“Your Book Deserves To Reach a Larger Audience”

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by James Scott Bell
@jamesscottbell

“Everybody talks about the weather,” Twain wrote, “but nobody does anything about it.”

Yes, and everybody talks about Artificial Intelligence, and nobody can do anything about it. It’s here, it’s there, it’s everywhere. It’s Skynet, it’s HAL, and soon it may be telling you, “I’m sorry Dave, I can’t do that.”

Today I won’t revisit the pros and cons, complaints and commendations, misgivings and infatuations writers have with AI. Rather, I refer to a recent report from Microsoft on the professions most and least susceptible to disruption from generative AI.

Writers, we made #5!

  1. Interpreters and Translators
  2. Historians
  3. Passenger Attendants
  4. Sales Representatives of Services
  5. Writers and Authors

The professions least likely to be impacted are manual jobs like phlebotomists (people who draw your blood), highway maintenance workers, plumbers, massage therapists, roofers, and embalmers (stiff competition for this job).

First question is: what the heck’s the difference between writers and authors? It’s subtle.

A writer writes stuff (you’re welcome). But they may not own the stuff. A writer can be someone who produces content for someone else, a writer-for-hire, e.g., a ghostwriter. Clearly, AI is replacing them.

An author owns the stuff (and can therefore license it), and AI is replicating them. The big issue for us fiction writers is whether AI can produce more than soulless trope rearrangement. And whether authors who’ve spent years learning the craft and developing a singular voice can compete with AI in the marketplace.

This is not to say that authors should avoid all things AI—things like copywriting, book descriptions, marketing materials. For these AI is good and fast, freeing up time for writing more fiction and playing Connections. It’s free, too. Pro copywriters are out of a job. Trad publishing doesn’t use them anymore, not to mention any other business that produces sales copy—which is every business.

Series writers can upload pdfs of their books to Google Notebook, press enter, and boom—series bible. Need a recall all the plots in in your 15-book series? Ask your notebook for summaries, and there they are. Need to recall how recurring characters were described in every book in which they appear? Presto. Those are all good uses of the tech.

There’s a dark side, of course A big new scam is targeting authors via AI-generated phishing emails. These are slick (gone are the good old days of scam emails from Nigerian princes rife with shoddy grammar). They purport to be a from an actual person who works for an actual marketing firm. This person just loves your book and wants to help you reach more readers!

What they’re doing is scraping info about you from the net and using high-praise buzzwords to give you a dopamine hit.

I got one of these just the other day. It begins by saying she (a female name) recently “came across your book” (one dead giveaway is when it doesn’t give you the title. But other emails do). She was “truly struck” by the “raw emotion and depth of storytelling.” And I “deserve” to have my book reach a wider audience. Dopamine!

The email goes on to promise higher book rankings on Amazon and a “customized campaign” to increase exposure across “key global markets.” She has “just worked with an author in a similar genre” who experienced a measurable increase in sales (but doesn’t tell us who the author is). She invites me to receive a “complimentary review” of my current Amazon presence and “explore” how the company can help me out. The email signs off with Warm regards, followed by the name…but no link to a website (which, of course, does not exist).

I laughed then trashed it. I should have labeled it “spam,” for two days later I got a follow up, hoping that I and my family “are doing well” (that’s so nice!) and understanding that “life can get busy” and reminding me “I have a specific idea for a campaign that I’m confident could get your book in front of a huge number of new readers who are actively looking for exactly this kind of story…I’d love to share the details with you in a quick 10-minute chat or call this week. No pressure at all, just a conversation to see if it’s a good fit.”

The ultimate goal of this “good fit” is to get my money and access to my KDP account. What could possibly go wrong with that? (You can read about this scam at the invaluable Writer Beware website.)

This con feeds off our bottom-line desire—we all want new readers. Well, the anecdotal evidence suggests that many readers sense when a book is AI-generated (and consider it “cheating”) versus having a unique voice and style, which only comes via the hard work of learning the craft, writing, getting feedback, and writing, writing, writing.

Yeah, we have to concede that AI is getting better at plagiarizing generating competent commercial fiction that can provide a quick escape. But will it create a rabid fan? I don’t think so. Only blood can do that.

