S1 Ep. 7: AI For Authors

Desiree Duffy discusses the use of AI in writing, including the benefits and recommended starting with ChatGPT for those interested in trying it out.

Key Points

• Desiree Duffy addresses apprehensions about using AI for writing, advocating for its use as an assistive tool rather than a replacement for writers
• Desiree discusses how authors struggle with distilling their book into a description or log line, and how ChatGPT can assist with this
• She explains how authors can use large language models like ChatGPT to generate book descriptions, titles, and even ideas for market research
• Desiree recommends starting with ChatGPT and trying out the free version before deciding to subscribe to the paid version

I’m here today with Desiree Duffy, who has a career spanning 20 years in marketing and public relations. Her current enterprises include Black Chateau, Books That Make You, and the BookFest. I’ve known you through the Independent Writers of Southern California, IWOSC. And I’ve seen you around quite a bit. You’re doing quite a lot. Why don’t you tell us what all you’re doing?

Desiree: Yes, I have three brands. We have Black Chateau, which is the PR marketing agency that started it all. I worked many years doing PR marketing, and my last professional position before starting the company was vice president of a digital marketing agency. And when I started Black Chateau, it was with an idea of, Hey, there’s so many authors out there who don’t really have a lot of the tools that marketers are using in the digital era.

Now, this was six years ago, seven years ago, actually, when I started Black Chateau. And since then, it’s evolved even more. But what I took from my previous positions and brought into Black Chateau was a lot of the digital aspects of PR and marketing and integrated that into what we call the author network, which is designed for book launches. It uses a combination of online tools, traditional media pitching articles, SEO, etc.. And then in addition to that, as we market our author’s books and doing all the things we were doing, we wanted to have a forum that reached the readers because authors, when you’re promoting their books, they want to reach readers. That’s their audience, right?

So that’s where we created Books That Make You, our consumer facing brand and it features book reviews. We do the Books That Make You show. I have my own podcast there. We do events and we celebrate authors. We have stories and articles about authors and a Webby Award-winning newsletter as well. The Books That Make You newsletter won a Webby Award.

Then when the lockdown hit a few years ago, back in 2020, we were getting ready to do fun things. So being from Southern California and the independent writers of Southern California, what we would always do every year is we’d be at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books over on USC campus. When we realized we weren’t able to do that in 2020 because everything was shut down, we decided to create an online event as a lot of people did. That’s when people started using Zoom and having Zoom meetings and hangouts and virtual events became a thing. Well, that’s when we created the BookFest and we have grown.

We do it twice a year now in the spring and the fall. We’re online, we’ve always been online and we embrace that because then we reach readers and writers from around the world. Day one is always dedicated to the reader and then day two is dedicated to the writer. And we do lots of programing, including at the last one we had a very wonderful conversation, interesting and in-depth about the use of artificial intelligence in the writing world and quote unquote, back then, all the way back in April, which seems like forever ago.

But the changing landscape in the way AI is evolving is just on fire. So even when I look back at that panel discussion, it was with Russell Nohelty and Lori Schwartz, I think, wow. Even then we were talking about things in a very rote manner. We still didn’t understand what was happening. So, you know, that panel and so many others people can access if they go to the BookFest to see what I mean.

Lisa: I guess the world has changed so much in the last three years. And I actually am thankful and I think a lot of people in Southern California, I’m in Santa Barbara, and even people who are in Los Angeles, they say that they love online events because going to live events, they get in their car and by the time they get there, they’re exhausted. So online events, I think, are kind of a blessing. I mean, there’s in-person is great, but if you just want to learn something new, online events are just wonderful.

Desiree: Yeah, I couldn’t agree more. It’s accessible. It’s quote unquote easy. Once we got past the learning curve of trying to figure out what Zoom was, and I was like, Oh, my gosh, why weren’t we doing this before? Because the technology was there. And sometimes you have to get a little bit uncomfortable. You know, you have to break out of that comfort zone. And then new experiences and learning can happen.

