Today on the Book More Show, I caught up with Dean Jackson at the studio to talk about the impact of AI on book writing and explore how AI, rather than 'doing it for you,' can help amplify your ideas and opinions while still providing the psychological benefits of having a book.
AI can be a fantastic tool to quickly split-test different parts of your broader idea to find the one that resonates with your audience, but we talk about why establishing a unique perspective is more important than ever in a world where generic AI-generated content is on the rise.
It can help create an experience that meets your reader's attention requirements, and we discuss how 'Actual Intelligence' paired with artificial intelligence can be the rocket fuel that gets your idea out there fast.
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TRANSCRIPT
(AI transcript provided as supporting material and may contain errors)
Stuart: Everyone welcome to the Book More Show in the world headquarters down here in Winshaven and special guest Mr Jackson Well.
Dean: I'm good the specialist of guests. Specialist of guests, I like it.
Stuart: We were at the house last night watching some of the abundance 360s and a lot of the conversations was around AI.
Dean: AI. What now?
Stuart: Yeah, who Chat what? Yeah Chat GPT, okay, not TP, okay. So the level at which that conversation was happening was obviously way in advance of what we're talking about, but still it's on everyone's mind Chat, gcp. No need to survey any content, the robots are going to do it all for us. So I've got some opinions on it. Tell me, I'm sure you have.
Dean: Yeah.
Stuart: I've been doing recently with people who have written books. A lot of the podcasts with guests have written books, but the thing that is different is that it's their opinion. So a lot of the AI options I think around the baseline just moves up. It's no longer as difficult to think of ideas because a robot can give you great ideas. It's no longer difficult to think about the first 50 to 60% of something because it's all, it's the facts, it's the information that's out there. But I think the real opportunity for people is it almost goes back to a grand conversation. It's the opportunity to establish their opinion, why their take on it is different and the robots that you can help support that and even create some of the downstream material or add to some of the downstream material.
I think the real difference, the real opportunity that people have got, is to establish their perspective. Our perspective on writing books very specific, very different from other people. I don't think anyone would mistake our view compared with other peoples. The AI can help support some of that message, but still establishing that fact. The second point is just the fact that other people aren't going to think that way. They're going to be looking for the low hanging fruit, the easy option of just pressing a button and churning some stuff.
Dean: I think everybody thinks this magical thing that this chat GPT is going to just write this book for me and everything is magical. But it actually. If you look at what, if we look at the landscape of what we do at 90 minute books. In the effort of creating a book, it's created in a way to be the most effortless way to create a book, it's actually less work to create a book using our AI process actual intelligence, real people doing the establishing what the outline is.
Stuart: Do you want to outline that? It's got to be lining the sand for that as a phrase.
Dean: Well, it's really. I think that's the difference, though, right Is that, if you look at the job of work for the author, the entrepreneur, the person who let's just back it up all the way to, why would we even be doing a book in the first place? And the reason that we're doing a book is to turn invisible prospects into visible prospects and to educate and motivate people so that they think the thoughts that we need them to think, understand the things that we need them to understand, see examples of how the things that you're talking about actually work, so they can draw the conclusion that working with Stuart would be a good idea. That's the job of work that we're hiring the book to do in the first place right If we sum it all up in a nutshell Now.
What that comes down to then is if you're the author, you're the entrepreneur, you've got all the knowledge, you've got everything that you want to say and it's just a matter of extracting it in the least intrusive way, least burden of time on you to extract that from your brain, get it into a digital format.
And the fastest bandwidth way to get your thoughts into a digital form, which is what we need, is through your mouth into a recording device. That's what it is. As soon as we record something that you've turned your thoughts into words into a recording, now it's digitized. We've got the audio, we can get that transcribed, we can turn that into a transcript, we can edit it all without you having to do anything. It's such a you know, if you lay it side by side, it's really the easiest way. It's easier than computerized AI, because you still have to then Prompt all of the stuff and you're still counting on. I think, ultimately, the big decision you have to make is as the book I'm trying to write. Am I trying to write a book report book, or am I trying to write a field report book?
Right and the difference is that a book, report, book, if all you're trying to do and we've used AI to do Books like that we just created a Medicare guide. That just it's all facts. It's all things that are already known and available on the internet. We're compiling it, putting it in a way that is Format. It doesn't we're not counting on any entrepreneur to give their you know, objective.