So does your book really deserve to reach a larger audience? Not if AI writes it for you. Do the work. Be the author. Bleed. Get better. And if you need a side hustle, learn embalming.

Comments welcome.

47 thoughts on ““Your Book Deserves To Reach a Larger Audience””

  1. Regardless of field of work, people should be alarmed at how AI/technology has put human interaction on the back burner. So many businesses you call now you can’t get a real person and their automated systems inevitably don’t give you the option you need to take care of what you called for.

    Nor do I want to use AI for anything writing related if I can help it. I want to keep exercising my brain. I’ve wanted to be a lot of things in my life but never a zombie. 😎

  2. I use AI to re-write book descriptions, copy for bookmarks, and yesterday to create better copy for my car that is for sale. I’ve tried to have it outline a story I’m working on (I’m a pantser), but my brain doesn’t write that way – I don’t know if it the outline or AI or both. Beyond the concerns you list above, another concern is the reduction in our vocabulary. There was a recent study about how AI reduces the range of vocabulary (sorry, couldn’t find the article this morning). If Hal 9000 speaks to us using 20K of the 40K words that most adults know, then that vocabulary begins to drift away from our brains.

  3. Very good subject, James. And so true that no-one is doing anything about it. Some, like you, Writer Beware, myself, and others, are attempting to fill Sarah Connor’s very impressive shoes in speaking out about the dangers, but do we honestly have a snowball’s chance of seeing change? I doubt it.

    Here in the equally Hellish state in which I reside, everyone complains about the shoddy electrical grid. But does anyone care (or even know?) about the massive-scale AI and bitcoin-scraping server farms being built all over? No. Most never look up from their phones where ChatGpt is doling out the required dopamine fix.

    I lost my correspondence job to an AI bot. My manager kindly assisted me in finding a new role, new team within the company. Part of her assistance included sprucing up my decade-old resume … by using AI.
    To my eyes, it was the worst pile of steaming gobbledygook I’d ever read in deliberately-induced sentences. Evidently, though, both the much younger recruiter and new manager loved it. I got the job.
    And so the automated wheel grinds on.

  4. I get at least 2 or 3 of these sorts of messages a day. Some of the ‘senders’ are persistent, asking why I haven’t replied. Straight to junk. The worst=stupidest ones ask if my book (no title–except for one that named a book but forgot to remove the brackets) is on Goodreads and/or Amazon. As if it’s so hard to find?
    The other peeve is “I hope this finds you well,” or “are having a nice day.”
    Thanks for this post, JSB. I hope you are having a nice Sunday. 🙂

  5. I read a website where you can put questions in and have experts answer. I am continually amazed at the number of people who think they can get rich quick with an AI written book. I find it sad. They are missing the whole point of creating a story. It is the journey of learning about yourself as you learn to write. It is wandering through a bookstore or Amazon and seeing something you created and others are enjoying. I’ll never get rich writing but who gives a rats ass.

    • It is the journey of learning about yourself as you learn to write.

      So true, Brian. Of the “inner journey” of the bot-dependent, one might recall Gertrude Stein’s quip about Oakland: “There is no there there.”

  6. The scam about getting a wider audience reminds me of a spam phone call I got the other day. I knew it was a scam call, but when I listened to the voicemail, the female robo (or maybe AI) caller cleared its throat to make itself sound like a human. Another one made it sound as if it was talking to someone right next to them as they made the call. They’re getting trickier all the time.

    • And AI can scrape a voice sample from an online video and clone it, then create a distress message requesting money. Every family needs to have a code word only they know to be included in any such message.

  7. I enjoy crafting the plot, characters, and words of the stories I write. I’m not worried about AI because it can’t take that away from me. Since self-publishing is still a thing, I can get my stories out to the public and have them read. Direct sales is also a new thing.

    Craftsmen (people) still exist and can sell their wares a hundred years after mass manufacturing came into being. I can’t see the demand for good stories that connect going away, we just need to look for different ways of getting them in people’s hands.

  8. I’ve been a panelist at the 83rd World Science Fiction Convention this past week in Seattle, and of course there’s been much discussion about AI. Last night, during his Hugo award acceptance speech, editor Neil Clarke of Clarkesworldmagazine made an impassioned plea for human writing and human creativity.