Lisa: Yeah. And that is probably the same thing with AI, artificial intelligence. I actually mentioned in a writing workshop, I said, well, that character needs some work because it sounds kind of AI. And somebody thought I meant author interference, but we’re talking about artificial intelligence, which is, you know, I tell you, when I go to check my email and clean everything out, you know, all the newsletters and file them and stuff seems like at least five of them a day mention AI. So this is just a broadening world and something that’s changing all the time, right now, just like you said. And we have to adapt and change with it. So what kind of uses are you finding right now?

Desiree: There are so many uses. I don’t know how long this interview is going to be, but we could do entire classes on all the things you can do. One of the things I’m going to address first, because what I’ve seen and heard, Lisa, is some really big apprehensions about using artificial intelligence for writers. And I want to address that elephant in the room first, because a lot of people, I know where their heads are going and I know what they’re thinking in the back of their head is AI is replacing writers.

They’re thinking of things like the writers strike that’s going on. They’re thinking that, Oh, I heard that AI really doesn’t write good stories. And we should just get away with it. There is a lot of people out there making judgments, I feel, without necessarily having the full lay of the landscape. And that’s hard because that landscape, like we keep saying, is changing all the time.

It’s hard to keep up. But what I’ve been using AI for is not replacing writers, so to speak, or not using it to totally write a story. There are people out there who are doing that. There is artificial intelligence or large language models, as they’re called, like ChatGPT to write an entire book. I don’t necessarily advocate for that, but I do advocate for using it to assist you in a myriad of ways.

Just like using Google as a search engine, as a tool. And we’d never think of telling an author, You shouldn’t use Google to do your research. You must go to the library. Nowadays, like we’ve all accepted that Google is a legitimate search tool, right? Just like we’ve accepted that spellcheck. And the fact that a computer can help us with our writing, with our grammar is there.

So with all of that said, some of the things I’m going to talk about, we’re going to be assisting authors and writers to do what they do best. And that’s being the creator, being the driving force behind those ideas because I don’t know about you, but when I’m writing, a lot of times I create this word salad, you know, especially in the term in the world of marketing and PR.

Once I know the author’s branding and I know their mission and I know the book description, I have all of those things and say, we need to put together an article about that author and their book. It’s just taking all those pieces and putting them together in new and exciting ways. And the nice thing about ChatGPT, I’m going to use that as the example, just simply because it’s the largest one.

There’s many other language models out there, but the nice thing is I can feed that and it can help me kind of restructure something that I’ve already written. Give it a new take. And the other thing I love about it too, is I have a chart where I have told it. All of your future inputs should be doing these things and some of those things are using Chicago Style Manual because I like the Chicago Style Manual we all have, probably remember and I still have mine up on my shelf for people that can see I’m pointing up because that style book that I used to have to look up how do I make a title? How do I cite this? How we’ve all done that? So guess what? ChatGPT does that for me. I don’t have to think about it. Our style guide is right there in ChatGPT and whether you use AP or Chicago or whatever, you can have it put or create those outputs in that style.

I’m using it to help do spellcheck and check for grammar. And sure there’s Grammarly and there’s Word and there’s all of these other tools. It’s nice, though, to have it right there in front of me integrated and then doing all of these things at once. And sometimes it comes back and I was like, Oh my gosh, I didn’t even know that wasn’t necessarily the right thing.

I get surprised sometimes that some of the things that it says so even just kind of underscore what I what I said, they’re helping rewrite, restructure and retool things. You know, do copy edit proofing, punching up. I even just asked my ChatGPT the other day, do you know what the term punching up means? Punching up writing. And it said yes and it told me what it meant. And I was like, okay, future outputs. Can you please make sure to punch up some of my writing? And so it kind of gives me a new take on some things and it really is a shortcut and saves a lot of time, especially sometimes when we’re doing some marketing and PR writing.

Lisa: Yeah, but it sounds like you’ve done a lot of training, you’ve had to train it. I guess you put a lot of effort into training this AI, it sounds like it and other people want to make sure to weed out punctuation and maybe they’re not good with that or something, but I’m wondering how much training does it need? But I guess the good news is, is that like with a lot of assistants or virtual assistants it’s not going to go find another job and move along. So at least with all this training you’re giving it, it’s not going to take it with it and leave you.

