Amidst the easy accessibility of information in our digital era, the written word remains a timeless medium for profound impact. Whether you’re a coach, a thought leader, or a business owner with a message to share, the potential of publishing a book to extend your reach and influence cannot be overstated.
In this episode of Influence by Design, we explore how to create a movement with a book with publishing expert Morgan Gist MacDonald. Morgan advocates partnered publishing and works with business owners and platform builders who seek to write, publish, and market a book that will level up their business and platform.
Morgan shares insider tips on how to strategically leverage your book, rather than simply hoping for book sales. If you need to boost your authority, books can be a catalyst to share your message and spur meaningful change in the world.
Discover how books provide an intimate, vivid way for readers to connect with you and your ideas, and with Morgan’s strategic guidance each step of the way, you’ll gain confidence to finally publish your book and make the impact you crave.
IN THIS EPISODE YOU’LL DISCOVER:
- How Morgan went from academia to publishing books (01:10)
- How to create a movement by publishing a book (03:27)
- The pros and cons of self-publishing vs traditional publishing (07:29)
- Optimal book-length for reader engagement (13:21)
- Leveraging a book to grow your email list (16:58)
- How to use Amazon’s “Look Inside” feature to drive email signups (19:55)
- The value of optimising your Amazon book page categories and keywords (26:11)
- The impact of using AI to write a book versus writing from scratch (30:25)
QUOTES:
- “It doesn’t matter how long or short the book is, but it must be engaging and it has to deliver on something that your reader really cares about.” -Morgan Gist MacDonald
- “The real power, monetisation, and influence comes in when people read, are changed by your book and you have an opportunity to work with them.” -Morgan Gist MacDonald
- “Having someone read the whole book and get totally immersed in the world of your book is way better than publishing a really thick book, but then no one actually finishes it.” -Samantha Riley
- “As authors, it’s really important to know where we’re heading before we even start writing.” -Samantha Riley
Resources
The Paper Raven Books Self Publishing Guide
WHERE TO FIND MORGAN GIST MACDONALD
- Website: https://paperravenbooks.com/
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ABOUT MORGAN GIST MACDONALD
Morgan Gist MacDonald is an author, speaker, and the founder of Paper Raven Books, an innovative publishing company designed to help first-time and experienced authors alike through the writing, publishing, and marketing process so they can get their books published and build a loyal readership and a long-term career as an author.
TRANSCRIPTION (AI Generated)
Morgan Gist MacDonald Snippet (00:00):
If we really are creating businesses that matter and movements that are important to the world, then we’re going to be shooting for excellence.
The innovative stylistic excellence is really going to come from us and our unique stories. Stories are going to be so much more powerful now, because they can’t be generated by ChatGPT. In the same way, our personal stories, that’s what transformed us as people. And that’s what our audiences find so inspiring.
Samantha Riley (00:34):
Welcome to today’s episode of Influence by Design, I’m your host Samantha Riley. And today we’re going to be talking about publishing but not the regular conversation that we normally have.
You’re a thought leader, you’re an influencer, you know that you need to have a book because you already know that today I have invited Morgan Gist MacDonald to chat with me because we’re going to talk about using your book to create a movement.
And I think that this is a conversation that needs to be have because as coaches we have a business that we know is here to make a big difference. It’s not just I put that in little air quotes a business, we’re here to create big change. We’re here to start a movement. And a book is something that we do in tandem with that. So Morgan, welcome to the show. I’m so excited to chat with you today,
Morgan Gist MacDonald (01:41):
the man that I’m honored to be here, thank you,
Samantha Riley (01:43):
I already know this is going to be a hot conversation because we’ve already been firing back and forth for ages before I went note, we just gotta hit record. Now you’re a publisher of paper, Raven books, just give us a little insight really quickly to give some context, how did you wind up to be doing what you’re doing.
Morgan Gist MacDonald (02:02):
So I did not intend to start a business, as many of us, you know, would begin our describing our journey. I was an academic, I was in graduate school for sociology, I was going to be a professor.
