How is AI impacting authors and the book business?
Welcome to The Marketing Accelerator Podcast, featuring three insights in about three minutes. I'm Drew Dinkelacker. I really good questions that get to the truth. If you have a marketing conundrum, then let’s talk. Today I’m speaking with Nicole Gebhardt, CEO of Niche Pressworks where they turn your expertise into a book, a brand and a movement.
Drew Dinkelacker: Nicole, your position is that books will become interactive…what does that mean exactly?
Nicole Gebhardt: Yeah, I think we’re at an incredible time in history where everything creates a new opportunity. AI is completely transforming the way we want to learn, the way we experience and interact with technology, right? And, that is flowing over into the book world, just as it is everything else. So, what I think we’ll see is the future of books, is they will become much more customized, much more personal. So, if you think just solely about the sheer amount of information Amazon already has about you and your buying habits and your family and what you’re interested in…now imagine that you go, and you’re looking for a non-fiction book. Let’s say you’re looking for a cookbook, and it knows that you’re allergic to shellfish and that you love Greek cooking, right, so you could conceivably create the perfect book for you and order that as a digital book or even a print-on-demand book as we move into this new world.
Drew: Sounds like there will be varying editions of the same book but targeted to different audiences. Are reader’s interests changing?
Nicole: Yeah, I think we’re going to see a major shift in why people buy books and what they rank as an effective book or a book that they enjoy, right? So, we always have people that love books. Like, I love print, I think you love print. There’s nothing like the sensory experience of grabbing your favorite book and a drink and sitting down in your favorite chair and anticipating you’ll be spending the next couple of hours enjoying the book. But why we’re reading books is going to fundamentally change, right? You had to go to a book to get knowledge in many cases before. But now you’re really going for what I call “info taped,” so what’s really more important now more than ever is the stories and the human wisdom and your experience and the unique way that you connect dots - that maybe someone isn’t. So, the way that we write books is already shifting in the way we’re coaching our clients and creating content.
Drew: How does all this impact the credibility that a book used to bring the author?
Nicole: Yeah, isn’t that the million dollar question! So, you know, we’ve always put an author at the highest pedestal, and now we’ve got a really great divide of two different types of authors. So, there’s a lot of noise out there in the marketplace, and they’re saying it’s, you know, more noise with better grammar. And, there are lot of people out there that are now cranking out AI books, and yet there are still people who are mastering the craft, learning how to articulate and communicate their unique value, and turn it into something somebody else wants to read and experience. So, you’ll see that great divide, and I think that the real winners will be the ones who learn how to share their voice and share their message. And, the other ones, you know, if AI can write their book, why would anyone want to read it?
Drew: And, that is a great question to ask! The Marketing Accelerator Podcast is a production of Marketing Accelerator.com where business leaders gain confidence in their marketing efforts and marketers turn into high performing leaders. If you have a marketing challenge keeping you awake at night, let’s talk.