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Reader,
PLEASE NOTE THAT ON OCTOBER 8TH, OUR NEWSLETTER WILL BEGIN TO COME FROM alex@getshelflife.com (INSTEAD OF alex@advancedamazonads.com)
🙂
3 Secrets:
1. What is an AI Agent in simplest terms and how is it relevant to authors?
AI Agent building platforms are the creation of an assembly line that takes in raw materials, combines it with some decisions that your AI model of choice (think asking chatGPT a question) makes, and then spits out some sort of final product.
Think of when Henry Ford created the first assembly line.
Simply, it took in the raw materials (metal, rubber, etc), a thinking person then combined those raw materials in some way, and then a car came out the other end.
Make.com (and Ai-agent platforms like it) are where you build your assembly line. Your thinking person on that assembly line is chatGPT or whatever Ai tool you’re using to be your thinking person.
The thinking person without the raw materials and instructions for what you want it to do, is useless.
It’s when you combine your raw materials with the thinking person, and tell it what you want – that something valuable gets created.
and that’s what makes a tool like make.com so useful.
Previously, you have to manually take your raw materials to the Ai platform (like when you ask chatGPT to look over an important email you’re about to send), you physically opened chatGPT.com or whatever and manually gave it raw materials. When it came back with a better looking email, you had to copy and paste that into your email and manually hit send.
An AI agent shows up each day for work and knows where to look for those raw materials and does whatever you need it to, without you manually needing to get involved.
2. Our first AI Agent Use Case:
Examples are the easiest way to understand things and so here is a breakdown of what we just finished building – our first production AI agent. It took us around 20 hours to build and you could honestly steal this idea if you wanted to.
The ShelfLife PR Ai Agent: This agent reads a public database of questions that journalists need help with every day (the raw materials) and then pitches those journalists an answer based on what our Ai Agent knows about our author. It writes a draft pitch and then automatically emails that pitch to the author for a final review. Then, the Ai Agent submits that pitch to the journalist on behalf of the author.
Before: The author or their team and to figure out which journalist questions were relevant to them (which takes time reading through each query every day), and then draft and edit a pitch from scratch to answer that question based on their beliefs. Each pitch might take an hour to find and then answer.
Now: The author just receives the draft pitch in their inbox, already written based on what they’ve written on similar topics in the past. They simply approve or edit it and email it back to their Ai Agent who does the rest.
The Ai agent wakes up every morning, knows where to look to see what questions need answers, it’s already been trained on everything there is to know about the author, and then writes media pitches on behalf of the author which it then emails to the author (like a human) to get approval. We’ve also trained it on how to write a great pitch and the results have been way better than I expected.
For example: Here is a journalists question:
We at UnboundB2B are preparing the next edition of The Orange Draft, our LinkedIn newsletter with 43,000+ senior marketers, CMOs, and VPs in our community. This edition challenges the old “60/40 budget rule” and explores smarter, math-backed ways to balance demand capture and demand creation. We’re featuring perspectives from marketing leaders like you — fully attributed with your name, title, and company. Please answer any one or two of the questions below (2–3 sentences is plenty) to be featured: 1. Do you believe most B2B marketers currently overinvest or underinvest in capturing demand? Why? 2. What’s the biggest risk when marketers skip fully funding high-intent channels before chasing awareness? 3. What signals tell you your ICP targeting is too broad (wasting spend) or too narrow (limiting growth)? 4. Why do you think the fixed “60/40 rule” fails in real-world budgeting?
And here is what it wrote on my behalf:
Hi Uday Pawar, The old 60/40 rule is too rigid for today’s B2B marketing—real results come from tracking signals, not sticking to formulas. I learned this firsthand running book launches: one campaign’s sweet spot was 80% capture, 20% creation; another flipped that ratio. The spreadsheet told the story, not the playbook.
Answers: 4. The fixed 60/40 rule fails because every market, product, and sales cycle is different. If you’re not measuring pipeline velocity and channel ROI, you’re just guessing. Budgets should flex based on what your data shows—sometimes that means doubling down on high-intent, sometimes it means priming the pump with new demand. 3. If your ICP targeting is too broad, you’ll see low response rates and lots of unqualified leads clogging your pipeline. Too narrow, and your lead volume dries up or you keep hitting the same accounts with diminishing returns. I track both response rate and cost per qualified lead to find the right balance.
Key points: – Ditch fixed ratios; let data guide your budget split. – Watch response rates and qualified lead costs to tune ICP targeting. – Review channel ROI monthly—adjust before you waste spend.
Alex Strathdee is the author of ‘Before the Bestseller’ and helps authors grow sales through practical marketing systems.
This all happened, without me lifting a finger.
Starting to see how this is relevant to authors?
If you don’t want to learn how to build your own Ai Agent, but want your own PR agent, email me back and we’ll put you on the waitlist for this Ai Agent that we’ve built. We’re testing with a few authors this month and plan on rolling this out to our author community in October. We are planning on charging $50-$70/month to cover our cost of development and the cost of the tools it takes to run it.
It’s our plan to continue to build out useful Ai Agents like this one (think your own personal book marketing team at one-twentieth the cost).
Next, we’re building an Ai agent that auto-generates social media content based on your manuscript and publishes it to your account without you lifting a finger.
All of a sudden you’re on pr agent, social media team, etc. For an author on a budget – this is honestly game changing.
Again, just email me back if you want to be added to the waitlist for this and future ones 🙂
3. Turn AI fear into fuel:
I can’t begin to describe the wave of anxiety that come over me when I started to hear about Ai Agents. “Crap! I’m already behind and far smarter people than I are using this tool to replace me.” These are my honest and raw feeling when these tools first started to come out.
One thing that helped me catch up and even start to feel ahead in using these new tools was just by replacing my social media feeds. I followed two instagram accounts (this one and this one) and pretty soon Instagram realized I was spending my time most on Ai content. All of a sudden my mindless social media scrolling has become spending 15-20 minutes daily learning amount the most recent advancements and applications of Ai. Call it my Ai-habit.
If you’re like me, and had dreadfully crippling fear around these tools – just start with a little daily exposure to them and all of a sudden your confidence will improve when it comes to using and seeing the power of these tools in your life.
I really do see these tools as the great equalizer, for those willing to learn them. We can build an impressive software company – without needing to hire a single software engineer. That’s literally what we’re doing now.
2 Links
- See therapy in a new light (I know I thought this was supposed to be a book marketing newsletter too?) because the mental game is what keeps you moving up. NYT Bestselling Author Catherine Gildiner Shares the Stories Behind Her Book Good Morning, Monster here. We talk about my personal mental health struggles and how to find the right help so you can make sure your demons aren’t holding you back 🙂
- Make.com quick tutorial because seeing is believing.
1 Quote
“Do not hoard what seems good for a later place in the book, or for another book; give it, give it all, give it now.”
– Annie Dillard
with love and sincere appreciation,
Alex
BeforeTheBestseller | ShelfLife
alex@getshelflife.com
P.S. Know someone who needs help marketing their book? We offer a $500 referral bonus 🙂
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