One of my favourite sayings is: Reading is like breathing in, writing is like breathing out.

Maryanne Wolf (UCLA Professor-in-Residence of Education) was recently quoted as saying, “Deep reading is now an act of resistance.”

Steven Bartlett penned a piece on LinkedIn recently with the heading Unpopular Opinion. Writing is going to be one of the most important skills of the decade.” https://www.linkedin.com/posts/stevenbartlett-123_unpopular-opinion-writing-is-going-to-be-share-7422001621540188160-lHdR/

He goes on to share a story about the Nobel prize winning physicist, Richard Feynman, who had this idea that you don't truly understand something until you can explain it simply.  His method was to take a blank piece of paper and write out an explanation as if teaching it to someone who knew nothing about the subject.  Wherever his writing became vague or convoluted, he knew that was a gap in his own understanding. Then he'd go back and fill it.

It reminded me of quote attributed to Einstein that I share with many clients and friends. “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.”

Bartlett continues. “When you write, you're forced to confront what you actually know versus what you think you know. You discover gaps. You fill them. You sharpen vague intuitions into precise ideas. Writing for a specific audience also requires you to step out of yourself and think deeply about the person reading your book. This process helps you organise your thoughts in a way that’s clear for the reader.”

AI gives you answers, and sometimes they are wrong or simply made up even if they sound plausible. AI cites references that are real and fake.  

Writing gives you deep understanding. Taking the time to research deeply and check the references underpins your credibility, builds your reputation and trust.

In a world dominated by AI generated slop, synthetic content based on regurgitated information that is increasingly feeding on itself, the answers AI provides are more and more irrelevant.

Your research (reading) and writing will set you apart from all those who are too lazy, too focused on looking clever and too superficial. Writing your business book will help you create clarity, consistency and relevance.

5 things to do

1. A book review and interview from/with Jaqui. I have rebooted my weekly book review on LinkedIn and monthly Author interview series, so if you’d like your book reviewed by me, and/or an interview, get in contact and I’ll put you on the list. Of course, I need to read your book if you are not a TBA client so let me have an eBook version of it. I’ll also add a review to Goodreads and share on my You Tube channel.

2. Checkout Substack as a way to grow your audience. It’s a platform where you can grow your audience and fanbase and, if you want, start to monetise it. It’s also where AI searches when it’s answering prompts. You can run articles, interviews and a range of other features. Given that LinkedIn is becoming a bit of a dog’s breakfast, it might be time for you to head to this platform and start migrating people there.

3. Review your LinkedIn profile. When was the last time you reviewed the ABOUT section of your profile, your photograph, description under it and background image? If it’s been longer than 6 months take time to review and update it. For your About section, try this format.

Pain points your clients feel…and how you fix it

Why you. Your unique value proposition and results

What you offer. Your services – pick the 3 top ones

Result.

Call to Action.

4. Want to increase your chances of coming up in AI Overview? Try this.

Ask yourself what prompts your key target audience reader would type into their search/AI chats. Then go and use these prompts in ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Microsoft Copilot, Gemini, and analyse the results. Do they recommend the same books? Is your book on the list? What to the books they have recommended have in common? Then rework how you describe your book and update this everywhere it’s mentioned.

Also check the sources AI pulled the information from…as that’s where you should be aiming to be visible.

5. Watch Hamish McDonald’s series Matter of Facts. Episode 3 on AI in particularly relevant. https://iview.abc.net.au/show/matter-of-facts

5 things from The Book Adviser

1. Be careful how you use AI. In mid May author Steven Rosenbaum, whose book The Future of Truth was released to great fanfare, incorporated more than a half-dozen misattributed or fake quotes. To be fair he did state in his acknowledgements that he used A.I. tools ChatGPT and Claude during the research, writing and editing process. His responded via a statement: “That [acknowledging he used AI tools] does not excuse these errors, of which I take full responsibility. I am now working with the editors to thoroughly review and quickly correct any affected passages; any future editions will be corrected.”

I use AI tools as well throughout various aspects of my research and writing, but I check EVERY reference and I don’t use AI to write.

If you value your reputation, check before you publish. And if you are not sure either don’t use the reference.

2. Upcoming book launches:  Sensorial by Kirsty Ludbrook; Toppling towers of power, by Jo Cooper. 

3. Scam alert. I read this heading in Entrepreneur Magazine: You don’t even need to write your business book and you keep every dollar it earns. It’s promoting Youbooks AI, a Non-Fiction Book Generator AI writing ‘solution’ that solves both, with a lifetime subscription currently on sale for $34.97 (reg. $540), a savings of over $505.

Yep, you read this right. And it breathlessly goes on to say: Youbooks can generate up to 300,000 words, enough for multiple books, a complete course companion, or a flagship title with room to spare etc.

There’s no ‘free steak knives’ to prompt you to act . . . rather a ‘special’ lifetime subscription currently on sale for $34.97 (reg. $540), a savings of over $505.

Interesting that the company behind this is registered in Cyprus under the name Skinny Bottle Llc – go looking and you see they sell – you guess it – a weight loss product and the secretary is a secretarial management company providing such services to a plethora of companies. 

4. New to The Book Adviser network. We’ve started working with the following people on their books: Philip Ruddock. Nation Building. How Immigration Made Modern Australia; Kellie Price. No Dough! How to lose weight, keep it off and be happier by removing flour. Richard Haigh: 40 Years of Parterre.

5. Donate to Books in Homes Australia before June 30. I’ve been a Role Model for Books in Homes Australia for over 10 years and a sponsor of Baryulgil Public School, between Casino and Tenterfield since 2024. Books in Homes provides books-of-choice to children living in remote, disadvantaged and low socio-economic circumstances, ensuring crucial early literacy engagement and the development of reading skills needed for lifelong achievement.  https://www.booksinhomes.com.au/

5 things to know

1. Google announced that it will soon drop users into AI-powered search by default rather than receiving a ranked list of websites: the famous “ten blue links.”

The resulting experience means Google will synthesise and answer from a list of sites and present it to you in a conversational format. In the new model, the step after search is "have another round of conversation with the bot". So, if you want to be recommended you have to change how you structure your content and where you need to focus.

If you are not learning about and actioning Answer Engine Optimisation alongside your SEO you and your book will, increasingly, not be discovered

2.  The Australian Federal Government has restated that it would not water down copyright laws to allow AI labs to train their models using Australian data. The government is facing pressure from data centre chief executives and big tech to create a licensing structure that would make it easier for AI companies to train models on Australian copyrighted material.

Dario Amodei from Anthropic visited Australia recently and signed an MOU with the government on AI and data centres – which did not cover copyright. 

3.  IngramSpark has launched a new feature, IngramSpark Assist. It’s an automated metadata tool designed to take the guesswork out of discoverability. By analysing your book’s title and description, it automatically recommends the highest-performing BISAC & Thema subjects, targeted keywords, and refined descriptions. So, if you’re not into working out the whole metadata thing, this might be for you. It applies to new books AND titles already published via IngramSpark.  https://help.ingramspark.com/hc/en-us/articles/41627826665997-IngramSpark-Assist-FAQs-Metadata-Assistant

4. Want to record your phone calls . . . of course with permission. Check out Granola. I am testing it at the moment. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/granola-ai-meeting-notes/id6739429409

5. I’ve been appointed as the Forbes Business Council Group Lead for the How to become an Author group. It was such a logical fit for me and means I can help more businesspeople and professionals write, publish and market their books.

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