Desiree: That’s a good way to look at it. It is like having a virtual assistant that once you train it, it remembers and retains that. I’ll throw in a couple of caveats because we’ve all seen the examples of a ChatGPT that spits out stuff that’s not factual and I had somebody call me on it. Well you shouldn’t use ChatGPT. It is known to lie and make things up and of course it is. But you also can spend a little bit of time training it and saying, hey, future outputs need to be X, Y and Z. And that little bit of time that you take, like you’re saying in showing and training your chat is actually probably less time than if you were to bring on an assistant to help you do that and it makes your work go faster.

And people might say, Oh no, now there’s virtual assistants who are going to lose jobs. Well, I think there’s going to be a lot of jobs out there for people who can train, ChatGPT, and other large language models and AI prompting engineering, which is what we’re talking about that’s getting it to do what you want that in and of itself is turning into a marketable talent right now.

So if you’re listening to me and going, Desiree, there is no way I could ever do what you’re talking about and train ChatGPT because I barely understand what’s going on. The nice thing is there’s people out there who can do that and they can get it up and running for you. You can hire people to help you.

Or people can be working on different aspects in the world of, you know, just everything vertical at this point, from marketing to PR to writing to even online shopping and everything is using or is integrating different aspects of AI. So having people there who can do that, prompting and engineer those, that is a new skill set that didn’t exist before.

Sure, there might be some jobs that are going away and that’s a very legitimate concern. But it’s also opening up avenues and new exciting platforms for people to work in that didn’t exist before.

Lisa: Yes, definitely. So I can see my vision of using any type of ChatGPT or tool like that would be. I remember going through and trying to write the Amazon description for my novel. And that was just like you said. I looked at all the comp titles and I took words, I made a word salad, like you said. And that’s a great term. And then I used those to make it and it really had nothing to do with my writing it because it’s not what would appeal to me, it’s what would appeal to general readers, readers in general who search Amazon looking for something new to read. So that’s where those AO generators, I think, can help.

Desiree: I think you nailed it there. Lisa, when it comes to a book description or a logline as another great example, a lot of authors struggle with that. It’s a common thing. I hear it all the time. Oh, my God. I need to distill my book down to just a couple of sentences or a couple of paragraphs. It’s so hard for an author who’s written this entire volume that that’s usually where they bring in a marketer.

In most cases, if they’re with a traditional publisher, the publisher is going to do their description, etc. But if they are an independent or an indie author or self-published author, or nowadays there’s a lot of hybrid publishers that still depend upon the author to provide them with a lot of that stuff anyway. So they can use large language models like ChatGPT to help them.

And it’s not an exaggeration to say that an author is going to spend several hours, if not days, because then they’re going to go back and they’re going to rewrite it, or they’re going to look at it again. They’re going to ask their friends feedback to now take all of those concepts and words and terms that they know they want in there, and to basically cobble it together into a sloppy copy, kind of that word salad and feed it to chat and say, Hey, turn this into a book description for me.

Can you make it between 100-200 words, two or three paragraphs at the end? I want to fit the hook that’s going to attract the reader. And then you see what it gives you. It’s going to give you an output and probably just a few seconds or a minute tops, and then you can read that if you don’t like it.

One of my favorite prompts I use all the time is try again. It’ll retool it. Maybe you like part of it, maybe like the first paragraph, but not the second paragraph. Or it didn’t capture something. Hey, the protagonist, you know, they actually go on this journey, make sure you explain that more fully and say, try again. And now what might have taken hours, days, weeks, even, or a marketing department all that time to flesh out is given to you. And then I always recommend Lisa, once you take it out of ChatGPT, put it into word, and even then you might want to do some light copy editing of your own. Maybe you didn’t like the adjective that it used needed just a little bit of you.

Now you’re punching up the copy a little bit, or maybe it kind of said things a little bit differently. So I always recommend, once you have it, take it out, put it into Word or whatever software you use and then read it. And even then if you want to take it and sit on it for a day or two and go back to it, you can but yeah, to answer your question, that’s an exact perfect example of what Chachi can be used for.

Lisa: But what, what else? Like stuff like generating titles or that kind of stuff. What other kind of uses are off the top of the list for what authors can do?

