re315: What if AI were your writing buddy?

[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign. Hi, Bo. Manit. Nice to have you. [00:00:12] Speaker B: How you doing? Good to be here. [00:00:15] Speaker A: Good, good. I'm, you know, it's one of these conversations we were just before we hit record and I thought, wow, we have so much to talk about. There's just way too many things. And so, and often I have these conversations where I think we should have hit record, you know, 10 minutes ago. So I, so, so we hit record because there's just too much, too much good stuff going on here. Great. One thing I'd really like to talk about today is helping authors break through. This is a big passion of mine. I have my own wacky weirdo ways of, of helping them. And then just having talked a few minutes with you, it sounds like you have some really cool, straightforward ways to help authors break through, sort of get over themselves. Get that maybe first book. Are they often first time authors when they come to you and get them going? So you want to tell us a little bit about. You have multiple businesses, multiple sites. Sounds like, narrow it down and give us a little, little update on Bo Bennett and your, and your multiple fingers and multiple pies, it sounds like. Sure. [00:01:24] Speaker B: Yeah. So I've been in the book business since I, I would say since 2002 was probably when I officially jumped in. But I didn't quite start offering the services to other people until 2010. I, I sold my company, my first company of significant value back in 2001. It was a web hosting company, like right before the, the big bubble burst. [00:01:49] Speaker A: So it was like timing. [00:01:51] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. So I wrote a book about my whole experience and it was called Year to success and like 700 page book, really thick. Took me a year to write. Wow. So I was again, we're back in 2002. Completely different time than we are now. Yeah, I was looking at how do I get this thing published. I sent it to a bunch of publishers and they sent me letters back saying, nobody wants to wait a year to become successful. Maybe if you rewrite it as like the seven steps to success or the one key, like, I don't want to do that. That's not how it works. [00:02:23] Speaker A: Nobody wants to wait a year. [00:02:26] Speaker B: So I, I did find a distributor. So this was kind of a unique situation where we could actually just kind of pay for the books. I, I ended up paying like 30 grand or something to get all these books printed. And then the distributor has arrangements with like Ingram, like the big houses, the distribution channels, and then they would distribute the books to them. So I did that and I ended up having A garage full of my books. Like just sitting there. I went through like a professional New York marketing firm that, you know, I forgot how much I spent. 10 grand or something, 20 grand on that. And I got some traction, but it wasn't, it wasn't enough to get rid of my, my huge inventory I had. So fast forward about, about eight years. And this is when books on the Internet. Well, at least when I first started paying attention to like this whole idea of ebooks, like delivering books over the Internet. [00:03:27] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:03:27] Speaker B: So I, I looked for a way like, okay, how do you do this? And there was no company telling you like, how to make an ebook. And, and it was just like crazy. And then there was like this online tool that was supposed to take a Word document and turn it into an ebook. And it was like such a mess. I mean, a total disaster. Even today, it doesn't really do a good job. The automation. [00:03:48] Speaker A: Is that Kali. Calib. Libra. [00:03:51] Speaker B: Yeah, Calibre. No, it wasn't, it wasn't cal. It was, it was. Oh, geez, I forgot the name of the company. They're still around today. They really. Yeah, yeah, they, they, they just do like mass distribution of, of like crappy ebooks. [00:04:06] Speaker A: Okay. That's kind of, you know, people who don't know. This is really cool hearing this because not a people, not a lot of people. You're a pioneer. I mean, you were back in the day. [00:04:14] Speaker B: Yeah. You could tell by the green here. [00:04:17] Speaker A: It was hard back then. I mean it was like impossible. [00:04:25] Speaker B: I mean, that's how I started my web hosting business in 1995. It was impossible. There was no like company to go to. I had to create it. So essentially this is what happened in 2010. I'm like, all right, let's, let's find out how to do this. So I, I looked and researched and found out how to create any ebook, how to do it the right way. And it was like a pain in the neck process. But over the years we, we've refined it a bit. But that's when I started my first ebook, ebookit.com where I would help people. I would take their books, do their manuscripts, and I would turn them into ebooks. And then also I started offering print books and audiobooks. So fast forward, I did that for about 10 years, really focusing on the publishing and, and the conversion. And then I used. We, we have a distributorship where we could send it to Amazon, Barnes and Noble, like all of those. We have relationships with all the major big guys. So we had the distribution