But I realized that I loved helping my colleagues and even the junior faculty with their writing more than I love doing my own research. So I left academia, I did do some teaching, but really wanted to just be in the trenches with writers I loved being in the Word doc, the Google Docs, I was writing coaching freelance editing books, and the business started to grow while I was solo freelance, you know, solopreneur.
And grew my client roster, like many of us do with referrals and just networking, right? And grew that to be big enough that I had other editors starting to work with me. And I got more in that sales and marketing kind of seat.
And we had enough authors who were writing books, and we helped them edit the books. Now normally, we would send them off to a publisher, and publisher would handle the publishing part.
But people kept coming back to us and saying, Thank you for helping me, you know, write and edit this book, I love it. I can’t get anyone to publish it. Can you help me self publish it? And I said, Well, I know how to write a book, I know how to edit a book, I don’t know how to publish a book. So I wrote a book. Start writing your book today.
And I really use that book to grow ludwell to figure out publishing, but also to grow our business. And so I was using Amazon as a traffic source. And we can we can dive into you know, how our listeners can do that as well.
But I figured out the process, walked a handful of clients through the self publishing process, and we’re having success. That was 2015. We did a handful. Now, you know, eight going on nine years later, we’re doing 5060 books a year.
Samantha Riley (03:48):
Wow. That’s so cool. I love that you’ve mentioned that Amazon is a traffic source. And I do want to dive into that a little bit further on. So I wanted to mention that for anyone that’s listening is going I’ve got a book already, we’re definitely going to be diving into how you can get more visibility with that.
But let’s talk first about creating a movement. Because this is, I think probably one of my favorite topics in business when someone posed this question to me probably about 10 years like what if you could create a movement rather than a business? And it’s always stuck with me because I think that that completely changes the conversation.
It changes our perspective, it changes the way we make decisions and through the lens that we’re looking at business through talk to me about how we can use our book to fuel that movement.
Morgan Gist MacDonald (04:38):
Yeah, and I totally agree with you, Samantha, that even just posing the question, you know, what if I’m starting a movement, what do I want this movement to look like in 10 years? changes how we approach everything because if it’s just how do I get to my first six figures or my first seven figures pretty short sighted, right?
It’s all about clients and how much can I charge the client? What’s my margin? Like? You know, there’s a there’s a time and a place for that conversation, certainly. But when you go into writing a book, publishing a book, and long term book marketing, it’s got to have a long tail, right? It’s got to be something that you want to be talking about this year, and next year and five years down the road and 10 years down the road, right to really juice what a book can give you. And books have this amazing ability to be spread, right?
That word of mouth, that happens with a book is extremely powerful. So you know, books get recommended one on one, they get recommended book clubs, they get recommended on social media.
And a book is a very powerful way to speak to one to many, but in an intimate kind of medium. Because you can use very personal words, tell personal stories, you really got someone’s entire attention in this book, and I think all of us probably have in mind books that changed our lives, there’s something the author’s style and voice and stories that linger in that part of our brain.
And so it’s a really powerful tool. And if we are thinking 10 years out that I would say that’s exactly, you know, the right, the right timeframe. And we’re gonna be we’re gonna be telling the right stories, we’re going to be speaking to the right people, when we’ve got that more long term vision in mind.
Samantha Riley (06:16):
It’s interesting that you said, you know, you’re hearing in people’s voices, because when I published my book, and we did big book launch, and people were reaching out saying, you know, I’ve downloaded your book, there was two people, and I’ll never forget it, because it happened twice on the same night, that reached out and said, I was reading your book, and I heard you in my head, like, you were reading it to me.
And I was like, wow, how powerful is that? Because I was in bed asleep, you know. And so, and I think that that’s what I love about books. I’m a massive reader, I know, I read on your website that you are to that. I love books, they’re so immersive, it’s just like your brain go. And you know, it completely goes into this other place that it doesn’t do in any other medium. And it really surprised me.
And I wanted to mention that, that I did have people reaching out saying, I read it, like you were talking to me in my head. And I just thought, wow, this is actually more powerful than even I thought,
Morgan Gist MacDonald (07:14):
Yeah, I absolutely agree. And I actually think that books pair really well, with the content creation that we’re seeing on the internet. These days, we’re seeing a lot of podcasts and a lot of videos.