Desiree: Yeah, titles, subtitles, all of that. ChatGPT can go back on the internet as of 2021. So anything that’s too fresh and new, it’s not going to know and it’s going to tell you, I don’t know this because this is as far back as I go, but if you wanted titles, for example, or you wanted it to generate ideas for where you should be writing, you know, the old saying skate to where the puck is going, not to where it lands.

Authors and writers are always trying to figure out what’s going to be new and fresh in the market. What do people want to read? So you could ask it to help you do some market research. What titles, what genres are selling right now? Should I write a cozy mystery, or should it be a hardboiled thriller? Oh, what’s selling nowadays?

Again, it’s only going to be able to go back to 2021, but it can be used to generate ideas like that. One of the things that I think it’s really interesting for, especially if you’re writing historical fiction or something that does have a place and time that it’s going to be very knowledgeable. It can be hard sometimes to do all of that Googling right. What did they wear in court and 1520s in France? You know, we can Google that and then you’ll find little pieces here and you’ll cobble it together. You’ll kind of wonder if it’s giving you the right information. You can create an entire thread that’s just about a period in time and you can ask it very specific questions.

I do suggest you fact check it using Google just to make sure. But it’s amazing. You know, this is what the gentleman of the time who were wealthy would wear, you know, the tights and the overcoats and whatnot. What would a woman wear on her head? What would her garments be like? What was the political climate? Who were some of the main players?

And, you know, the lands at that time. I mean, Europe over many years, just like every place in the world went through so much, power struggles, who was king at the time? What was the role of the pope at the time? So being able to just ask those questions and get very specific answers rather than searching and going on Google and going into the box and trying to collated all together can be a nice little aide or assistant, like you said, as you’re writing that novel.

So that’s another way I feel authors can specifically use large language models to help them out.

Lisa: Yeah, research. Research is a big one and marketing’s a big one. How about like, I guess for fiction writers it would be plot. And then I guess for nonfiction writers it would be outlining, organization kind of thing. Is there ways that it can help organize material?

Desiree: Yeah, absolutely. So if you want to ask it and give it the information or the plot points, for example, that you already have an ask it to chart that out. It can help you do that. There are even plugins that are an option. Now in ChatGPT. If you have chat up for so the plugins include a plethora of things even as far as making charts and graphs.

So if you’re a visual learner and you want to take your plot, for example, and have a chat with the use of that plugin, I do believe it’s at the paid subscription. It’s $20 a month if you want to pay for it. Otherwise there’s the free versions. But by adding plugins like that, you could get a visual representation of your plot or a graph, the traditional plot, ascending items and then the climax and descending so it could plot things out for you.

You could also use it to help you remember your characters. I hear this a lot, especially authors of science fiction and fantasy and the ones who have big worlds. Lots of characters, right? It’s really easy to lose track of, okay, this person, they have dark skin and green hair and yellow eyes and they’re from the blah, blah, blah race.

You can use it to create character profiles that you can just add to and go back to. Sure. Of course, you can use Word for that. I know a lot of authors who have a Bible that they create, but you can use ChatGPT and other forms of AI for that. Ancillary to what writers use when they’re creating worlds gamemasters.

I’m somebody who back in the day I played Dungeons and Dragons. I was a Dungeon Master, and I had the dice and I had the world and I had the notebooks and I had the monstrous compendium and the D’nD guide, and I had all of the books, all of the volumes. Well, nowadays, artificial intelligence is being used by gamers to create these worlds, to remember these worlds, to create a lot of the stuff.

And it’s very akin to what a writer might need it for, especially, again, if they’re creating robust worlds in their book series and they need to remember, retain and maybe even need a little bit of creative inspiration along the way.

Lisa: That’s great. Very, very helpful. So you mentioned that the paid version of ChatGPT is $20 a month at this time. So do you think that is worth it to go for that? Or do you think people can get enough out of the free version? Or is there is there are other programs people might want to use? I know some people do all that organizing and stuff in Scribner. I’ve never used it, but a lot of people like to use programs like that, and maybe those companies are going to be developing AI to go into their programs or anything like that. Have you heard since you’re out there in this community of people, on this groundbreaking industry, have you heard anything?

