with an entire plan to get your book idea out there and on the market. I’ll see you there.