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)
It’s scary to be a creative if you believe AI will make you obsolete (and as a writer, I 100% relate to that fear). But I believe there’s a new path opening up, one where creatives can use AI to impact the world in ways they couldn’t before.
I have trepidation around talking about AI uses for authors, too. But it’s hard not to notice the creative potential it has for us, such as the story music you mentioned. It’s a chance for fiction storytelling to evolve into a multimedia experience for readers/consumers without being cost prohibitive to indie authors. Talk about expanding your audience!
I didn’t know you were in band! I was too—played clarinet. Anyway, I’m glad you were brave enough to write and post this. I do use AI to help me with ideas and research, but I haven’t used it for marketing yet. I’m not sure what I could do, but I’m going to start thinking of ideas.
Of course you know how I feel about this. I’m still very happy that I embraced AI early and that I can teach others how to use it. This is important technology that’s going to completely upend our business. You cannot just ignore it and hope it’ll go away. So thank you for taking a stand. It’s doubtful you’ll be cancelled. ☺️
Thank you, Steph! You have definitely been a pioneer here. I respect all view points on this issue. I think the danger is not talking about it and not driving awareness to it.
I can't screenshot in these comments. But you can upload your own audio and you can choose to do an instrumental only generation so that it just makes the beat. Then you can export and edit in your DAW of choice! Suno is very cool. Very impressed with it. There's another tool I found for music that's even cooler for a different use case. Need to experiment more and will report back!
That's awesome! I've got music in my books and I have the melodies of all of the songs and recordings of me singing them, but I don't have the time to compose full accompaniments. This sounds like the perfect solution!
There are tons of amazing indie game developers on Steam. There are tons of amazing indie musicians on Bandcamp. I get that collaborating with other human beings is slower and possibly more expensive, but… this angle of “we don’t need cross-specialist projects anymore, we can just sit in isolated silos using AI” is… not exciting to me. 😕
I want AI to automate jobs that humans are bad at/don’t enjoy. Like fine-tuning ad spread or sorting out SEO tags. An automated tool for “put in your project specs and we’ll use that to find appropriate creators who are looking for collabs” would be incredible, it’d save a lot of time and brainpower which could instead go to actual conversations and collaborations. But cutting the other people out entirely? I feel that art in general will be weaker for it.
I agree with you. There are tons of amazing indie musicians and game developers and artists and everything under the sun. Collaborating with others is amazing and should still happen! I collaborate with others all the time, now more than ever— whether it be artists, designers, and developers.
There’s just a new window of opportunities that authors deserve to know about. There’s room for so much creation in this world. Whatever approach someone takes I respect.
Where does one purchase a big pencil? I like AI. It helps me with lots of things. Helps, not takes my place. Today I sent some data from Pinterest into it and it spat out content ideas based on my audience stats. I love that. I think the people saying AI is going to take over our jobs is just over hyped.
It’s scary to be a creative if you believe AI will make you obsolete (and as a writer, I 100% relate to that fear). But I believe there’s a new path opening up, one where creatives can use AI to impact the world in ways they couldn’t before.
It's a superpower.... just must be used wisely!
I have trepidation around talking about AI uses for authors, too. But it’s hard not to notice the creative potential it has for us, such as the story music you mentioned. It’s a chance for fiction storytelling to evolve into a multimedia experience for readers/consumers without being cost prohibitive to indie authors. Talk about expanding your audience!
Yes! You are right on the money here!
I didn’t know you were in band! I was too—played clarinet. Anyway, I’m glad you were brave enough to write and post this. I do use AI to help me with ideas and research, but I haven’t used it for marketing yet. I’m not sure what I could do, but I’m going to start thinking of ideas.
I'm glad I can get you thinking... I'll for sure be sharing more ideas and experiments. The clarinet is beautiful! Great to meet a fellow band peep!!
Of course you know how I feel about this. I’m still very happy that I embraced AI early and that I can teach others how to use it. This is important technology that’s going to completely upend our business. You cannot just ignore it and hope it’ll go away. So thank you for taking a stand. It’s doubtful you’ll be cancelled. ☺️
Thank you, Steph! You have definitely been a pioneer here. I respect all view points on this issue. I think the danger is not talking about it and not driving awareness to it.
I'm so glad I joined FFA for even the two months I did. I learned so much from you and the others about how to use AI in good ways. Thanks!
Thank you! That’s great to hear!!
Amen.
And thanks for introducing me to Suno. Do you know if it can take my vocals for songs I've written in my books and put music behind it?
I can't screenshot in these comments. But you can upload your own audio and you can choose to do an instrumental only generation so that it just makes the beat. Then you can export and edit in your DAW of choice! Suno is very cool. Very impressed with it. There's another tool I found for music that's even cooler for a different use case. Need to experiment more and will report back!
That's awesome! I've got music in my books and I have the melodies of all of the songs and recordings of me singing them, but I don't have the time to compose full accompaniments. This sounds like the perfect solution!
Oh, please share with me what you end up creating. I'd love to listen!
You got it! It'll likely be in June (I've got a release & a KS before then) but I'll absolutely share it with you!
There are tons of amazing indie game developers on Steam. There are tons of amazing indie musicians on Bandcamp. I get that collaborating with other human beings is slower and possibly more expensive, but… this angle of “we don’t need cross-specialist projects anymore, we can just sit in isolated silos using AI” is… not exciting to me. 😕
I want AI to automate jobs that humans are bad at/don’t enjoy. Like fine-tuning ad spread or sorting out SEO tags. An automated tool for “put in your project specs and we’ll use that to find appropriate creators who are looking for collabs” would be incredible, it’d save a lot of time and brainpower which could instead go to actual conversations and collaborations. But cutting the other people out entirely? I feel that art in general will be weaker for it.
I agree with you. There are tons of amazing indie musicians and game developers and artists and everything under the sun. Collaborating with others is amazing and should still happen! I collaborate with others all the time, now more than ever— whether it be artists, designers, and developers.
There’s just a new window of opportunities that authors deserve to know about. There’s room for so much creation in this world. Whatever approach someone takes I respect.
Where does one purchase a big pencil? I like AI. It helps me with lots of things. Helps, not takes my place. Today I sent some data from Pinterest into it and it spat out content ideas based on my audience stats. I love that. I think the people saying AI is going to take over our jobs is just over hyped.
BWAHA! OMG, that song is HILARE. It kinda reminded me of a song you'd hear in an episode of Power Rangers.
hahaha! I'm so happy you liked it :). And OMG your Substack branding is on point.
Thank you! Appreciate that.