Desiree: That there are a lot of companies, you’re absolutely right, that are using AI integration and a lot of companies popping up out there. You mentioned you’re getting a lot of emails. A lot of them are powered by ChatGPT or powered by something underneath that. And you’ll hear that a lot. Even Bing is powered by ChatGPT.

So there’s a lot of elaborate action and things that are happening on that front. I have noticed, yes, one of the platforms I use and I’m not endorsing it in any way even a paid endorsement. I don’t even know if they know I use it. But it is AutoCrit and is a community as well as you can put your manuscript in it, you can evaluate it.

I like to use AutoCrit as a marketer because I have authors that come to me and they want me to represent their book and then they’re like, Hey, can you read my entire manuscript? I’m like, Hey, I’m sorry, I can’t read all 250 pages in the next day I get many, many people. But I do want to evaluate your writing kind of quickly and get an idea of where you land.

One of the things that AutoCrit does is using a form of artificial intelligence. I can’t speak to exactly what kind, but it’s really nice because you can upload your main manuscript or pages or a chapter even, and it’ll give you outputs and it’ll compare it to different authors within your genre. It’ll search and identify different areas in your writing where you could use improvement.

It’ll tell you how many adjectives you’re using, how much dialog you have. There’s a whole list of things that AutoCrit helps you with. So that’s one thing that I know personally that is using some form of AI. Is Scrivener using that? I can’t speak to that. However, I could see them and so many other platforms out there if they’re not adapting to it yet, they will be soon because it is such a powerful tool.

You know, even we mentioned Grammarly earlier, all of these tools already out there and that we’ve used and even search, Google, Bing, etc. all of that was the precursor to where we are now with AI. So one could argue that even running something through Word was a precursor to what’s out there nowadays. So to answer your question, I think a lot of the platforms we’re familiar with are going to be using it. And if they’re not, they will be using it soon. I as a marketer get messages and emails and notifications too. I just logged in to one of our websites the other day and I can see that WordPress Elementor, which we run on our websites has a new AI integrations. I just logged in to Constant Contact the other day, where we do our email marketing and I saw them posting a notification about their AI integration. So those are some of the things that I’m seeing and keeping up with. And so I recommend that to any of your listeners out there. Take a few minutes to explore it, see what they’re doing, see if it can benefit you, because again, AI integration is already underneath and probably powering or will soon be powering a lot of the platforms you use.

Lisa: Yes. AI is here to stay, it looks like. So if somebody is just starting out and they want to try and see what they can do with it. So you recommend first starting with ChatGPT?

Desiree: I think so. And I’ll fully answer that question because you did ask, should they use the free version or the paid version, you can go to Open AI, and you can sign up for a free version of ChatGPT. I think it’s ChatGPT 3.5 at this stage is what you get. I recommend trying it out the free version. And if you decide that you like it and you would like to unlock some of the paid aspects of it, if you think it is for you, then you can subscribe and it’s $20 a month. You can cancel at any time. I don’t think that’s a huge investment. It actually kind of came out of the gate full throttle and surpassed Google.

As far as search engines in the world of AI, Google has been doing stuff for many, many years and they were kind of playing their cards close to the vest and then here came Open AI. It came out with ChatGPT and a lot of these firms just went barreling past Google in a lot of ways. So it’s interesting because if you use Bing, you can actually use their search functionality in Skype and you’re like, OMG, you old fogey, you still use Skype? Yeah, I still use Skype. And actually right now I really like Skype because it’s got AI built right into it and just sit there as if I was chatting with a friend on Skype and chat with Bing AI and it has it’s citing sources, it’s citing where it’s finding this information. So those are just a few ways that if somebody wants to explore this and they’re like, well, I don’t necessarily want to do the ChatGPT, you can find it in other platforms as well.

Lisa: Have you tried Google’s BARD?

Desiree: No, I have not. I have you.

Lisa: No, I haven’t. Let’s see where they go with that. But you mentioned AutoCrit. Is that how it’s called?

Desiree: I believe that’s how you pronounce it.
Lisa: Yeah. And how much is that?