And so when you’re growing this kind of platform, as as we all are, right, we’re business owners, and we’re thought leaders, and so we are creating content, you’re right, people get to know your voice, even if they haven’t met you. And they bring your voice to the book. And so yeah, it’s just it, but it’s in their imagination, right. So
Samantha Riley (07:44):
yeah, I love that. Talk to us about self publishing versus traditional publishing. Because, you know, there’s a lot of obviously, there’s pros and cons to both if we want to have our book in an airport, which actually is one of my visions.
But I’m guessing that can’t happen as a self publisher, but don’t actually know. Talk to us about what the pros and cons are of each and why we would want to consider one over the other? Well, I’ll give
Morgan Gist MacDonald (08:10):
you a short answer about the airport, that one’s pretty much pay to play, you would need to be with a distributor and we can get into traditional publisher usually has a relationship with a distributor.
That’s the person who’s getting you into nationwide Barnes and Noble, although that’s trickier to do these days at potentially paying to get the book into those airport bookstores, the Hudson bookstores and that sort of thing.
So the most common pathways for publishing these days, our self publishing has become very popular, very doable. Like to actually produce a professional quality book with a self publish tools is extremely doable.
You can either do it yourself, or you really what most of us do is we hire freelancers or freelance team to do the editing, do the design, actually, you know, publish the book, that sort of thing.
The benefits are that you retain full control, you are deciding the title, the subtitle, you’re deciding the cover design, you’re, you know, deciding on all the content that’s inside the book you can put in, we’re gonna talk about this a little bit later on, you can put in lead magnet inside your book, those bonus resources, companion courses, meditations, whatever you want to put in the book is your choice because it truly is yours at the end of the day. You also can order copies of the book at cost, basically.
So if you speak a lot where you want to run a book funnel, you can order those copies at you know, two or three or $4 apiece, and now you can really use it as a marketing tool. Now the con is you’re probably not going to hit a bestsellers list with a self published book. I less you have a pretty big list, you know if your list is 100,000 plus, you could probably hit Wall Street Journal or something like that.
Knock and hit New York Times because New York Times is an editorial bestsellers list, it does require connections. And it requires bookstore strategy and, and some of that sort of thing. traditional publishing is kind of on the opposite end of the spectrum, that is where you need an agent, you need to be introduced to a publisher, they will pay for the publication, they’ll also control the creative vision of the book, at the end of the day, they are going to have the final say on the title, the subtitle, the cover design, the content of the book, and all of that the benefit of a traditional publisher is they can get you much more easily into those bookstores, you’re going to have to lean on them, and really make sure that they are doing that because traditional publishers are getting a little bit, I don’t know lazier is not a nice way to phrase it.
But you know, they’re really relying on authors to do a lot of the selling. So they are mostly signing authors who have 100,000 plus audience already. And so if you do if you are in a position to negotiate with a traditional publisher, you’ll want to make sure that they are you know, I mean, we could get more into this if you want.
But like for Best Seller list strategies, for instance, you want to make sure they’re coming out with a hardcover new release of your book, because it’s easier to hit New York Times with a hard recovered new release.
But I just had a friend who publish with Simon Schuster, and they didn’t, they released hers as a paperback for her. And so it was much more competitive little things like that, you know, start to get, you want to talk to someone who has been with a traditional publisher and get their notes.
And then kind of smack in the middle between those two options is hybrid. And you’re gonna see if you Google like, you know, publishing partner work with a publisher, like if you Google any of those sorts of phrases, almost certainly, you’re gonna start running across these hybrid publishers, where they’ll ask you to pay a certain amount, like 5000 10,000, or 20,000, toward the publication of your book, and they’re gonna say, well, we’ll split the royalties 5050, I would put a big yellow flag.
Because what that means is that they are going to upload all of your book files, the print files for printing the cover, ebook, paperback, hardback the interior files, like all of those, I mean, it’s funny these days publishing is so much about files, but they are uploading them to the printer in their own publishing account.
