How to Use AI in Your Book Marketing with Travis I. Sivart

Lynn

Hey future authors, this is Lynn “Elikqitie” Smargis, back with another episode of Publishing for Professionals. I'm really excited to be here this week with a guest. I don't have a lot of guests on my show, but I do have a curated list of guests. I love to bring you all my listeners and watchers whether you're watching this on YouTube and or Substack because I have some great information to share with you. Today we're going to go over a hot topic with my guest, and my guest today is Travis I. Sivart. He is a prolific author of fantasy, science fiction, social DIY and more, and when he says prolific, he really means it. I mean, I don't think I've ever met anyone who has written more fiction books than Travis. He's created the Traverse Reality, a shared universe that connects his cyberpunk, fantasy and steampunk worlds. He's a super cool person and human being all around and has an amazing family of cats, which you will probably see on this video. Travis, welcome to the Publishing for Professionals podcast.

Travis

01:16

Well, thank you very much Lynn.

Lynn

01:18

I'm so glad we're here today because we are going to talk about the hot topic of book marketing. Not only book marketing, but how to utilize AI tools to shorten the time it takes to make your content for book marketing. So AI, of course, hot topic, everybody's talking about it, right, because it can help with your productivity. But one of the things before we jump into the book marketing piece I would love to talk about is we really need to be careful with copyright in AI, right, because we can't just take what we have in AI if we just prompt it and just copy and paste it. So give me your thoughts on how you avoid copywriting when you're using AI tools.

Travis

01:59

Well, I don't use them to write the images that are being used, checking the laws or just because the ai model has learned to make images by looking at other people. So is every other human being. So there's not strict copyright rules for a generalized picture, unless if you see an image or a product that is a copyrighted. For example, if you used a president's face or a face of a famous movie star and put into your AI, then you're walking on thin ice and it can cause problems. So if you use generalizations, not specifics, when designing things, so you're not getting, you know, mrs Butterworth, maple syrup in your whatever image you're creating, and with the writing, if you're using your own writing to create that prompt, that's your copyrighted material. So anything used from that shouldn't be an issue. Now check what I just said, Lynn. Is there anything I missed? Whether it was understanding the question or other places you think it should fit?

Lynn

03:04

No, no, I think that's spot on, because that's how I use AI as well. I take my own content, put it in there and ask it to rewrite it for me in different formats, and that way I don't have to spend so much time doing all the writing myself, and then I just take that content, polish it up, make it my own style and then, yeah, put it out on the different channels. So, yes, I agree, absolutely. We always have to be careful of not using obviously you know things that are patented, copyrighted and or other images other people are already using, because one of the things people don't understand, I know, is that they think, oh, it has to have a patent or a trademark. If it doesn't, I can use it, and that's not true is, if it's published, then it's copyrighted.

03:43

So we definitely have to be careful of that type of material. So let's jump into the book marketing aspect. So when did you start using AI for your book marketing?

Travis

03:53

Very recently when I say very recently, I guess almost two years ago I started toying with it. There are other people out there who have very great sites and one of these people has a thing to create a book blurb using AI. But it was as AI was just coming into its own. It was more in its teen years of development, and this was very handy because, as an author and I don't know about everybody else, but I think most authors are with me the hardest part of the book is when you get to writing that blurb, when you get to writing posts for social media, et cetera, et cetera. We wrote this whole massive, incredible, intricate thing. To break it down to two paragraphs less than 500 words total. That's hard. We don't even know what the important points are anymore.

Lynn

04:47

So I'm with you on that because, like, every time I write a book, it is my own or my clients. I'm like, I am just so like. At this point I'm like I'm okay, we're done with the book, and then I'm like, wait, no, I have to think of new book marketing ideas right, right.

Travis

04:58

Whereas if you take chapter one and drop it into your program du jour of choice or whatever have you, we can discuss different programs, because I've used a handful of them, um, to be able to go. Give me five blurbs, 500 words or less, go it's. It's a wonderful tool and if anybody's worried about AI stealing it and using it somewhere else, no, they will learn from it. But, yeah, no AI company wants to come up across a plagiarism copyright issue themselves and they're avoiding it like the plague, especially with any of the big ones. You know, midjourney, chatgpt, et cetera. Smaller ones, smaller ones. Well, it's like any business out there. Sometimes the smaller is the better idea because you got closer personal stuff.

Lynn

05:52

Other times they're the fly by night trying to get something quick out of people right and I know you had mentioned you know there's obviously a ton of programs out there. The two most popular ones that I know of, like ChatGPT, claude, there's, you know, gemini. Google has Gemini. There's a lot of AIs out there. I think almost every Canva has its own AI, like almost every platform that's out there has its own AI, including this business coaching program that I'm in right now has its own AI. Of course, it's all built on the open AI that's out there and just adapted and trained specifically for different reasons. So what is your AI program du jour that you love for writing? What is your favorite?