network and and about like two or three years ago, I realized that I was missing a major component and that was the marketing. Because like our authors would put books out there and just kind of sit back and wait. And it doesn't work that way. [00:05:38] Speaker A: Right. [00:05:39] Speaker B: I mean, once you get it out there, that's great because people have the opportunity to buy it, but they need to know where to go to get it and they need to want to get it. And that is a huge, huge missing component. So over the course of like a year I, I tried out hundreds of different marketing services with all my own books. I'm an author of over a dozen books myself. So I, I wanted to, to get a good sampling out there, find out what works and find out what doesn't. And I would say about like 5% of the marketing services that I've tried work, and that would be under like a very loose definition of work, but I would say 5% are worth pursuing and worth offering to other clients. The other 95%, like what did I just pay for? Where the heck did my money go? I mean, this is crazy. [00:06:28] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:06:29] Speaker B: And, and that's like still today if you go out there and search for book marketing, I guarantee you if you keep stats and, and a close way to monitor things, you'll find about 95% of that stuff is junk percent work. So our business was all about taking that 5% and then offering it to our clients. And that is part one. I'll give you a chance to say whatever you want to say and then I'll get into part two, which, which happened about eight months ago. And that was completely refining things based on artificial intelligence and kind of taking the book publishing industry in a new direction. [00:07:07] Speaker A: Wow. All I have to say is this is super exciting because if you're ahead of your time on web hosting and then on like ebook distribution and publication and all that, then I can't wait to hear about what you're going to do with AI. But you know, it's really funny because I know a lot of first time authors, they're not going to feel the pain of what you went through. And I followed on later on, but I mean like just early KDP days, early Kindle Direct publishing and Kindle days and stuff. I mean that was brutal. The whole like, like you said it wasn't Caliber or Calibra, whatever it's called, but it was a total nightmare. I mean I, I did websites back with Dreamweaver and HTML and stuff in the, back in the day and now it's, it's so easy. And so now here we are, 2023 and so much of this stuff is so easy. However, it's exactly like you said. Okay, great. Yeah, I know how to get a book done and I know how to publish it, but which of the like hundred options for, for distribution or, or selling or marketing should I use? And then, and how do I know what's good and what's not? So I love the fact that you say there's 5%. Of course it makes me really curious what you, what your 5% is. And, and, but you're going to share that with your authors, right? I mean, to help them succeed. [00:08:26] Speaker B: Right, right. And in fact just go to BookMarketing Pro. The services we offer. That's the 5%. Those are, those are the ones, those are the ones that are, that are worth it. And believe me, I've, I've had a lot of services on there that, that start working out well, but quickly or don't work well enough for enough people, so I take them off. So it's, it's an evolving list. But the majority of what you see on there has been on there for about a year because, because it's, it's good and it's, it works. [00:08:55] Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah. Wow. All right, I'm ready for, I'm ready for eight months ago. [00:09:01] Speaker B: Okay, eight months ago, as I mentioned, you came across one of my sites, BusinessMarketing Pro. And that's a site I was starting. I was in the process of building it to be kind of like the partner for, for Book Marketing Pro, but for all businesses instead of just authors. And then I was, I was getting really excited for that. I put a lot of time into it, but I completely just dropped that. I said, forget about it. I'm stopping this project at least for time being because of this thing called artificial intelligence and our access to it as mere mortals. It was my first experience with, with artificial intelligence. I think was, was probably a chat GPT, just one of the large language models that you could interface with on, on like a, on a website and just like talking to it, interacting with it and saying, hey, I'm writing a book about, about marketing businesses and marketing tricks. Can you, can you, can you give me a good description for that book? And it wrote like within seconds a book description better than I could have ever written. More enticing, more, more sales inducing. And, and that was my, I'm like, this just did this. And it's completely original. It didn't copy it from somewhere. The way that AI works this this will be interesting to, to your listeners, I'm sure. It, it let me go back one step and do you know, like right now there's a lot of people suing different AI large language models like chat GPT, like authors, famous people saying, hey, they stole my work, or artists saying they stole my work. But that's not. They're not going to win. And if they do, it's going to