You Write Like...
Recently someone told me “writing is the easy part” of being an author.
They were right. Marketing is hard. No matter if you’re marketing a book, a technology company, a software product or anything. Marketing is hard. And, as a note, I love marketing so someone who doesn’t is really going to struggle.
But fear not! I have some Artificial Intelligence help for you this week to make your marketing a little easier.
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Writing is a beautiful art form. Just like there are only so many ways to paint, there are only so many ways to compose your words, sentences, paragraphs, pages, and stories. Chances are, you compose your work like someone else. Perhaps, someone who has had success with their stories.
Discovering your writing style is a journey but through the magic of Natural Language Processing (NLP, a field of Artificial Intelligence) computers can figure out who you write like. This is a powerful tool in marketing because you can target the readers who like to read how you write. This means you can laser target your marketing campaigns to focus on the minimal viable audience (MVA).
Wait…Minimal Viable Audience?
Yep! The minimal audience who wants what you’re doing. Not everyone is going to love your art. So, don’t sell to them. Sell to people who you know, or have a good reasonable belief, will like your work. Using NLP, you can get out of generic categories and start targeting specific writing styles like yours. If you write like Katherine Arden, you can target her audience even if you’re writing a different genre. People like to read styles of writing just as much (perhaps more) than limiting to genres.
This minimal audience will be more receptive to your content and ultimately help you engage the most likely buyers of your product.
Thanks Prateek Katyal for this image (https://unsplash.com/@prateekkatyal)
Two Services to Discover Your MVA
Recently I’ve explored two services to discover this information. ScoreIt! and Marlowe from Authors.ai. Both are really interesting. Here I’ll highlight both for you to decide which is the best fit for your current project.
NOTE: I didn’t get paid for this post by ScoreIT or Authors.ai. These are my thoughts without the influence of sponsorship. Your mileage may vary with these products.
ScoreIt!
This was the first one I tried. I bought it through Bowker with my ISBNs. It was $99 for a report and some consulting time. I did not use the consulting time, but I did attend a webinar to explain the service and how to use it.
I like ScoreIt’s very simple approach and design. The “who I write like” was clear and the adwords terms to use to appear with writers like me was very easy to implement. I also appreciate how simple it was to see the Amazon pages of the comp books provided by ScoreIt. Combining ScoreIt with Publisher Rocket (from Kindlepreneur) really enabled me to get a complete picture of how to represent my book with these other titles.
The downside is that I didn’t really “get it” until after the webinar. So, make sure to do the consulting or webinar. The webinar was free and really sparked lots of ideas on how to get the most out of the investment.
Marlowe from Authors.ai
At $45 a report (that’s the price point I used) Marlowe punches WAY above its weight. I was shocked at the volume of data and quality of resources in my Marlowe report. Yes, I got comp titles which is what this post is about, but I got a ton more. I’ll do a more thorough review of Marlowe in general in a future post, but I’ll just say WOW for now.
Using Authors.ai was super simple and literally made me say “that’s it?”. The heaviest lift was formatting the document to be Marlowe friendly but Authors.ai walks you through what you need to do (small things like removing title page, headers, footers, etc…). The comp title section of the report is clear and gives you a great spectrum of titles based on content and writing style. Beyond that, I love the “Themes” section which really expanded my thinking on how to talk about my upcoming book. Check out this visual from the themes of my upcoming novel <dis>Connection.
I’m still going through all the excellent content from Marlowe so stay tuned for a full report. Needless to say, this report has rocket fuel for how you talk about your book and tons of inspiration for marketing in new/different ways. Prior to seeing the above graphic, I never thought about marketing this story about struggles with Work Life Balance but it is absolutely on target. That is a MAJOR theme of the main character’s struggle with her father.
The downside, <dis>Connection is a novel-in-verse. Some of the conventions used in this format were a little confusing for Marlowe. This can be avoided with some extra cleanup on the file and next time (there will definitely be a next time for me with Marlowe) I will spend a lot more time formatting the document. Here’s a few of my lessons learned that you can apply to your novel-in-verse to get the best Marlowe results:
Make sure you have a space at the end of your verse line otherwise Marlowe will smash together the last word of the line and the first word of the next line.
Use “ “ for dialog. I use italics for talking which creates confusion. Simple update :)
Marlowe won’t determine who is talking if there is no attribution to the speaker (I think). I use the deep indent to signal “not the main POV character” talking while the main POV character is flush left. So, attribute more :)
Artificial Intelligence to enhance not replace
Marlowe and ScoreIt’s content can really help you understand different ways to market your book but these are just sparks not complete strategies. You can take this data and use it but to get the most value, you still need a human who can turn raw data into actionable intelligence.
