This week, we’re doing a mini-series on how authors can use an AI tool like ChatGPT to support their author endeavors without crossing the line of plagiarism, copyright issues or just ethically questionable practices. In this series we’ll be covering how authors can use a large language model (LLM) to act as a personal assistant and a host of publishing pros in your pocket. Without ever replacing the job of a human, these prompts will help you with writing, editing and marketing your book.

In this first part, discover ethical ways to use ChatGPT to assist in your drafting endeavors. In part two, we’ll talk about how it can be used during editing without turning it into a virtual editor. And in part three, we will break down the many ways it can ease some of the struggles around marketing and promoting your book!

So if you’ve been curious, but cautious, about the emerging world of AI, kick off your exploration here!

Marketing

Now, if you are adamantly opposed to using AI in any part of the writing process at all, I understand. I really do. With many publishing professionals insisting that no AI be used at any stage of the writing process, it’s easy to shy away from the opportunity to use something like ChatGPT in the drafting and editing phase. Though I believe the examples above are well within the ethical bounds, I can appreciate wanting to avoid the tool entirely during the creative process.

HOWEVER… this does not mean that ChatGPT is useless to you. For so many authors, there is one part of the process that they dread above all others: promotion.

You’ve written your book, edited it, done all the things to produce the final product. It has a cover and all your beautiful words inside. And now… you have to get people interested in the thing! Social media, public relations, book events, marketing, email, sales… these might as well be curse words in author world.

So if ever there was a set of tasks to offload, this would be it.

Advertising

I don’t know about you, but nothing in my journalism and English training taught me one iota of anything about how to run ads online. And while there are countless courses, articles, and other instructional tools out there to teach you the minutia of running ads, it’s still an overwhelmingly daunting process. One that is likely to take months to learn, implement and hone.

So (and perhaps you’re catching my drift at this point) hand over some of this work to AI! One of the things I love about ChatGPT is its ability to distill massive amounts of information into very digestible, bite-sized pieces.

Educate Yourself About Ads

You can use it at various stages in the process. If you need to do research on where you should be advertising, you can start with something like this:

Prompt: My new book is a fantasy novel about dragons featuring a female lead character. It is heavy on the romance and the audience is predominantly women. It would appeal to fans of ‘Fourth Wing’ by Rebecca Yarros and ‘A Court of Thorns and Roses’ by Sarah J Mass. I’d like to run some ad campaigns to promote it, what platforms should I focus on?

Brainstorm Content Ideas

If you need step-by-step instructions on how to run ads on a particular platform and what works best, you might ask ChatGPT a question like this:

Prompt: I have written a women’s fiction novel about intergenerational trauma and would like to run ads for it on TikTok. How would I go about doing this and what sort of content is likely to perform best on the platform?

Define Your Target Audience

Not only will it walk you through how their ad platform works and what you’ll need to run an ad there, but then it provides ideas for what content will resonate. Remember, you can continue to drill down with ChatGPT, so if for example, you don’t know how to target audiences on TikTok or you don’t know who the primary audience might be, then continue asking questions!

Prompt: What target audiences might I choose for a book like this? [Provide more details about your book. Maybe you discuss domestic violence or alcoholism, you can add these details to see what suggestions ChatGPT generates.]

Write Ad Copy

While you certainly don’t want to use AI to write your book, all bets are off when it comes to promotional materials. Your ads will need copy in them regardless of where they run. Use ChatGPT to optimize your content for conversion and grab the attention of your particular audience.

Prompt: I’m running ads on Instagram for my newly released novel. Create ad copy for my book using the synopsis. These ads will be targeted at [your audience]. Optimize for grabbing attention and converting sales.*

*You might need to provide details like word/character count and any other specifics regarding that particular platform.

Now, I’m not an ad wizard myself, and odds are there are AI platforms and software that can run your entire ad campaign for you. Optimizing it at will and changing course to gear towards what works. I’m sure that’s out there and if it isn’t yet, it will be. The ad platforms themselves are likely using AI to automate campaigns too. But nonetheless, if like me, you’re just trying to find an entry point into the world of online advertising, this could provide some helpful tools for doing so.

Marketing

As an author, there is an overwhelming amount of work that needs doing that isn’t writing your next book. So many things fall under the umbrella of “marketing,” some of which you can’t outsource, but plenty of which you can!

Once again, this is a good time to automate scheduling, planning and organizing. Let’s say that you intend to participate in email marketing, blogging on your website and creating monthly videos for a YouTube channel. Let ChatGPT help you with content ideas and the cadence of your weekly and monthly marketing to-do list.

Prompt: Act as if you are a book marketing expert. I’m publishing a book about [details about your book]. I’d like to write one blog post a week, regularly email my audience and produce a video twice a month that I can also upload as a podcast. Could you help me come up with some content ideas that would appeal to my audience (not just promote my book) and develop a schedule for production?