be a huge mistake. But the reason they're not going to win is, is because artificial intelligence is like human intelligence. What I'm saying right now, the words that I'm speaking, the ideas that I have, these weren't created out of nowhere. Like, all of my ideas come from other people's ideas and other people's words. Things that I've seen in a sitcom back in 1990. You know, everything comes together and makes you who you are. And those, that's what gives you the ideas, the characters that I've written for my sitcom, which I'm sure we'll talk about, those all came from 30 years, 40 years of watching sitcoms. And it's like an amalgam of everything. And that's the way that AI works. But it remembers everything under. Unlike humans that just remembered little fragments, remembers everything, right? So, so when I create something, it is true creation in the sense that it's taking the knowledge of humanity, everything that in writing that was fed to the A and and using that to create new things. So, so I, I think like anybody trying to sue it, they're. They're wrong because then they should minds will just sue everybody for taking little fragments of ideas, because that's what AI does. So anyways, I was blown away by it. So I figured, well, if AI could write a description, could it write a chapter? If it could write a chapter, write a book, and. And the answer is yes. Not just yes, but it could write a book. And right now we're talking about nonfiction because there's a technical reason that fiction doesn't work too well with AI but for nonfiction, it could write a book. And with my experience of working with thousands of authors over a decade, and you know, I'm sorry to the 95% of authors, and I'm going to DIS right now, but AI does a better job than 95% of the authors that I've worked with, you can say, well, bo, maybe you work with crappy authors. No, I don't. I work with a lot of really good authors. It's just AI does such a fantastic job and, and it could Write better than I can. Like, I think for. For most of the writing I do, it writes better than I can. Not everything I could. I could definitely. My PhD is in social psychology, and I could write better on that topic and the topic of logical fallacies and critical thinking. But it even. AI even says that it has like a college level understanding of things. So, so that's where you. It's really good at writing. It's really engaging. And it. And it words, things. Great. So in the past eight months, I put together a couple of different websites that allows authors to use AI to write a book. The main site that I just launched is called bookbud BU D AI and that's where you could go just with an idea. All you need is an idea for a nonfiction book. And you work with AI like a partner. And as you mentioned, it's kind of like a writing coach where you enter in your idea and the AI will say, okay, I came up with these titles. What do you think? And then you pick one of the titles or you say, give me some more. And then you say, okay, I got this title. Now give me a description or give me a table of contents for this book. AI like, instantly comes up with a. An amazing table of contents for like a really engaging book on that topic. And you could say, this is great, but let's throw in a chapter about that, or let's take this chapter out and you could revise it. And then once you get. Once you're good, you say, okay, let's go. Right? You know, and it'll write the entire book for you. And then you could take it, and then you could do like a print book and you could move it over to the. Our audio site and do like an audiobook with AI cloned voices that sound exactly like human voices. My voice. I cloned my own voice. I don't narrate my own books anymore because I press a button and within like an hour, the entire book is read in my voice with emotion and everything. And there's no reason for me to lose my voice anymore to. To spend. And with all this editing you had to do, it's like, forget it. This is fantastic. So the bottom line is literally within hours you can start with an idea and end up with a completely ready to go formatted ebook, an epub format moby PDF. You could have a completely formatted print book. Right now we do suggest a service to. To do the formatting and that takes like a day, but it's only like 10 bucks. And then. And the audiobook that you create and it gives you the full audiobook files ready for distribution. And you could have all those. I mean really, you set aside a half of a day, maybe a full day if you really want to put time into it and you have yourself a book on the market distributed like for like, you know, a couple hundred bucks. This is mind blowing stuff. So that's why you can see, that's why I got so excited that I just dropped everything I was working on. I didn't even finish that last episode of my sitcom. I was animating it. And right now if you go online, you got nine out of 10 episodes. Everybody's waiting for the 10th. But I didn't do it yet because I'm so busy working on this AI stuff, which is so exciting. So, so that's where we are. And then books. AI is another AI company that I created that creates personalized books. Not for publication, but because I thought about, well, what if you could just tell the AI about yourself and relate the entire book to you and your specific