So you will never get to see how many sales your book has, you’ll never get to see how many royalties or you won’t have any control over that book. And so I’ve just been hearing a lot of kind of like sad stories, people who, like I went with this publisher and my books and their account, and now I can’t do anything with my book.
So there are some reputable ones. But you just want to have a really good conversation with anyone before I start going down that road, I would really only consider a hybrid publisher that has relationships with a bookstore, because that’s what we lack in the self publishing world is we don’t have those relationships with bookstores. Does that kind of
Samantha Riley (12:57):
help? Yeah, Terry, listen categories horizontally so that at least people can make the decision? Oh, well, this is the route that I want to go down for this reason, because at least if you’re educated about it, it makes it easier to make the decision.
Can we talk about the length of the book, my book was quite short, I even spoke to a good friend that I met, he specifically writes his books, so that they’re so short that they actually, the book is so thin, that he can get it into an regular envelope to post to people, which I thought was actually super cool. But can we create a movement with a short book?
Morgan Gist MacDonald (13:33):
Absolutely, absolutely. In fact, one of the main challenges of writing a book is just getting people to read it to maybe there are two main challenges. One is getting people to know it exists. And then once they know it exists, so they actually buy the book, then the next big challenge is getting them to read the book.
And so, you know, I would generally say that it doesn’t matter how long or short the book is, but it must be engaging, you know, it has to deliver on something that your reader really cares about. It needs to be powerful.
And so a lot of times people ask me, Well, okay, Morgan, how long should it be? I’m like, okay, aim for 20,000 words, that’s a really good starting point, that’s pretty achievable. For most of us, once you kind of get your flow under you, that might be something like 20 or 30 hours of writing, that can be a long weekend, you know, that could be done over a few weeks, you may realize that it grows from there.
So maybe it hits 40,000 or something like that, and that range 20,000 words to 40,000 words is something like 150 to 200 and a bit page a hit, you’re still hitting in that like, short, sweet spot. And what the goal is, is just to help the reader actually finish the holding book and get you know, and to be changed to be transformed to have that satisfying ending like get them to the end of the book is really where that transformation is going to happen for your reader that inspiration.
Samantha Riley (15:03):
And if we think about creating a movement, having someone read the whole book and getting, you know, sucked into and not sucked in, in a horrible way, but you know, when you’re reading a book, and you just get totally immersed in the world of that book is way better than publishing a book, that’s, you know, I need to make sure that it’s a really thick book, but then no one actually finishes it.
And I think that it almost, and this is just from what I’ve personally experienced, that a lot of people get caught up in the ego of, I’m afraid of what people will say, if my books too short, I need to make sure that I get to a certain amount of words so that I’m taken seriously, where I was more like, I just want people to read it.
Morgan Gist MacDonald (15:44):
I’m right there with you. My book is not even 25,000 words. But I did format it as five by eight, the two standard sizes in the US anyway, are five by eight and six by nine Europe. And I believe also Australia, do it in millimeters.
If so those millimeters shake out a little bit differently. But I put it in the smaller format. And then you can play with margins and add illustrations and you can make it you know, so that you’ve got that spine on the book, I think that’s what most of us really want it. We want a book that’s good enough that when you put it on a shelf that you can read the title and the author name, and that’s very doable.
Samantha Riley (16:21):
You don’t want to just to look like a little tiny slit of light. Oh, what’s that? I bookmark. Now, as coaches, there’s many reasons that we want to write a book, it’s not necessarily I think a lot of people think that I’m writing the book to sell the book, where I would say that that’s almost like a secondary that for me writing a book is more about building email list positioning, visibility, getting opportunities, like speaking these kinds of things.
Can you talk a little bit to that. And you know, what we want to be thinking about as authors when we’re writing it, because I think it’s really important to kind of know where we’re heading before we even start writing.