Information it's factual stuff, right. So if you're, there's many things that that would fit for. If it's you know how to's on a certain thing that's already known, tutorial type of things, you could get Chat GPT to write those kind of books. But I call them definitely book reports because it's just researching and Compiling and formatting information that's already known and available, no guarantees of how factually accurate it is. We've seen, right, that's you got to. Still got a double check.
Yeah, everything and that requires a GPT tickler to prompt the right things that you want. It's not just hey, write me a book on this. It's, that's not as easy as that. But if you want to write a field report which is sharing your subjective experience based opinion, council advice, guidance based on experience in real-world situation, with supporting stories that only you have had, that's not what a AI is going to be able to do. You need capital, A I actual intelligence to do that, and that's where the 90-minute book process comes in.
Stuart:And that's the difference going forward as well, as more and more people think, looking for that silver bullet of the easy option, the number of book, report, books is going to increase because it's an easy option.
Dean: I think I don't remember the numbers, but the number of chat GPT written books that are credited. These are ones that are credited in the Amazon store as a author or co-author. Chat GPT have hockey sticked.
Stuart: Right.
Dean: Well, I guess that's. It's only logical that it's hockey stick. It's only been three or four months that it's even been an option, but that number is going up, up. There's going to be a dearth Is a dearth, a big number of them.
Stuart: Is that? Yeah, it's supposed to be glut Glut. I don't know. I don't know.
Dean: That's it so any grammarians on the listening to this right now. I've always wondered what is a dearth compared to a glut? I'm going to assume I think that a dearth means it could be so many of them, an abundance of them.
Stuart: One of those words now we're saying it more and more. One moment please.
Dean: Live. Hey Siri, what is a dearth and distinguished American painter? No, that's not what I'm looking for.
Stuart: And it's the problem with AI you don't necessarily always get what you think you get.
Dean: Oh no, sorry about that. A dearth is a scarcity or a lack of something. There is a dearth of evidence. So forget what I said. There's not going to be a dearth of chat GPT books there's going to be an abundance of them, and abundance.
Stuart: So this idea that now becomes the baseline.
There's definitely a place for those books in an oval funnel, but it's not necessarily the first thing in the most valuable thing that you could do, the thing to establish you as opposed to your competition, particularly when you're in a field that isn't.
There's no shortage of financial advisers, no shortage of doctors, so to be able to differentiate yourself from the crowd, this idea of having the opinions come through and the thing that you're sharing, just as you said, is your experience and your stories, which are unique, even separate from the fact that you are, to a certain degree, pre-programming and pre-conditioning people to think in that way, so that the first time that they walk through the door, they're already predisposed to be aligned with your way of thinking. It definitely seems to be a silver bullet problem of thinking this is just going to be a push button, but the contrast to that, as you alluded to, is the ease of the actual intelligence option. The easiest way is just to talk about the things that you know, using a model that structures it in a way that achieves the job of work.
Dean: It's a bit. We do the prompt thing. You're the intelligence we draw it out from you.
Stuart: Right.
Dean: And everybody, it's easy to talk, yeah.
Stuart: So I think the place where it does have a benefit is potentially downstream. So we talk about often I have a book now what it's not a kind of build it and they will come type problem, although I did hear a podcast the other day where they were adamant that it was build it and he will come, they will come.
Dean: Okay.
Stuart: So the opportunity is now that the book's created. You've got an outcome at the end of it, a call to action that you want people to do, and leading up to that is a table of contents, that kind of roadmap, stepping stones them from the beginning to the end. So the content within the book helps you elaborate your ideas and motivate and educate people to take that. The opportunity with ChatGTP is to take that to. Did I say GTP again? Yeah, you did.
Dean: Every time.
Stuart: Hopefully I'm trying to change them, not have them change me. So the opportunity is to have ChatGTP elaborate on some of those ideas. You've now got an asset in the book that shares your opinions on, say, five subjects, five elements within the book. Those elements are going to resonate with people in many different ways. To have the content to address each of those options, of all the different ways that people think about a particular thing, ChatGTP is a great way to very quickly brainstorm and elaborate on that. So starting off with the seed idea of the chapter title and then give me more variations will reveal ways of thinking about it. You didn't necessarily think about it because you come into it with your way of thinking. So I think it definitely gives there's an amplification opportunity, but amplifying your ideas amplifying someone else's ideas.
