You can cancel me. But every author needs to know this...

AI's impact on indie publishing is entering a new phase. Read to understand the new opportunities and threats of AI and why I made a song to market my new book with AI (and how you can too in minutes)

Note: Everyone has their views on AI, and I remain conflicted about several aspects of it. If you’re determined never to use AI, good for you. Stick to your values. If you’re curious about how AI can help you expand your storytelling opportunities, find new readers, and build a business that’s not affected by the daily whims of social media platforms, read on…

First, you can expect the Author Marketing Superpowers Bootcamp 👢 to hit your inbox later this week.

It’s 5 days of bite-sized insights that help you take a story from an idea to $1,000 in income by utilizing the 5 Types of Author Marketing Superpowers (you can learn more about the superpowers in this Kickstarter here).

Now for some real talk.

This is scary for me to share with the world.

But I can’t stay silent any longer.

The truth is the authors I love (all of you) stand to lose so much more if I stay quiet about this.

If I don’t stand for something, then I stand for nothing.

I stand for this community. I stand for bringing Power to Storytellers. I’ve dedicated my life to serving you all.

And there’s one looming superpower that I just can’t ignore any longer.

Yes, it’s AI. But no, it’s not what you think.

I’m Pro-Storyteller. And that means I’m sometimes against AI and sometimes… I’m for it 😳

As a community, we have been dealing with the impacts of generative AI for the last 2+ years. On LibGen, you can see if your books were used by Meta to train its AI systems (millions of authors’ books were).

Let me be really clear about something.

I don’t hate AI.

But I do have a strong disdain for many of the companies and people behind making AI possible, and in turn their ideas, values, and visions for “what’s good” have been imposed on these products and our futures.

Not every AI is created equal or in the same way. Likewise, not every application of AI is the same.

It’s why this pro-AI v.s. anti-AI debate in the author community is often painted as a black-and-white issue when it’s incredibly nuanced.

It’s scary to move into a future where AI systems have more and more power when we as authors don’t have power over the systems or have much power where we distribute our content on eBook retailers.

This is why my mission is to bring Power to Storytellers. By helping you build your own platform off the retailers (I cover this in length in my Self-Publishing 4.0 article) and by giving you new tools, the mindset, and the community to rise up together and achieve our storytelling dreams.

Storytellers rule the freaking world. And if anyone tells you that’s not true, they are likely telling you that story to serve their own rule and disempower you telling YOUR story.

With that said, being against everything under the sun AI is just as lazy of a position.

AI has endless possibilities for creatives.

Saying all artificial intelligence is bad is like saying that all electricity is bad. Electricity used to create nuclear bombs? Maybe not great. Electricity made from coal-fired power plants? Certainly contributes more to climate change!

Avoiding AI entirely is like willingly choosing to keep yourself in the dark when cities full of skyscrapers are lighting up with new appliances, modes of transit, and life around you. Whether and how you decide to use it or not is a personal choice, but you deserve to know.

With all of this said, up until recently, I didn’t see present-day AI changing the industry all that much.

So it helps some authors write books faster. What does that really do for the economics of publishing? Very few stories already made nearly all of the money according to the Power Law (this is one of the superpowers inside of the Author Marketing Superpowers Deck).

What will flooding the market with more books do when the market is already so full of books that no reader will ever read even 1% of the books released in a given year in their entire lifetime?

Marketing was already hard. More books flooding the market just makes it marginally harder (since it was already so saturated). It’s why I dedicate this newsletter, my teaching, and all the technologies I build (such as Reader Meter) to helping authors reach more readers by putting their Readers First.

AI has a lot of promises to make marketing easier. There are even a lot of promises to make writing easier.

But AI, up until recently, didn’t really change the game in my humble opinion.

To be candid with you, talking about how to make a cover with AI or pump out more ad images and copy with AI just didn’t intrigue me. It’s possible to get good output with AI, but a lot of it is just average.

And in order to make great output with AI, it meant understanding not just how these AI systems work, but most importantly how readers work and what good marketing looks like. So I chose to spend my time helping you understand what good marketing looks like and how to stand out in an ever-crowded world.

That’s what Author Marketing Superpowers is all about. That’s what putting your Readers First and going Beyond the Book is all about.

And I’ve been even doing it myself with my adventures with the BIG pencil.

You can check out this Facebook post here on it.

And speaking of the BIG Pencil, I recently made a song about this BIG Pencil.

A song called BIG Pencil Energy.

It’s hilarious and wild, and after I wrote it I thought, how could I make this song myself? I went to an arts school for middle school and played trombone in the band. Despite this, I’m no musician.

I thought… let me mess around with some new AI tools and see what’s possible.

The results shocked me. In fact, it was the most shocking moment I’ve had with AI ever.

But the truth is I’ve had a few moments like this in the last few months.

AI is opening up a whole new world of possibilities for authors. And no one is talking about it.

Will this become an AI newsletter?

Hell no. This newsletter is about unleashing your marketing superpowers and putting your Readers First. There are way more superpowers than ones related to AI.

With that said, I have a crazy new superpower to show you. And it’s really a whole suite of superpowers. I’m sure this won’t be the last time I talk about it.

But this is the first time.

And here’s why it’s so important.

AI is not just changing HOW content is getting made and HOW marketing content is created (all of that’s cool but it’s not revolutionary).

AI is changing HOW stories are distributed, opening up entirely new storytelling and marketing channels for authors.

This is game-changing. It’s a power that shouldn’t be ignored, regardless of the ethics of how these AI systems were built. They are powerful for your marketing. And you can unlock these powers today at near-zero cost.