Again, you can get as detailed as you want with this. You can input a bunch of ideas you may already have and ask it to come up with more or to organize your thoughts. You can ask it to assess what your readers might be interested in. You can ask it to fetch recent news and pop culture events that tie into your theme. You can even ask what marketing platforms it thinks might suit your audience best. Or to write attention grabbing headlines and video titles. It’s truly limitless. And there is nothing wrong with a little discovery chat with a bot. Pretend like it is a marketing expert that you have a limitless consolation call with. What sort of questions would you ask?

Social Media

Love it or hate it, social media has kind of become par for the course. But just because you know you should have it doesn’t mean you know what the heck to do with it, right? And even if you do, staying consistent and coming up with new content ideas is a challenge. Let ChatGPT brainstorm with you and even create a monthly calendar that’s easy for you to follow.

Prompt: Acting as a social media expert, help me develop a monthly social media content calendar to reach my ideal audience who might be interested in my science fiction novel about space travel. The book is similar to stories like Interstellar and The Martian. I intend to post to Instagram, TikTok and Threads. I want the content to be 80% focused on things my audience would find entertaining, funny or interesting and the other 20% to be focused on book promotion. Please help me come up with content ideas (particularly Reels and TikTok videos) as well as a posting schedule that is manageable in 5-10 hours a week. 

When you ask ChatGPT something like this, you will get a fairly general breakdown of what sort of content you can consider and how to best utilize your time to produce content across these platforms. From there, you can drill down more.

For example, it provided this recommendation to kick things off:

Monday

Instagram Post: Fun fact about space travel.
Threads: Discussion starter on favorite space movies.

Tuesday

Reel/TikTok: Short video explaining a scientific concept from your book.

Wednesday

Instagram Post: Meme about space travel.

Threads: Poll about which space technology they’d like to see in real life.

Thursday

Reel/TikTok: Behind-the-scenes of your writing process.

Friday

Instagram Post: Inspirational quote from a famous astronaut.

Threads: Quick trivia about the solar system.

This is very straightforward and simple, but also sort of generic. From here you can ask it to now come up with a list of twenty, fifty or even one hundred “fun space facts”. Or generate a list of the best books, movies and TV featuring space travel that you can review and discuss. Before you know it could have a year’s worth of content on your hands.

Promotional Materials

You’ll find there are some materials associated with with promoting your book that you might be expected to produce. From press releases to one-sheets, author bios to elevator pitches, ChatGPT can help you gather, organize and deliver all the most valuable information about you and your book in a neat and professional way.

Taking the information you already have and asking ChatGPT to help you format it properly and summarize your content can be a quick fix to some otherwise time-consuming tasks.

Public Relations

Public relations is a usually a daunting arena for authors to tackle on their own, but if you aren’t able to afford PR pros or you don’t have a lot of in-house publicity support, ChatGPT can help tackle the task by giving you some starting information and supporting materials to venture into contacting the media directly.

Prompt: Act as a book publicist and help me come up with a list of media outlets to reach out to about featuring my memoir about motherhood and divorce. If you can, organize the list starting with outlets that appear to be particularly open to contributed columns and guest posts. 

Here’s a preview of what ChatGPT came up with:

HuffPost Personal

Description: Features personal stories and essays on various topics including parenting, relationships, and personal growth.

Submission Guidelines: HuffPost Personal Submission

Scary Mommy

Description: A popular parenting website that covers a wide range of topics related to motherhood, including personal essays and experiences.

Submission Guidelines: Scary Mommy Submission

Motherly

Description: Focuses on motherhood and offers articles, advice, and personal stories.

Submission Guidelines: Motherly Submission […]

It even provided links for where you could go to submit your pitches. And speaking of, use ChatGPT to help you come up with articles that fit the individual outlet and let it help you refine your pitch for the best chance of being selected. It should go without saying, but don’t use ChatGPT to write the actual article, just to support you in your effort to secure coverage.

AI has gotten a pretty bad rap, from Terminator-esque ideas of apocalypse to the opportunity it provides for bad actors to run amuck in spaces like publishing, it makes sense to be concerned about an AI future. The truth is though, that it is coming (actually it’s here) whether we like it or not. So authors can learn to adopt and adapt or risk being left behind.

A few disclaimers authors should keep in mind:

  • ChatGPT and all other AI systems aren’t always accurate. Make sure you double check any information you get from these programs against other reliable sources.
  • Literary agents, almost universally, do not want query letters or any other materials to be AI produced, so don’t outsource the task of communicating with agents. But you may be able to use it to research who to pitch!
  • Know that whatever you’re feeding ChatGPT is being used to train it further. If you have any moral hangups regarding the development of AI, use your own compass to guide you on what to use it for.

With any new tool, there is a lot to learn and even more implications than we can even think of here. But we would all be remiss to dismiss this inevitable evolution coming to books and publishing.