Morgan Gist MacDonald (17:05):
I 100% agree with you, Samantha. And that’s really where we encourage, if we’re just starting with a writer who’s you know, they haven’t yet authored a book, they’re still in that sort of creation generating ideas, we actually start kind of where we started this conversation today was like, let’s future pace, let’s put you three years, five years, if we can get into 10 years out, you know, that’s where we want to be like, what message?
Are you speaking? And who are you speaking to? Let’s grow toward that. And then we’ll back up and write the book that puts us on that trajectory. And exactly, as you said, you know, what stages do you want to be on? If you’re a speaker? What types of clients do you want to be working with?
Maybe it’s not the same clients that you work with today? Maybe it’s not the same stages that you’re on today? Where do you want to be going? Because exactly right. The book is like a beacon, the book will attract the attention of, you know, a group of people, I’m right there with you, the book should grow your email list.
And we can talk about tactical ways to do that we’ve sort of, you know, dropped some seeds there already, so that when people read your book, as soon as they finish the book, they’re thinking, Oh, my gosh, how do we get? How do I get more of Samantha, where I can I hear her speak? What other content does she produce?
Can I work with her, you know, we want them at the end of that book to be thinking I want more of this author. And so then that’s the backend, right? That’s the back end products and services and opportunities.
The book sale itself is not going to be as monetarily satisfying. You know, like, you’ll sell some books, you’ll give some books away for free, you’ll mail books to clients, you’ll bring books to speaking events, right?
So, you know, we joke about how you’re not going to buy a yacht with the book sales, however, where the real power and monetization and I would even say, influence comes in, you know, when people read your book, and are changed by your book, now you have opportunity to work with them and your business, or speaking or consulting or any of those sorts of things. So I’m right there with ya
Samantha Riley (19:12):
totally. Now, it building an email list is kind of one of those things, right? Because that’s how we bring people into our world. How do we set it up so that we’re able to get those emails? Because for those people that don’t know, when you’re selling a book on Amazon, you don’t know who’s buying it? Say How can you, you know, make sure that you’re getting something like how, what’s the workaround?
Morgan Gist MacDonald (19:36):
Yes, yes, this is such a good question. And you’re right. No bookstore will ever tell you who the customer was. That’s the bookstores customer. Amazon’s not going to tell you who bought your book. Barnes and Noble won’t tell you who bought your book. Indiegogo won’t tell you who bought your book, you know, like none of these bookstores will tell you who purchased your book and so you will need a way for people to reach out to you and sometimes, you know, I feel like the advice is We’ll just put your website or your email address or your social media somewhere in the book, it’s like, well, we all know we’re marketers, we know that people need a stronger call to action, need strong call to action inside of our book. And I like to place it, especially for nonfiction books.
And memoir might be slightly different. So if we wanted to go who want to talk a little bit about memoir or even fiction, we could, but especially for those who are writing, you know, pragmatic how to business building nonfiction, I like to put something at the beginning of the book, and I’m gonna get a little bit specific and a little bit geeky about
Samantha Riley (20:37):
strapping, this is what we eat. Because
Morgan Gist MacDonald (20:41):
Amazon is the primary source of book discoverability. in bookstores right now, people are not walking into your even your big chain bookstores, at the rate that they used to instead, they’re going to Amazon, they’re typing into that search bar, they’re browsing through categories, they’re clicking onto books, and they are browsing books that way, and Amazon does something very interesting on a book sales page.
And you can see this yourself like, you know, if you’re at your computer, or even on your phone, right now, you can go through this process, as I’m saying it and you probably have done this already, because it’s super intuitive.
You go to a book sales page, you’re looking at the book cover and the title and the description, and you see the little Buy Now button, you might very well click on that book cover to do what’s called look inside, it automatically show you a preview of the book. Now it pops you to the look inside function brings you to a specific page. Ideally, I want it to automatically bring you to a page that says free get, you know, thank you so much for grabbing a copy of my book, here is the fast track course that companion guide, meditation, the checklist that you know, whatever it is, here’s the thing, go to this link, scan this QR code and grab the free thing that I have for you in my book is the audiobook, you don’t have to do the audiobook, but that is super high converting if you want to, you want to steal mine, you know, the look inside pops you directly to this page, it says free gift, snappy title, here’s the link and the QR code.