This idea of trying to be more broad once the thing is created, but that thing is yours and something that you own that can be used in multiple ways. I think that's really the hockey stick opportunity of sharing that thought wider and broader.
Dean: Find that their ChatGTP is a really great brainstorming partner. You think about that as a great way of thinking about it, Like if you're thinking about what would be good content ideas to write articles or email follow-up things, about what would be some questions about this particular topic that I could write and that's. It's really good in figuring those things out and prompting like that and that way you can use it as a guidance to get to prompt your thoughts about you answering the questions. You know.
Stuart: Yeah, yeah, that's a great point as well, this idea of there's. So bringing it back to. We often use the analogy of what conversation would you have if someone just walks through the door and asks you about your business? The real world, this idea of conversational conversion to the real world example, and then repeat that in there or reflect that in the email, the idea that the AI is a thousand people coming in and asking those questions. It just is such a faster way of moving through all of the talking points to be as broad as possible, not just narrow. The other thing that we've been using it recently for is with a couple of people who have got more. We've worked with a couple of clients recently who have got good Facebook skills in terms of.
Facebook ads. So they've got platforms and teams that can vary quickly and cost effectively do a lot of split testing, so very small costs but, split, test different things.
So this idea of chat GPT coming up with lots of variations around the words of a particular subject and then these particular teams are very capable at testing them. It's an interesting way of getting that real world feedback quicker. So should I call it this or this or should I position it in this way or this? They've had quite a lot of success in that testing it in the real world. So it's your ideas, your focus, your expertise, your opinions, but maybe just tailoring the language, something to resonate a little bit with the audience. We've got the idea of the minimum viable book. On the minimum effective book, I've got a preference for the minimum effective book, kind of pre-selling this before it actually gets written and finished. So hopefully no one's going to beat us to it. But those two books are exactly the same books, but whether one subject resonates more than the other, having chat GCP come up with lots of variations on those things.
Dean: Well, I think that's really. You know this, this, lots of you know the rapid onslaught of more book options now that there's going to be more and more to read. I think it's what's not increasing. Is our attention right, our ability to sit and consume those books. I've been doing a series of podcasts about book, books that I've read, or how the lessons I've learned over, you know, 34 years of doing this here, and one of the things that I realized is that I had so much more time to read in the 90s, you know, in the early, the first half of doing that and until you know, up until the iPhone, where that's just such easy dopamine.
Stuart: Right, that short hits yes.
Dean: And it's such you know there's a burden of time, like you look at anybody's screen time on their phone and you look and see like how many hours a day sometimes mine gets into double digits. I mean, you know of screen time and it's just like some of it is useful, some of it is just going into, you know, a tick tock. You know it's just so easy to get in and get one minute. It's never not satisfying right, there's always a win.
**Stuart:**And always the potential of something funnier and better. The next one. That's what I mean, and it's so easy to just contaminate.
Dean: Everything's going that way now. Youtube shorts, facebook Reels, instagram, tick tock they all look the same. You can't tell which stream you're in. They're all trying to. You know, because that's the winning formula has been just infinite scroll of stuff that the algorithm is pushing to you, right, so that versus the you know, manual nature of reading a book. That's why I think these short books that take advantage of the shorter window and it's a service to people to be able to condense and organize your thoughts into a.
you know from concentrate, get just the good stuff in the book. You know fluff like everybody's bought books that you buy this 250 page book that could have easily been explained in 50 pages and would have been more useful and better. And that's what I look at is let's just start with that.
Stuart: Yesterday, as we're recording today. On Thursday yesterday I recorded a podcast with Brandon Poe, who I think is sort of probably be the show that goes live before this one. But here's the whole point. He's on his fourth book now, so the first one was a traditional one, three with us. So he was talking about handing them out an event that they were at, a big accounting event, and had several phone calls from people where they were saying I read it on the flight on the way home because it's 50 pages, one concept and starts the conversation.
Dean:Yeah.
Stuart: Yesterday we were watching the 360, the abundance of 360 feed and Tony Robbins was on talking about the life force book, which must have passed me bad. I didn't even know it was one. That was exactly what.
Dean: It's a huge book.