Travis

06:37

Chat GPT has been the most comprehensive of my language style. In other words, I've always been horrible at making up keywords and hashtags, whether it's SEO, search engine optimization on your websites, or hashtags for Instagram, tiktok, etc. And I've always been bad at Googling, because the way my mind works and the way I lay out words is not how the normal human being does it, apparently. So, to have somebody that can go I know what you mean I can help you, and by somebody I mean a AI. It's been beautiful and I tried. You know the handful I tried, and the most recent I've come to, just about a month ago, was ChatGPT. I figured it's the biggest, it's the best, it's the most well-known. Let me see what it can do.

07:23

It was incredible the understanding of this AI to be able to take two sentences laid out like a conversation and generate show notes for my own podcast. I was dazzled and the images that I've had to create for me so much more of exactly what I'm looking for. It's almost creepy with the. You know I was reading my mind because pretty much from the get-go it had me, it got me and understood what I was trying to dig for, and I was so pleasantly surprised. I was like somebody who recently quit smoking or lost weight. I just wanted to tell everybody about it and tell them why they should do it too.

Lynn

08:09

That's funny, and so you said you know taking your own content, putting it in there, generating keywords, right, and then what other things have you used it for as far as like putting your content in there? Have you generated social media blurbs? Have you generated anything else with using AI for your book marketing?

Travis

08:27

Yes, absolutely. Social media blurbs Also. I've used it to go. You know, here's my book and I fed my whole book into it, asked it for feedback. So it gave me pros and cons and broke down and it took it six or eight hours to get through it, so it wasn't instant.

08:45

And it asked me if we wanted me to go more in details and in that same conversation I said, okay, you have my book, now I need to make a video for this book. It went through the book, pulled out the most important scenes, gave me a short, like one sentence blurb that I would want to use to create the image for that, and then it told me what program to go to that is free and easy to use, with a small learning curve to put those images together, add movement to them. So it's not quite a video, it's just that still picture which zooms in or zooms out or has smoke going across it, and it walked me through that step by step and, though I've done that before with my own programs or whatnot, once I realized where it was going and what it was doing, I dug more into that going. Hey, I, yeah, tell me more about how to do that so that's interesting yeah no, I no.

Lynn

09:44

I say I've never tried prompting it to give me like, say, like, hey, what video would be good pulling out of this book content? And that's really interesting. That's a really cool use case for AI with using your own content, because that's one of the ones I haven't thought about. So when it did give you directions on, like okay, this is what this video is going to be about, and it gave you the one sentence what? What tool did it ask you to use to make the video?

Travis

10:11

I would have to go back. Hold on, let me check my menu, because I may have installed it. I may have used the online version. I know it mentioned Clipchamp and I believe that's what I used, but it mentioned like three or four different video making tools. In each one it listed this one has the smallest learning curve, but you're going to be limited on the tools. This one has this, this one has that, and I needed something. Limited on the tools. This one has this, this one has that, and I needed something.

10:40

Look, I'm going to create a social media post that I'm putting up there and then forgetting about it forever. I don't want a huge learning curve. To spend an hour creating a six panel video and putting music to it and all that, that's one thing. To spend seven hours creating this video, I don't. I realize the quality difference will be drastic, but people aren't studying these like they do a major motion picture. They're going hey, that looks cool. Either they scroll on or they go to look for the book. You, you don't need a uh jj ab Abrams quality movie trailer for the book. I mean, don't get me wrong. If you can do it, use it. Yeah, do that. But on the other hand, we have to balance our time. That's one of the biggest things about self-publishing is deciding where your time goes, because you can do all the things, but what do you want to do versus what you have to do?

Lynn

11:36

Yes, actually, that's very important because, especially when you're writing a book, right, there's like I actually did a keynote yesterday and I talked about all the shiny objects you can find with AI, and it's not about going after the shiny objects, but finding the tool that best suits your needs. Right, and, like you said, with that low learning curve. That's really important, especially if you haven't done like I don't do video production. I just do super small videos on Canva, um, and they look fine, right, like it doesn't.

12:05

Again, like you said, it doesn't have to be JJ Abrams production, but I think that what you said is so valuable that not to spend a ton of time on making all the content, because if you'd spend all the time on making the content, then that means that's not time you're spending getting the content out and sharing it with people.

12:20

So you have to be really careful of how you utilize your time. And I think that's one of the great assets of using AI as a tool, because you get that time back, because you're not spending so much time figuring out like what video tool I should use. You know how, where, what, what type of video should I make on this, and then and then and then making it right, so it shortcuts that time down tremendously. And so you said it gave you three or four tools and then. So one of the things we all know AI is famous for is giving us incorrect data or information. So do you feel like the tools that chat gave you, like the information on it, like this tool is very easy to learn? This tool has a little more of a learning curve. Do you feel like, when you looked up those platforms and programs, that the AI was pretty accurate on describing them?