And of course, we all know what that does. They go to that link, they scan that QR code. Now they’re on your landing page on your website, and they can very easily provide their email address, you send them the free thing.
Now they’re on your email list. The trick is getting Amazon look inside to show that is it as the first page how we do that. And this is new ish Amazon made some changes in the last few months. If you have something similar already in a book that you’ve published, just go back and check, you know, does it do this.
And if not, here’s how you fix it, you want to put that free gift under a heading that is something like preface it, you know, choose preface or introduction or something like that. And in the table of contents, which should come before this, you’ll want that section title to be the first thing listed.
So let’s say in the introduction, but it doesn’t matter. It could be preface it could be introduction, it could be author’s note, whatever you want to title it. But let’s face introduction Table of Contents, the first thing listed is introduction.
And it provides the page number. And right after the Table of Contents, you have the introduction, which is you can write a line or two, that’s fine. But you want to make sure that free gift is in that introduction.
That is the mechanism by which Amazon decides ah, this is the first thing in the table of contents. It says introduction we shall start there. And it shows that first. So now anyone who’s browsing Amazon and discovers your book, even if they don’t buy your book, they could become a new email subscriber. And that actually it’s even more valuable than a book purchaser that is
Samantha Riley (24:01):
gold that is so clever that you are you were talking and I was just like, No way. It’s that simple. That’s so cool. Because Amazon is such a big search engine. So it’s a great way to actually get people into your world without necessarily even purchasing your book. That’s incredible. blown my mind that
Morgan Gist MacDonald (24:25):
the only way to be in front of the millions of Amazon searches and do this process of getting leads from Amazon is to have a book. There is no other product on Amazon that has this same look inside feature that enables you to put a link and a QR code right in front of someone.
And I do want to note that the QR code there is intentional because also very recently Amazon disabled clickable links and in the look inside but we have not seen them be able to disable QR code for the queue. archive still function. So if someone’s looking at it, especially on like a computer or tablet or something that can grab their phone and
Samantha Riley (25:05):
take it pay. And no, you did mention just before we move on, you did mention that Amazon has changed quite a bit. And one of those is for authors that already have books that they may need to go in and reselect their categories. I would love it if you could share this, because for anyone that’s got a book they wanted to be doing well,
Morgan Gist MacDonald (25:26):
yes, yes, I’m so glad that we were talking about this, Samantha, because this is like public service announcement for authors. I’ve been like trying to tell every author that I get in touch with like, some things have changed on Amazon and need to update them immediately. So for a little bit of context, if you have a book on Amazon, we do recommend that it’s available as an ebook, and a physical version, because the ebook is allowed additional marketing juice, so to speak.
So the e book is allowed to have seven keywords, and three categories, it used to be 10 categories, actually, you used to be able to keep asking for more more categories. But now, they have officially limited it to three categories. And also ebooks have some other advantages, you can set them for free for a few days, and you can drive a book launch team and get verified purchase reviews, we can talk about that. Okay, so that’s why we want an e book is for that marketing juice.
Now the e book went through a whole bunch of changes on the Amazon platform over the summer changes that were not officially announced of it. So if you have already published a book, chances are whoever helped you publish it either doesn’t know or just isn’t telling you that these changes are number one, the keywords have been through a interesting scramble. So if you have not updated your keywords, I would recommend downloading a software called publisher rocket publisher rocket is by Dave Chesson Kindlepreneur.
He’s been around for ages. And his is sort of the gold standard for finding great keywords it ideally we want to have just like any other SEO, keyword phrases that have high search, low competition as much as you can.
So just double check your keywords. Again, with something like publisher rocket, you get seven keywords. So double check those keywords. And then a one that you can do right away you can do it even right now while we’re talking is categories. So Amazon updated all of their categories, their Kindle categories used to be kind of this like scattered, amorphous set of categories, they’ve constrained them now to certain pathways that you select from. And in doing so they somehow like deactivated your previous categories.