Stuart: Yeah, that's my first thing was I really want to read that. There's lots of interesting seems like there's lots of interesting stuff there. My second thought was on Amazon. It's 728 pages.
Dean: Yeah.
Stuart: I'm not going to read that.
Dean: Right, exactly, I'm going to do the best well in wealth.
Stuart: I've got the drive back up to Pennsylvania next week so I might audiobook it because.
Dean: I'm guessing that it will be a 24 hour audiobook, but even that I mean this these hours that things are shifting, you know, and our attention spans are needed to get the payoff. And certainly you know, as long as it's an entry into a who, not how type of relationship that your clients are craving from you. Yeah, the positioning as being a who for someone not just showing people how that's that was valuable. I mean, it used to be valuable to learn and show people how to do stuff, because that was the only way that they would really Right. That was their option. Learn, that's what they were looking for. Looking for the how do I do that?
Stuart: Yeah, I often use the same with people that the book's not the product, the conversation's the product, and comparing it with traditional publishing, where the book is the product.
Dean: Yeah.
Stuart: Publishers are interested in book sales and volumes and the money that comes back from it. Yeah, I got an email the other day from I think it was Book Baby, one of the published self-requisition services out there, and they were. It was something that I'd never thought about before, but they were talking about chargebacks for authors. So there, I think the position of their email was that they don't do chargeback. So if you in a traditional world, if you get your book into a bookstore but the bookstore eventually returns it, whatever royalty that you were paid which they gave an example, and I mean I know how small the royalties are, but it was really reminded of a $20 book, you ended up with $1.75.
But then of that $1.75 for the return, they reclaimed the royalty payment but also charged you the return shipping for the book. So you can be in a situation in a traditional world where the book is the product of actually being underwater. I mean, it's such a crazy scenario compared with, like you say, the thought that the book is an introduction to a conversation and the conversation is leading to you being who to solve their problem, which is really what people want.
Dean: Yeah.
Stuart: Yeah, yeah, that difference, the opportunity that I think people need to know now about the robot side of things is it's not a civil bullet, it's people are going to just press a button and try and get it to it for them, but that's going to be a low value piece. There's going to be a lot of them out there, so to separate you from the competition. It's really establishing your ideas, your perspectives, and that's why people is building that rapport, why people want to work with you.
Dean: And we're saying all of this with only knowledge of GPT-3. That's why I want to really say that? Because I have not had a chance yet to interact with GPT-4, which may be if we're to believe everything that we're hearing, it may be the equivalent of having a graduate student working for you to just set them on a task and write the whole thing. It may get easier, but I think it's still about the it's still more book reports.
Stuart: That's what I mean, and that's the thing.
Dean: There's no other way. This is the best way and that's what people really want. The differentiator of a field report I look at all of the books that I've been talking about on my series of the most impactful books in my life are not they're not book reports. They're field reports from people who actually created insight and can articulate it and share it in a valuable way that I get from. I think about what Robert Cialdini.
I think about six weapons of influence and persuasion that those aren't technical, just book reports. Those are based on thinking, observing, setting up experiments, executing the experiment, analyzing the data and coming to his explanation of it in a way that you can see that when you get somebody to take some initial action, the odds of them taking the next step are exponential. And that's kind of where that was one of the thoughts that led to using a book as the first step in something. If I've got courses about how to take great photographs of people and I am offering a book to people called how to Take Great Photographs of People, that if I'm offering the people who download my book a weekend experience of an immersive course on taking great photographs of people, odds are they're going to be very interested in that, because they raised their hand to tell me the congruency of it.
Stuart: it's such a clear path. We think about mapping out that journey from the conversation starter to the first easy way of getting started, that kind of mafia offer in their profit activators. But it's all of the psychological benefit of a book, all of the credibility that it carries and all of the authority to be able to bottle that up into something that also meets their attention requirement and gives a clear next step, an obvious logical next step. That's where the real difference comes in yeah, yeah, super exciting.
Fantastic. Well, we'll check back in as we bow down to our mobile overlords and see how the world looks.
Dean: then we can deploy actual intelligence for people still serving up actual intelligence since 2013. Since 2013.
Stuart: Fantastic. Well, thanks, as always. Everyone thanks for watching. I'll link to Dean's series on the 10 most influential books in the show notes, so make sure you check out that. Yes, and we'll catch you in the next one, awesome.