Let me show you what I mean…

AI for Authors is Entering a New Era

The get shit done (GSD) paradigm of AI is evolving. Yeah it’s cool if AI helps you pump out more stuff, but I have never agreed with the merits of a productivity philosophy that prides itself in output.

Now AI is helping you create things that would have been utterly impossible before.

Tools like Suno make it possible to turn the lyrics you write into a beautiful song in minutes. You don’t need to market your book with images and newsletters anymore. You can make music for your readers.

Tools like Kling allow you to turn Midjourney images into video, opening up a whole new category of vertical television that is taking off with POV content on TikTok (here’s an example).

Tools like Bolt and Lovable allow you to use natural language to describe what elements you are looking to add to a website and it makes the code for you in seconds. You can now customize your own tech stack simply, leading to less software costs, and endless new permutations for marketing funnels, reader journeys, and more.

And this is just the beginning.

Music, Television, and soon Video Games, will all be possible to create by everyday solo storytellers like you and me at a cost that rivals a cup of coffee. Even categories like translation are becoming remarkably accessible, allowing storytellers to go global with their IP without needing tens of thousands of dollars or selling your IP rights to foreign publishers.

This is why I’ve been so excited about going beyond the book.

Hollywood is not just for the big studios anymore. Steam doesn’t need to be dominated by Triple A titles. The record labels already don’t rule music, and they will continue to lose more power. In 5 - 10 years as 3D printing continues to go mainstream, this impact will be magnified across exponentially more product categories.

I understand the concerns even here. These AI systems still aren’t controlled by everyday storytellers or compensating the people whose content made them fairly (or at all most of the time). We need legislation to change that. We need new platforms like Created by Humans that make it possible to get compensation for works you give the rights for different AI systems to train on.

We need all of these changes. We need a technology future, not just with AI but down the entire stack, that puts storytellers in control.

But I’ll tell you what I’m not worried about.

AI taking over the creative process entirely.

Over 25 years ago computers surpassed the ability of human chess players. No human could compete with the new deep learning systems.

At first, it seemed like the end of human chess.

Until Garry Kasparov, the world chess champion who got beaten by the AI, did something radical.

He became a centaur.

He found the machines alone were NOT the best at playing chess.

Instead, it was humans working in tandem with AI to devise strategies, run simulations, and ultimately become the best in the world.

Humans working with technology and technology working with all humans (not just the select few it was designed to benefit) is the future.

How you decide to work with technology is up to you. But technology is such an indistinguishable part of the human experience that it is impossible to avoid.

Will you use AI in your marketing?

Will you use AI to expand your IP to new formats like games and video?

Will you use AI to market your books in novel ways through music and personalization?

Or will you not use AI at all in your marketing and creation process?

There are no right or wrong answers here.

There will be thousands of authors who continue to make a living without ever touching a generative AI application. And there will also be thousands who make a living creating incredible experiences that put their Readers First with the help of AI.

What excites me about this new age of generative AI is that it’s opening up net new creation. Allowing movies, songs, marketing funnels, and new kinds of experiences that would have never been created before. It expands our field of opportunity, rather than us all competing for the same pot of Kindle Unlimited page read payouts each month.

And because of this, it would be a disservice to all of you if I didn’t sometimes cover developments in AI and how they can apply to marketing your books.

Sometimes it will be mentioned in passing in a newsletter. Every once in a while, it may even be the topic of conversation. But I’m done with being quiet. And I’m done with being scared that talking about this will get me canceled.

I’m on a mission to bring Power to Storytellers. And I will never hold any power back from you. After all, sometimes the greatest powers are the ones that are most often overlooked, misunderstood, and ostracized.

With all of this said, let’s get into what sparked this all.

I made a song with AI… and it rocks (it’s literally a rock song).

How I made a marketing song using AI and you can too

I was inspired by this glorious advertisement from Liquid Death called Kegs for Pregs featuring Kylie Kelce.

Author Marketing Decks needs a song!

So I wrote the lyrics to a funny, inspiring, and relatable song about book marketing for authors called BIG Pencil Energy.

Then, I went to Suno, entered the lyrics into the “write with Suno” section, entered the style of music (think genre, mine was alternative rock), and the title of the song.

That’s it. I hit “Create” and in less than a minute I had two options for the song. I played around for an hour, having fun and creating dozens of versions. The version I liked the most is the one I’m sharing with you today.

You can listen to Big Pencil Energy here on YouTube (I even made a lyric video where I dance around all silly).

Note: in order to use this song for commercial purposes, I had to first subscribe to Suno Pro for $10/month before generating the song. If you use Suno for free, then any songs created during your free version of Suno can not be used for commercial purposes.

Is my goal to make a music career out of this song? No.

Is my goal even to make a dime from this song directly? Also no.

My real goal is to make marketing fun and create something that can easily be shared amongst my audience (you all) that features one of my products (the Author Marketing Superpowers Deck).

In the future, I may run an advertisement where I use this song and even include it in an email automation to encourage people to use their sidedecks and have fun.

In short, it’s now an asset for my business that I can use as part of my larger marketing engine to build deeper connections with my customers, help you all on your storytelling journey, and ultimately sell more of my products.

And as an added bonus, anytime there is karaoke at an author conference… you know I’m going to be asking if we can do this song 😉.

And that’s it for this one.

Thank you all for being with me on this journey. This seriously was stressful for me to write, but it feels really good getting this all out there.

I’m excited to see the amazing things you create for your readers.

Remember, marketing is a service. Your marketing should seek to entertain, educate, or inspire your readers in and of itself.

I’ll be back this week with the Author Marketing Superpowers Bootcamp (don’t worry no more rants about AI 😅) and an extra special episode of the Beyond the Book Podcast.

In the meantime, don’t forget…

Together we are boundless,

Michael Evans

The Author Sidekick