So you have to go into your ebook details. So you want to go to your dashboard where your ebook is published, you want to click the little dots and say Edit ebook details. And you want to look at where your categories are, you will be able to select three, and you want to go as deep into those categories as you can.
So keep selecting further and further and further down into those categories. get as deep as you can into those categories. And that is going to help with your visibility on the Amazon platform. If you can go very deep into a category, maybe even like run a little promotion, get some juice back go into that book.
If you can hit number one and a very small category, it will actually lift the visibility in the next sort of categories. That’s next died of so go check your categories right now reselect, three different categories, because chances are Amazon has basically deactivated the previous categories.
And so now we need to go reselect them in the new, like tree, the new chain of categories that they have available. Oh,
Samantha Riley (28:50):
thank you for sharing that because I had not heard that at all. And I think that that is super valuable for anyone that’s already got a book, I want to go back to creating a movement. And I want to give this a little bit of a different question because Chet GPT has obviously taken over the world, as I’ve seen on the socials, people talking about, oh, I just got Chet GPT to write my book.
And you know, I did it in an afternoon. Talk to us about this is this. I mean, my brain goes hmm, we want to be promoting our thought leadership, this probably isn’t a great way to go. But I’d love to hear your take. Maybe I’m a bit old and fuddy duddy I don’t know,
Morgan Gist MacDonald (29:27):
I like chat GPT as a sounding board as a research assistant, as a tool I can use when I’m feeling kind of stuck. I think it’s a useful tool.
However, I think that trying to quote unquote write an entire book with Chad GPT you’re going to end up with a lot of generic sounding content is right and if we are truly building a business that we love and creating a movement that we think is really important, then we don’t want watered down numeric sound Doing stuff. I think Chad GBT is going to an all these you know, AI interfaces, they’re gonna set a new bar for mediocre. You know, like, you have to at least meet this minimum standard, like, now we spell things correctly, and our grammar is decent.
You know, that’s the minimum acceptable bar because he better be running it through some sort of Grammarly or pro writing aid. All these things use AI, right? Yeah, yeah, that’s a new bar for mediocre. And all of us as readers and content consumers, we’re going to expect more, we’re going to expect, excellent.
And I think that’s really the the challenge that is available to us, if we really are creating businesses that matter and movements that are important to the world, then we’re going to be shooting for excellence. And yes, we can use chat GPT, you know, just to make sure like, I want to write about, I don’t know, weight loss or whatever kind of topic we’re in, you know, what are some topics within weight loss and taggi beauty will give you 100 different topics, and you’ll scan through them, you’re like, oh, yeah, I forgot to talk about that.
And they flew a section my book about that, or, you know, give me some research on this subject. And then Chad GPT might give you some blogs or articles. And so it can be a useful tool. However, the innovative stylistic, you know, excellence is really going to come from us and our unique stories, stories are gonna be so much more powerful now, because they can’t be generated by chat GPT in the same way, our personal stories, you know, that’s what transformed us as people.
And that’s what our audiences find. So inspiring is those stories of transformation. And so those are going to be elements of the powerful movement making books is going to be Yeah, those stories and those lessons that you learned the hard way, in terms of PT is not going to know what actually works in a business and what doesn’t what actually works for weight loss and what doesn’t what actually works for financial independence.
And what does it it’s going to be able to give you some generic information, but you are going to have your own story, your clients, stories, your own frameworks, your own methodologies. And that’s the kind of content that’s really going to attract the right people to your senior movement.
Samantha Riley (32:21):
So Chet JpT, is there to help us with writer’s block. But you know, if we’re talking about creating a movement that happens with emotion that happens when we connect, and that happens through storytelling.
So yeah, I’m really glad that you tucked into that, because I think that that’s so important that, you know, right now, because it’s only the beginning of us using AI in a big way, there is so much information, but it’s not information that’s going to move us forward. It’s that connection. And you know, connection is what people are craving and, and that happens through telling stories. So I really love that. So
Morgan Gist MacDonald (32:59):
I do want to say Samantha I am hopeful for I’m a very optimistic person in general. So I’m not the type of person because I check DBT is crap, we’ll never use AI, we should only be human. But I think it will be really cool when we can create our own little AI, a little AI universe, and what if we can just tell it stories and you know, write journals and load our podcasts and load our videos and load all of our content into our own little AI?