circumstances. That's exactly what I did. So I created an interface where you could tell AI all about you and all about the topic you want to learn about or you want to know about. Like a travel book, exercise book, fitness book, cookbook, diet books, you name it. Anything non fiction again. And then it creates a book specifically for you. And when you read the book, your jaw drops because you're like, did. So somebody just wrote a three hour long book for me and it knows everything about me because you, what you told it and it's specific my circumstances. I mean it. What else can you ask for? It's wonderful. [00:16:53] Speaker A: But, but you're not, you're not saying memoir. It's not a book about my, my life. [00:16:57] Speaker B: No, no, no, it's. [00:16:58] Speaker A: Yeah, it's, it's. I'm going to talk about a certain topic, but it's going to relate it. It's going to be specifically custom made for me. [00:17:05] Speaker B: Right, right. And that's interesting because that is one of the books on my, that is one of the websites that are on my to do list as well. Like being able to do like a memoir and. [00:17:15] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:17:16] Speaker B: And got all the ideas. I'll get to that like within a month. [00:17:22] Speaker A: Wow. Wow. You know, okay, so I don't even have to ask but you know, Amazon, what was it like two weeks ago or something? It came out with a new radio button where you have to choose like what was your book? I can't remember the options. It's like so, so, by the way, for people who don't know. Yeah. Hey, this book you're, you just created, I can't remember the question. It's something like, did you use AI? You know, not at all. And then there's two other sort of flavors. Is it like it helped or it did the whole thing or something like that? Right. [00:17:57] Speaker B: Yeah, exactly. Like you used AI for light editing, or you used AI for to edit the whole thing, create the whole thing, or not at all. So like three levels and then for the writing, for the translation and for the COVID for the images in the book. So you've got like the three different categories there. [00:18:15] Speaker A: Okay. And so with bookbud, for example, would that be the third one with the, like, I did a lot. [00:18:22] Speaker B: Yes, right. [00:18:23] Speaker A: It's not the, yeah. Okay. So actually on that topic, so what is Amazon going to do with that information, by the way? Is it, is it just kind of like classified and like, oh, this was AI created, or do you know? I just, I don't know the answer to that. [00:18:35] Speaker B: Nobody knows. Nobody knows besides Amazon. But what was, what was really exciting, at least from my perspective, is when Amazon did that, it basically said, AI generated books are acceptable because they didn't put in their terms and conditions no AI generated content. They say yes because they see where it's going. I mean that. And I have. So there's a couple ways that they could, it could go from here. They could be using this for research purposes to see how many people are actually doing it and then come up with like a plan on how Amazon is going to work with AI and authors that use AI in order to make more money. Because that's what it's all about. How could they make. [00:19:15] Speaker A: Right. Because you're right, it's. Well, they did, they didn't say, oh, I used AI. And then the next, you know, the conditional answer tree after that says, oh, you used AI. Kick you out. They're not doing that. So that's interesting because it would be. [00:19:35] Speaker B: It would be a huge lost opportunity for them. I mean, they, they see where this is going. They're not stupid. Amazon is good at making money. They could, they could at some point flag books that are AI generated for consumers so consumers know that they're AI generated. I think that's a mistake because in a way, I, I, I, I, I see that as kind of like a, a type of racism or sexism, but with computers, like a kind of prejudice against AI. You wouldn't say, oh, this book was written by a woman, you know, we just want to make sure, you know, that it's like, no, you don't do that. It doesn't matter. You know, I don't care if it's a woman. I don't care what color they are. Okay? I just care, like, is the content good? And that's the way it should be for AI. You should, that's all you should care about. So, so they could go that direction or at, at some point that maybe they could incorporate their own AI and have a back end and Amazon could start building and creating books based on what the cost, what the readers want, because they have full information. They know what books to publish, what books will sell. So maybe they're going to start creating AI books which, which is going to be tough because, well, for people who create AI books because it's hard to compete against Amazon. But yeah. [00:20:57] Speaker A: So this is, I think this is fascinating and I think as you and I briefly talked about before and you know, you've been in the book world for a long time. I've been in the book world a long time and I am a, you know, died and died in the wool writer. I always have been, always will be. I'm a traditionalist in many ways. Like, you know, sit at the cafe with your pen and paper and stuff, whatever old school writer through and through. Right. And