    Earlier in the day, I was in the audience at a panel on the state of the science fiction/fantasy magazines in 2025. Neil and the other editors/publishers discussed receiving AI submissions and how the banality and simplicity was a dead giveaway, noting that “GenAI” is really just a sophisticated autocomplete.

    I think the same could happen with book descriptions generated by AI. Granted, there’s already a cookie cutter aspect to many human written ones. I’m fortunate in that I have several author friends I can run mine by to help make them better.

    Then there’s the staggering electrical consumption involved in using these large-language models, as well as water usage to cool server farms.

    The AI scams I’ve gotten reveal themselves by both the language and the exaggerated promise. Any of us who has marketed our own work knows there’s no such thing as a sure thing when it comes to marketing.

    • A sci-fi gathering is the perfect place to have these discussions, Dale.

      The power grid issue is real, especially here in California. I’m thinking we have to go to small modular reactors (SMRs) and soon, or we’re cooked.

    • If I may, there’s also an issue with low frequency humming and thrumming from the massive chiller plants associated with these server farms, resulting in local residents losing sleep, losing property values, having headaches, etc., all with no easy legal recourse.

  9. I get several of the “Hope you are well” emails a day. The first one I got went into such detail about the plot and characters of one of my books, I thought they must have read it. Then I realized it was AI.

    I’ve been responding to the emails with a short “Thank you… I don’t need your services at this time…etc” hoping there is an actual human somewhere at the receiving end who will be touched by getting a message from another real human. But I still get follow-ups which I trash.

    The nice thing about being an author is that all the AI systems in the world can’t stop me from sitting in my recliner and crafting a story that’s all mine.

  11. I’m getting two or three of these “your book deserves a better audience” emails a day, and they’re the same friggin’ emails with different signature blocks.

    Lots of offers for book trailers, too.

    One well-meaning young fellow guaranteed to raise my online presence and [SEO stuff that I don’t understand]. He even provided me with an upfront analysis of my covers and online presence. Here’s the thing: The person making the offer is himself invisible on the internet.

    One reason to have a traditional publisher–perhaps THE reason to have a traditional publisher–is to talk myself into believing that someone is taking care, on my behalf, of the stuff I don’t understand.

    With that point made, here’s two recent stories that made me a devotee of AI.

    1. Y’all know I have this radio/TV gig. Well, I was tapped as a last-minute stand-in for a two-hour political roundtable (think The Five or Agronsky & Company). I knew the basic topics, but with zero time to prepare, I tapped Chat GPT for 5 talking points each on topics x, Y, and Z. Bingo! Ten seconds later, I at least had structure for my segment.

    2. “Water For Elephants” is coming to DC in December for a limited run and Joy really wants to see it. It’ll be part of the overall Christmas package, so we’ll make a night of it. The days of simply calling the box office for tickets are over. You have to select from among various ticket agencies/scalpers that have already Hoovered up the best seats. So, I turned to AI and queried, “For the duration of water for Elephants run at the Warner theater in Washington, on what night are the best adjacent seats available for the 7:30 show?” Boom! Ten seconds and a mortgage payment later, we’re all set.

    • Yeah, the AI tools are there for myriad things and they’ll only get better. The trick/skill/necessity is knowing when NOT to use it, a trick/skill/necessity not, as far as I can tell, being taught in most homes and schools.

      Enjoy the show!

  12. There is some good in AI, and we use it all the time– search engines, anyone? My fear is it will enable the upcoming generation to use it as a crutch. I’ve learned through experience that if you don’t use it, you lose it. I shudder to think about future generations.

  13. Somewhere near the top of the AI replacements list right there with authors should be musicians. I just watched Rick Beato create an indie record starting with just a song title, asking ChatGPT to create lyrics, then handing it off to another AI to create a ficticious performer, another AI to render the recorded song with voice and backing band. Rick is a respected recording artist, musician, and teacher, and he is dismayed but also impressed by the outcome.
    https://www.facebook.com/reel/2842699555898926

  14. Good post, Jim…crammed with stuff I didn’t know, like, “The ultimate goal of this “good fit” is to get my money and access to my KDP account. What could possibly go wrong with that? (You can read about this scam at the invaluable Writer Beware website.)”