These tools give you a different brain to look at your work but you still need to make sense of the data. Both companies (ScoreIt and Authors.ai) have done a good job on telling you how to interpret the data and both encourage collaborating with humans to maximize value from the report.
Photo by Tima Miroshnichenko from Pexels
Last Yesterday: Part 1
It was a dark and stormy morning. The man had been lying in bed for minutes, hours, days…he wasn’t sure, staring at the ceiling with his eyes open, when suddenly there was a knock on his door.
Curious as to who could be visiting him this early, he got up and opened it - only to find an old cat standing outside.
"I'm sorry," said the cat apologetically, "but I've lost my collar."
The cat held out what looked like a piece of string wrapped around his neck. The man recognized that it wasn't just any old piece of string.
The man shook his head to bring himself to this strange place.
Where was he this time?
The man woke up in a room that looked like it was in the old west. He had been lying in a bed which he could tell had been slept in many times before - judging by the various stains of all different colors that were visible on it. It might have been comfy once, but now the bed was dusty and looked like it would collapse under him.
He looked to the cat, "Don’t you always lose your collar?"
The cat nodded and lazily licked its paw. "I guess I do."
The man nodded too. "How do I get home?"
"Oh, that?" the cat replied nonchalantly, "You'll need to ask The Observer."
The man wonders why The Observer keeps shuffling his reality. He's not sure if it's an experiment, or if The Observer is just bored, but he lost track of how many days he’s been drifting through reality. It's been weeks, or years he’s not sure, since he's been able to stay in one place for more than a day, and constantly starting over in a new reality got old so long ago he can’t remember when.
"Where's The Observer this time?" The man grabbed his six shooter from the nightstand. He checked the chamber seeing one bullet left. One more shot at stopping The Observer...this time, he can't miss.
"Under the bomb shelter." The cat stretched and bumped its head against the door frame. "In the backyard." It sighed.
The man stepped outside to the dry desert lands of the American west. Not the real west but The Observer's imagined west straight from an Elmore Leonard story. A tumble weed blew by and the man sighed at the cliche.
A meow slipped from the cat as it followed the man around back. Wind blew the dusty dirt off storm doors that led down into the ground.
"Yep, that's it." the cat purred. "Tomorrow can you prioritize finding my collar?"
"There won't be a tomorrow." The man hefted the gun as the cat laughed. "Yesterday was the last one."
Wind kicked up and blew against the man's face as he opened the storm doors. He squinted into the darkness and then descended the stairs into the glittering cavern below. He walked through the cavern passage. Gems in the walls pulsed with light and power as he looked back for the cat. But it didn't follow him this time. The man kept his gun in front of him, cocked and ready.
At the end of the hallway, an ornate oak door stood inlaid with gold and silver.
The man took a deep breath before opening it. The room was dark, but the gems glowed blue and pink. Long shadows danced around the circular room.
"Are you here?" he grumbled.
"Come in." The Observer's voice was cold and distant.
The man stepped into the room, his gun held high. The Observer was sitting in a chair in the middle of the room, his legs crossed. In one hand he held a deck of cards, and in the other an orb that flickered with light.
"Draw, shoot, or see," The Observer mused. "which will you do this time?" A smile crested The Observer's thin lips.
The gun leveled at The Observer and the man lined his shot. His finger tensed on the trigger then was struck limp at the sight of his daughter in the orb. She played with his wife in his backyard in his true reality.
His gun lowered as his eyes fell further into the flickering orb.
"Ah, so trying something different this time?" The Observer laughed.
Suddenly, the man's daughter turned and looked right at him. Her eyes were cold and lifeless, and she continued to play with his wife. His daughter waved to him, and the man flinched.
"There is no tomorrow." The Observer chuckled as the cards danced through his fingers. "Your daughter awaits but will fate release you?" The Observer flicks a card to the man's feet.
It slid to his boots and laid face down. He bent down to pick it up, saw his daughter still watched him, and lifted the card.
to be continued...
Let’s find out what’s on that card next time :)
Disclosure: This story was written with the assistance of an Artificial Intelligence Natural Language Generation (NLG) system. I pieced together the concept and directed the AI what to write as well as connected the dots that the AI system helped me mine out of the story. Would you like to see a video of how I built this story? Let me know in the comments.
Thank you to Michelle Kogen (https://ayearofreading.org/2021/11/26/poetry-friday-ode-to-autumn/) for hosting Poetry Friday this week. Sorry I don’t have a poem this week but I thought this story would be a fun one for us to enjoy after Thanksgiving. Hopefully it helps everyone shake off the turkey coma :)
See you next time and let me know what you think is on the card. Perhaps your idea will spark some creativity for me and the AI system to explore next week.