so, because then part of me is going to say to all of this, of course traditionalist is going to say, oh, you know, this is, this, this is terrible, this can't be. But then, and oh, isn't this the end of the world? Right. And so however, what I come back with is, is the reality check. Because the, the, the thing I get probably the most and the one that I don't want to say frustrates it frustrates or not annoys. It's, it's almost, almost not saddens me. It's when. It's when the author like you and I talked about before, they come up and say, oh, hey Bradley. Oh wow, you've written so many books. That's so amazing. Yeah, I'm working on my first book. I've been working on it for seven years. I'm on my third editor and I, I've already, you know, paid thousands for editing and publishing and whatnot and, you know, probably got scammed three times and whatnot. And so, and my biggest fear is sort of that they'll never publish a book. And for me, and this comes from a place of pain for myself when I also from, in my story, I was waiting for perfection, right? I was waiting to write the most awesome, fantastic book of all time. And of course it's never going to happen, but I was procrastinating in doing it out of fear of failure. And so instead of writing a crappy book, I wrote no book. Because if you don't start, you can't fail, right? If you don't start the race, you can't lose. That was my thinking, which I hate to say it was not good thinking and I don't recommend it because it's just, you're just basically prolonging the pain. And so here, because I know, I mean, there's so much like fighting with AI, right? And so I'm sure you hear about it all the time, but for me, I'm basically pro. Anything that is going to help somebody share their story with the world or even not even the world, just get that story out of them. That's sort of one of my dreams, like dream missions in the world. If I were, I, I don't know if you ever listened to Steve Martin way back in the day, stand up comedy, he had a thing where he said, oh, if I were the all being master of time, space and dimension. That's my, my joke. If I were the master of all being time, space and dimension, I would make a law that everybody had to write a book every year in their lives. And also because every year of their life they're different. They're a different person this year than they were last year and they're a different person now than they will be in a year. And so I'm very much, I want people to get the story out of them, to tell their story. And not, and I'm not even talking selling books and making money and being famous. Not at all. I think writing, this is the pure writer in me. I think writing is therapy. I think it is happy and joyful and getting something out of you, it literally like lightens your load. So that's why I think if we can see this AI, you know, book bud as your writing coach or your writing partner or your writing colleague or your, your sparring partner and you're actually going to get your first book done, then I'm, I'm all good with that. That. There you go. I'll send, I'll get off my soapbox now. But that's, Yeah, I just think it's anything for me that helps them, helps people get past the struggle and break through. And then if, and then on book number two, I, I tell people like, I'm Mostly interested in their book number two. Because book number one, I just want you to get it done. Please just get it done. Because then we're going to have a much different conversation. And so if, if bookbud's gonna help you get your first book done, great. I don't care how you do it. I just want you to get first book done. Because then you're gonna like, see, you're gonna open up, the dam is broken, and now you're gonna say, oh, right, there you go. All being master of time's basic dimension. That's my goal. [00:25:15] Speaker B: Yeah, well, it's, it's a good overall point that you bring up. And that's the idea of, of an author having a story, having something, ideas to get out. And I tell my authors, like most of them come to me with that kind of attitude, saying, look, I wrote this, I spent years doing it. I really don't care about making money more than I do getting my story out of there. And that's great. I mean, writing AI isn't going to fill that void for you. If you have something that you want to say and you want to write, the only thing that's going to fill that void is writing that's always going to be there. Yeah, the AI help with that, with those ideas. You know, you give it the ideas and it could make suggestions and then you can, you can revise it and so forth. But really for people who want to write, there's always going to be that, that availability for people to write and publish. But if you're publishing content that AI could write better, then you might want to think about publishing it, or you might want to just come to the, come to the conclusion that just your family and friends might get the book and, and that's it. I, I was telling you before we started recording, I think that AI writes better than about 95% of the authors and including myself, and I say 95% of the stuff that I could do. I do have a PhD in social psychology. So when I write about that or when I write about cognitive biases, logical fallacies, all of that, I could write better. So I think that's where