    I like to tell people that all the flap about AI is mostly above my pay grade (and the synaptic relays in my brain…), but as an author, I can’t just ignore the flap. I should educate myself, which is why I show up here daily.

    Have a great Sunday!

  15. Dear Jim,
    I hope this email finds you well…

    Seriously, thanks for drawing attention to this burgeoning problem.

    What’s scary is how fast it’s improving. Last week I recd one about my new book The Villain’s Journey-How to Create Villains Readers Love to Hate. The subject line read:
    “Debbie, Your Villain Deserves More Viictims—Er, Readers.”

    Wow, now they’ve learned how to inject humor to convince you they’re not bots.

    Of course, there’s no company name, no website, and a Google search doesn’t show “Frank, Annabel, and Linda (FAL)” who are the alleged humans offering improved SEO for The Villain’s Journey.

    AI is getting scary good at human mimicry.

  16. Recently I’ve been using SudoWrite as an aid to brainstorm my second book in series. Yesterday I opened it up to see an announcement about their latest beta concept called “My Voice.” It has nothing to do with audio. This is your writer’s voice. You can train it with a few thousand words of your own writing, a chapter, even a whole book. The way you use it is to highlight a section of your draft– your own writing or an AI’s–and click a popup toolbar to rewrite it in your voice.

    I tried it to see how this might work. Trained it on my opening chapter which is totally my original writing, no AI at all. Then I highlighted about six paragraphs of a very rough draft, including dialogue, and gave it to My Voice. The result was less than scintillating, but did a credible job. This is in beta, don’t forget.

    My point is that this is the direction AI for fiction is taking. A few weeks or months hence, My Voice output will be indistinguishable from my own writing. In a way, Garry Rodgers told us a few weeks ago he’s already there, having filled in ChatGPT with his entire ouevre. I’m not happy with this trained writer’s voice development, because it opens the door to piracy in ways we haven’t seen yet, but soon all the writerly AIs–Gemini, Claude, Grok, NovelCrafter, etc., will have the same under a new name.

    And Jimmy Sixth-Grader will be pumping out a new Jack Reacher thriller on his smartphone while a bot called MathMind fills out his fractions test for him.

    • Yep, hand over your soul, too, as our brains atrophy and we become Soylent Green. AI can be a beard, creating an “author presence” that forms relationships with readers, just like “love companions” do now.

  17. I’ve gotten that exact material in phone calls in recent years. The name of the “agency” is always changed, but the script remains the same.

    Some business expert recently said that we will lose over 50% of white collar jobs in the US in the next years. Who will the bad bosses bully then?

  18. Sounds like I better do the work, be the author, and get better because I don’t think I’d make a very good embalmer. What a dead end job that would be!

  19. Ugh. I’ve been getting slammed with those emails. Some even mention what they love about certain characters (which they pull from reviews).

    Last Friday, I got a different type of scammer, who tried to shame me into responding by saying things like, “Why doesn’t [book title] have more reviews? Let me know when you get sick of living in obscurity.” The final kicker was, “How many more years will you waste writing books no one reads?”

    When a sales pitch doesn’t work, they can get downright nasty. 🤬

  20. My husband doesn’t like to read, but he does enjoy stories. He was listening to one the other day and I said, “Honey that is AI narrated and written and it sucks. If you want to listen to it, please put in your ear buds.”

    He asked me what was wrong. I told him. It took him a few minutes to realize that I, the writer, despised that poorly done story with all it’s repetition and flat narrative, purple prose, and how it is infringing on the work that I am doing.

    He finally understood and sheepishly shut it off. What I did do was give him my tablet with several good books that I had bought in audio form for him to listen to. He’s been deep in those stories and I haven’t seen my tablet for the past two weeks.

    BTW–good copywriting isn’t AI. It actually takes a human to make it good and set up a campaign. AI can help with some of the stuff, just like in writing a book, but to get the best stuff, you need a real human, who understands humans.

  21. I just found out from my son (an avid hater of AI) that some art schools have stopped teaching how to make the art (draw, paint, etc) and are now teaching students how to give AI the best keywords to achieve the desired results.

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