Roughly half of all internet traffic, from what I’ve been able to gather, comes from bots. Let that sink in. An overwhelming army of non-human scrapers and crawlers are clicking, copying, analyzing, and spitting out information that humans use to find stuff. Which means that the old days of buying ad space and sitting back to await the results are kaput.
Think about it. You pay $1000 for an ad, and half the responses are not sentient human beings looking for your product. You’ve just tossed $500 into the dumpster, and the dumpster is on fire.
Five years ago, someone searching for a good book to read might head over to Amazon and put in a search term like “Action packed thriller” and see a bunch of cover thumbnails. Then they could browse, like in a bookstore. That made keyword selection in KDP so important. Maybe it still is, but increasingly readers will go straight to Google or an LLM for a search. So how do we optimize for the bots? Like being in love, it’s complicated, and life is complicated enough as it is. Thus, I have not done a deep dive on this, but if you want to you can start with this post from Thomas Umstattd’s AuthorMedia podcast.
I would rather spend my time doing what I do best, writing the next book. Because, in the end, that is still the #1 marketing tool.
Why? Because of trust.
There are only two ways to grow a business. The first way is to find new customers through marketing and advertising. The second way is to sell more to satisfied customers.
The first way is expensive and, now, increasingly difficult.
The second way works if—and only if—your product delivers the goods.
For a novelist, the goods are stories that readers love. If they love one of your books, and that gets them to read another one, and they love that, too, you’ve made a fan. Which is why an email list is crucial. This lets you keep in communication with happy customers. Writers do this via emails/newsletters, which avoid the fog and noise of the internet space. The care and nurture of your list is a subject beyond the scope of this post. But if I may offer two bits of advice:
- Don’t hard sell.
- Don’t overstay your welcome.
These days, people are looking, across the board, for people they can trust because they have been hosed so often.
This, I think, is what’s behind the recent news of a Big 5 publisher pulling a book because of suspected AI use. The pub knows that most readers want a human being to be the sole author, and don’t want their reputation for providing that to be compromised. I’m not going to delve into the various uses of AI tools. I’ve stated that my “red line” is at the actual text that appears on the page. This is not, however, an opinion shared by all. One bestselling (and controversial) author openly states:
“Artificial Intelligence was used in both the research and composition of this book. I have asked the AI to mimic my writing style so you, the reader, will not be able to tell what was written by me and what was generated by the AI. I am also not going to tell you or make any indication of what was written by me and what was generated by the AI. It was I, the writer, who decided what words were put on the pages of this book, so despite the contributions of the AI, I still consider every word of this book to be mine. And I don’t care if you don’t.”
You know what? I have to give kudos to this fellow for being open about it. I don’t agree with his practice, but at least he isn’t trying to hide it. That’s far better passing off AI-generated text as one’s own words, which is what these scandals are all about.
In an episode of Downton Abbey, when it becomes clear that the old ways of life are on the way out, Carson the butler muses, “The nature of life is not permanence, but flux.”
Hoo boy. We’re in flux right now, on steroids.
What hasn’t changed—and never will—is the value of trust. Whatever you do, however you do it, don’t violate that trust in your work.
Comments welcome.