And then, you know, we can prompt it and say, you know, help me tell that story where this happened when that happened. And they can give you a draft and then you’re not starting from scratch, but it’s from your content. Your life, I think that will be really cool.
Samantha Riley (33:43):
That’s cool. If that happened on a big scale, that would be creepy. But I understand the personal thing. And yeah, that would be cool. Because I know that I do a lot of writing, writing. Even though I’ve got a podcast, obviously I talk a lot.
But I love to write like all of my teachers at school just every time they saw me had my nose in a book. I’m a big reader. I love writing. But I have noticed that I can just quickly run it through chat GBT and say can you just rewrite this?
So I do all of my own writing, but then just you know, what put in there and just say, can you just rewrite this and it just it places the words in just a nice little nicer places, I guess but I don’t want someone else using my stories that kind of freaks me out a little bit if
Morgan Gist MacDonald (34:28):
you could like put you know, a bit of a like a privacy wall around it that like when I think about this, I think about like a little hard drive. I know it wouldn’t actually be a hard drive because no one has hard drives anymore.
But like space on the cloud a little hard drive off to the side that like I can have it access and you know pull stories and content and examples and because I forget some of my own stories. What if we could have like almost like a little computer brain?
That could remind us Oh, yeah, the relevant here Whereas when your client did this, yeah, so like a writing buddy, that wouldn’t replace me as a human, but would help me, you know, come up with the content from my own vault of content.
Samantha Riley (35:10):
I love that idea. Absolutely love that idea. That’s so cool. Now you have a, you’ve got a couple of things that you’ve offered to our audience.
So for people that are listening to this episode, and don’t currently have a book, hopefully, this has got you thinking, wow, if I want to create a movement, I can see how a book would really play into that. And I know that you have a self publishing guide. Can you talk to us a little bit about that?
Morgan Gist MacDonald (35:38):
Yes. So this is a it’s videos and templates. And like just a walkthrough, basically, a huge checklist that is very tall, I have a detail oriented, bent to me, as well as sort of a visual roadmap of how do we progress through this self publishing journey from writing the manuscript, actually producing the book itself, and then launching and marketing the book.
And I am totally happy to give that to your folks, Samantha for free. This is a special link. And we’ll post it in the show notes. But for you guys, if you go to paper, Raven books.com/ready. That will I’ll ask a couple questions, I’ll ask for your email address.
We know how this works. And then I’ll take you straight into our community where you can ask questions and things like that in the community itself. And that’s also where we store all the checklists and videos and guides and templates that will walk you through that whole self publishing process. And so if you’ve heard me talking about login to your dashboard, and click that it shows you all of that. Wow. And how does that
Samantha Riley (36:47):
that is so, so cool. I love that. So you can definitely get the link for that over at influenced by design podcast.com If you’re cooking dinner, or if you’re out walking, and you couldn’t write that down, you can always go back to influence by design podcast.com
And get the link to be able to get that self publishing guide. Morgan, it’s been an absolute pleasure chatting with you today. I’ve loved everything you’ve bought, you bought so much value. Thank you so much.
And I look forward to I’m going to jump in, I’ve got a book and I’m going to jump in and grab that self publishing checklist because I’m a geek and I want to know more. So thank you so much, because you’ve added so much value today.
Morgan Gist MacDonald (37:27):
Thank you, Samantha I again, I’m honored to be here on your podcast. I’m a huge fan. And just really grateful to share all this with your audience. So thank you.
Samantha Riley (30:18):
Thanks for joining me for this episode of the Influence By Design podcast. If you want more head over to influencebydesignpodcast.com for the show notes and links to today’s gifts and sponsors. And if you’re looking to connect with other experts who are growing and scaling their business to join us in the coaches, thought leaders, and changemakers community on Facebook, the links are waiting for you over at influencebydesignpodcast.com
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