Desiree: Good question. I saw an offer at the beginning of the year. They were doing a sale. So I signed up, I believe it was for a year subscription and I think it was around don’t quote me on this around $300 ish. But I thought again, for me to be able to quickly evaluate some of the potential authors that we work with, I thought it would be a valuable tool and I really like it.

It’s fun to work with it and see that evaluation. Another thing that I saw they do and I’ve only participated in one, so I really can’t speak too much about it, but they have groups and webinars very much like writers groups. So you can join that group of writers and share your writing get feedback. So they do that with different genres, whether you’re in romance or nonfiction, I believe that they have different writing groups you can subscribe to as well.

Lisa: Okay, so that’s great. So that’s something I think I will look into. I think other people will too. It’s just been so informative and I think I will have to have you back at some point, because I think things are going to change a lot and a bunch of new information is going to be popping up every day. Anything that you want to leave people with?

Desiree: Yeah, because we scratched the surface on the large language models. Some of the things I think are really exciting too is the art. And again, I know that people are upset because they feel that if it’s deriving from something that exists and the artist, the creator, is not being paid, that’s an issue. I agree. But Midjourney can be used for some really cool things.

We had an author not too long ago who had a vision for his book cover, but he was kind of pulling stuff together and it just wasn’t collated. I noticed a quote from his book and the description of a scene, and I took that along with the image and kind of fleshed it out a little bit and we put it into Midjourney and we got some really fast concepts and the author went, OMG, you nailed it.

So if anybody has ever worked with a cover artist and has been trying to get them to see their vision and it’s just not working, that can be really frustrating. Take again days weeks to get some concepts, to get an idea of where that graphic artist designer cover artist might go can be a benefit for authors if they’re using Midjourney.

And again, there’s DALL·E 2 and there’s so many other image generators. So that’s another thing that I think is really exciting and could be useful for writers. And one more thing I’ll throw out there the voice over aspects of artificial intelligence.

Lisa: I know that I spoke with a literary agent and he was saying that one of the changes that is coming in contracts now is authors can say, no way will AI narrate my audiobook.

Desiree: Exactly, exactly. Or and I know this can cause debate. But what about the author who could never, ever afford to hire a voiceover artist? It’s just not in their budget. They’re an independent author and they’re struggling and they’re doing it all on their own. They’re an entrepreneur. What a great opportunity they might have using an artificial, intelligent voice for their book narration. So I’d like to see both sides. And I think as creators, as writers, a lot of times it’s really easy to say, Oh yeah, you need to go hire a publicist. I’m a publicist, so I get that a marketer, you need to hire all these teams. But I recognize that there’s people out there who can’t afford these things. They never could. And if they never could, it’s not like you’re taking money away from these voiceover artists or these folks that are doing it, but you’re scoring those authors to have a seat at the table and to be at least competing more closely with some of the big players out there.

Lisa: That’s very true. But they’re with a big publisher, that big publisher better not be scrimping on the narration. So that’s what that is. How about you, do you have anything coming up that you want to plug, any events?

Desiree: Oh, yeah. We have the next BookFest. That’s coming up October 21st and 22nd. Like I said in the beginning, we do the BookFest twice a year in the spring and the fall right now, currently until the end of Labor Day in September for the BookFest awards submissions are open. So if you’re an author who has a book, consider submitting it for a BookFest Award.

It was really cool this just a couple of weeks ago or last month, I should say. Several of the last BookFest Award-winners opted in to participate in the salute to the BookFest Award winners. And we had a big display on the Nasdaq board in Times Square, New York. So it was a really cool moment.

So we’re going to do that again for select winners again, but you can submit for that. And the podcast is going to be filled with panels and discussions and authors talking about the craft of writing and so much more. And I can tell you this, I’m not going to tell you too much because I want you to find out when you’re doing this. But there will be an artificial intelligence/new technology discussion happening at the next BookFest as well. And people sign up, get email updates, just go to the website for that.

Lisa: Great. Everything is so very cutting edge right now and exciting and I just want to thank you for taking some time and sharing this with us and giving us an introduction to this big new thing, big, new world.

Desiree: Oh, absolutely. My pleasure. Lisa, thank you so much for having me.