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Reader, Thank you for the awesome discussions that came from last week’s newsletter. I want to highlight 2, one on each side of the fence. If you want to catch up on last week’s monologue on how books are now video games you can do so here. Jeremey Madsen is the Operations Manager for BK publishers: Authors could try making their own custom chatbot, trained on their work, to serve fans who don’t want to read their book, but those chatbots are only going to be incrementally better than a general chatbot (Claude, ChatGPT, etc.), and so would be very hard to monetize—because why would I pay for a custom chatbot when my general chatbot (which is either free or I already pay for it for work) is just as good? Chatbots will continue to erode the nonfiction market without much opportunity for authors to gain revenue from them. A comparison would be YouTube—YouTube provides free, highly visual how-to guides on pretty much any DIY topic, which I’m assuming (though without data) has caused a big decline in the sales figures of DIY books and manuals in the last 20 years. I’m sorry if this seems pessimistic, but I just don’t see any clear path out of the reality that chatbots have created a new information stream to compete with the already saturated information landscape of books, magazines, TV, websites, video platforms, etc., with no clear path for independent creators to gain money directly from this new information stream. Christopher Hensley is the author of Digital Kaizen My view is that AI is going to commoditize generic how-to content, but it may actually make strong framework-driven books more valuable. If a book is just a set of instructions, AI can probably personalize those instructions faster. But if a book gives the reader a worldview, vocabulary, decision framework, or operating system, AI becomes a way to interact with that framework. That’s how I’ve been thinking about my own book, Digital Kaizen. The book lays out the philosophy: voice-first capture, small improvement loops, signal curation, AI as a mirror instead of an advisor, and human judgment staying in the loop. But the companion Field Guide I’m building turns that into prompts, workflows, and exercises readers can actually use with ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. So instead of the reader asking, “What does this book say?” the better question becomes, “Help me apply this framework to my week, my notes, my business, or my next decision.” That feels like the next evolution of nonfiction to me. The book becomes less like a static manual and more like a reusable operating system. I don’t think that replaces the author. I think it raises the bar. The author’s moat becomes their framework, voice, judgment, and ability to help the reader see their world differently. Really interesting question — I think we’re early in seeing where this goes. Alright, enough of that, let’s get onto what you’re actually here for 🙂 3 Secrets When I came into this industry, it took me forever to figure out how retail distribution actually worked. Essentially it’s relationship driven. Publishers have team-members whose job it is to sell you to the brick and mortar stores. They have the pre-built relationships and lines of communication to reach out to the book buyers of those stores. The more fuel and credibility you can give to your publisher, the better their sales pitch will be to get retail stores to pick up the book. Just won an award? Just hit a list? Pass that information along to your publisher to help them sell you better to book store representatives. Source: Read from an article in the most recent IBPA magazine edition. 2. Get more emails at live events: Social media comes and goes but building an email list is no less valuable than it was 20 years ago. For this tip I take inspiration from comedian Kevin Hart. Personally, I don’t actually think he’s that funny but I can’t argue he isn’t a genius marketer. (Maybe further proving the point that good marketing with an average product is going to beat a great product with bad marketing). For the first decade of his career while performing he would get an assistant to put a business card on every seat and table with an invitation to write down their email. “Kevin needs to hear from you” read the card. Source: Page 186 of Perennial Seller by Ryan Holiday (I found the first 75% of the book to contradict itself but the last 25% included a lot of useful marketing ideas) 3. Run your first Goodreads giveaway at least 3 months before release when your book goes up for pre-order Every entrant has your book automatically placed on their Goodreads want-to-read list. On the release date, all these people will receive an on-sale notification email from Goodreads. Major publishers and authors do multiple giveaways each month leading up to publication. If your first giveaway gets over 1,000 entries, consider running second and third giveaways each month before release. 2 Links
1 Book: With your permission, I’d like to replace 1 quote with 1 book I’ve read recently Thank you to our CMO Laura Russom for recommending The Frequency Era by Chris Walker It gives you historical context for the current AI revolution. First came the agricultural revolution, followed by the industrial revolution, which was replaced by the knowledge revolution. Now, in a knowledge-abundant world, what becomes scarce and what becomes abundant? Although I’m not sold on the term he uses to describe what’s next, The Frequency Era, it does make an interesting case for what we should focus on next to continue to be valuable. It could probably be a 20-page essay vs. a 200-page book and I hope he gets a better book formatter, but I found it worth the read. 3 stars.
Alex P.S. Know someone who needs help marketing their book? We offer a $500 referral bonus 🙂 |