authors need to go right now, is they need to think like, what, what do I have that's completely unique that AI can't touch, you know, or, or what do I know better than AI that has a college level? But, you know, that could change too. That could change very quickly, and it is changing. I think that my superiority over AI right now in those topics is probably Going to be short lived, unfortunately. And I'm okay with that. I'm okay with having access because I have access to that AI. You know, having access. Everybody does. Having access to something that is so much smarter than you are, could ever be. It's. It's amazing. I, I can't wait to see where humanity goes from here. I'm very optimistic. As opposed to some people thinking AI is going to destroy the world, but that's where I am. [00:27:34] Speaker A: Yeah. Hey, we're kind of running up on time, but here, here's something I would love to, to offer or invite you to. It is currently fall 2023. I, I'd love to have another discussion in, in a few months or, or whatever time frame kind of works out because it. Cause I know you just started this, right? Relatively. Yes. Yeah. And so I think it's fascinating and again, I'm, I'm just pro. Helping people get their stories out of them in whatever way that works. And I would love to. Because this world is going so fast. Right. You were talking about 10 years from 2002 to 2012, where those were like dinosaur years in the publishing world, but now it's like light years. Right now it's just everything's so fast. And so I'm really curious to see where, where this goes and I'd love to have a conversation with you again in a few months and, and see what's going on and see what, how this is helping authors break through and get them unstuck and, and use this AI as a partner. And again, you got to get over that. Like you said, you got to get over that stuff and see this as a partner or as a writing coach maybe, or a sparring partner and have a go. You know, we were talking about comedy a little bit or humor. Like a lot of my stuff, I wanted, I want it to be fun. I think I want writing to be fun. I want it to be light. I wanted to. It's also what I think when you're, when you're lighter, when you're having fun, it just comes out better. Right? Like when you're in like flow state. Right? Flow state. And it's just like, yeah, I'm focusing. Go, go, go. So I could even see this book bud as an experiment. Go play around. Go write your own book first. Finish it, please. And then go write it with Bookbud and I don't know, compare and contrast and take notes and see how it went. But to see as an, as an experiment, that's how I first started Writing. A buddy of mine, like, forced me to write for 30 days in a row as an experiment. And then, because then he said, bradley, I know you're scared of failing because then you won't fail or win. It's just an experiment and you're going to have, you know, experiment results. It might be positive, might be negative. And so this is also like, give it a go have fun. Go have fun with bookbud, your new AI writing buddy. I'm loving it. [00:29:48] Speaker B: Cool. [00:29:48] Speaker A: Great. Hey, then, so what can they do? Should they, if they. If they're interested in this, should just go to bookbud AI and check it out? [00:29:57] Speaker B: Yeah, yeah, definitely go to bookbud AI and also check out Books AI too. If you're just looking for a book that you don't want to publish but you want to read. So like, as a reader, you go there and you create your own book. So two. Two different ideas, two different sites. Yeah, go there, play around with that. [00:30:13] Speaker A: Did you say books? [00:30:16] Speaker B: Books. [00:30:16] Speaker A: Sorry, did you say books? B O O O P with a. [00:30:19] Speaker B: P for personalized books. So books P O O K S dot AI. [00:30:29] Speaker A: Okay. Oh, I got it. I got it. Okay. Oh, awesome. Wow. All right. [00:30:35] Speaker B: Yeah, so go have a lot of fun with it. You can generate a free sample book. You can see how it works. What's just a quick technical note? The Books AI uses earlier version of the chat, which is a lot cheaper. That's why we could do the generated so cheaply, whereas bookbud uses like the most advanced. That's why it's published worthy, where books isn't really publish worthy. I would never suggest anybody publish a book from that. [00:31:01] Speaker A: Okay. Okay. That's so interesting with the earlier version and it's just. And it's not as good. I mean, it's really going so quickly, isn't it? [00:31:07] Speaker B: Yeah, and that was just like a. A tiny upgrade and a tiny upgrade in time, the time frame. But yeah, in terms of quality, night and day. [00:31:17] Speaker A: Yeah. Great. Wow. Okay, well, speaking of which, then. This is going so fast. We'll. We'll reconnect and I really want to hear more. I want to hear like the update of how it's going and if you. [00:31:28] Speaker B: Months. [00:31:29] Speaker A: Cool. [00:31:29] Speaker B: Sounds good. [00:31:30] Speaker A: Hey, Bo, thanks so much for being here. It's been fascinating hearing about this. I know a little bit about AI to get me. To get me in trouble, but this has been fantastic. So thanks so much for good. [00:31:40] Speaker B: Love talking about it. It's a lot of fun. Thank you for having me. [00:31:42] Speaker A: All right, thanks.