Travis

13:06

Absolutely, because one of them was DaVinci, which I know is a beautiful program. It is free, but it's got a big learning curve.

Lynn

13:14

Correct.

Travis

13:16

Clipchamp small learning curve, because I use that too for smaller projects, and I've used Canva, which that was on the list also, and I don't remember what other ones. I still have the conversation saved so I can go back and refer to them. Matter of fact, when I first started using, I started copy pasting the information the AI would give me. By the way, here's a fun fact Chat GPT at least, specifically told me not all of the information is correct. Do your research after it, because you know it's fair. I mean, you ask anybody. They're going to give you information. But is any information you get from any source a hundred percent correct, especially if it's more than an hour after they researched it, because things change constantly absolutely.

Lynn

14:03

And then there's always the what I call the whisper down, the lane effect of like once somebody gets the information, someone tells it a little bit differently, someone, and then by the time you're the fifth or sixth person that's heard it, it's very far removed from the original source of information on the actual fact, also known as game of telephone. Yes.

Travis

14:21

Yeah, there's a great Mel Brooks clip where they do that all the way down the line and at the end of the line the first guy repeats it exactly like the last guy, and I was like, oh, he said that's nothing what I said, I know, but I know this telephone.

Lynn

14:36

I know exactly which of all brooks clip you're referring to.

Travis

14:37

It's funny, it's really good anyhow, it doesn't matter, we don't need to hang on that. But yeah, it's true, it's information gets diluted, changed, uh, personal impressions put on it, and ai may be cleaner than that, but remember its information is coming from outside and surprise, surprise, not everything on the internet is true. Right that is such a true statement.

15:04

I recently ran across somebody who said they do their research on TikTok. And yeah, I was. I got that. Look too, I got horrified. I'm like what Any other sources? Well, sometimes YouTube. I'm like what any other sources? Well, sometimes youtube. I'm like no, no, no, you can't even trust, like the actual source 100.

Lynn

15:23

Uh, tiktok is all opinion I mean, if you're doing a hobby, right, like I've been into painting lately right, that's fine. Go on youtube and see, like, different painting, because you know no one's going to blow up or catch on fire if you make the wrong painting mistake. On painting process, right, it's like you paint over it, who cares? But like, yeah, youtube and Tik Tok in and of itself to use for factual information, definitely, I don't know, I feel like YouTube is definitely a little bit better, but you know, I mean cause you can actually see the person doing the thing, you can see if the person messes up or how the product or whatever it is turns out.

Travis

15:55

But yes, they were researching health care supplements.

Lynn

16:00

Oh no.

Travis

16:01

And I don't remember what product it was, but it was like and I don't mean it was a male enhancement product, but by that I mean male health, not not sexual or anything like that. And I'm like, because my wife picked it up and looked at it, she's like do they know what's in here? Because she knows herbs, she's got a degree in herbology or something. And she's like did they research this?

Lynn

16:23

That's when the conversation happened and we're like, oh, okay, yes, yeah, and people, the thing I'm very much into alternative health. But the thing I don't like is the multi-level marketing companies that get into it, because then they start spewing off all these things that are opinions that they don't have any factual thing to back up against. And I'm not going to get on that whole soapbox right now, but, oh my gosh, I can tell you, I could tell you reams and reams and reams of things people have said we could just tie it into writing.

Travis

16:55

Yeah, and this exact topic those companies, quite often not even US based companies. They are using AI to generate some of these ads and some of these things, where they give it the information and they have it spit out. And it's just like reading the instructions on the new piece of furniture that was printed and translated in China and you're like, oh, that's so funny. That one line is sometimes these commercials, and you'll notice the commercials for these things have at the end, these are not based on actual data, or something along those lines, and you're like wait what.

17:29

And the same thing with creating the ants for your books you want them to feel as genuine as possible. It's why using your own content and then proofreading the AI's content afterwards that's so important, because at least chat GPT is like do you want any tweaks? But a lot of times it's just a matter of changing a couple words or removing half a sentence because it's not exactly the message you want to send. And it's not horrible, it's just not. You're just tweaking it like you would your own first or third draft of a blurb or ad, and it's great to do it with that too, to make sure you're giving the message you want to give and not some plastic thing made nowhere near you.

Lynn

18:14

Right, exactly. All right, my friends, we're going to take a quick break, but when we come back we're going to talk more with Travis Sivart about book marketing with AI. All right, we're back with Travis Sivart and Travis before the break, you mentioned tweaking the book content. Like ChatGBT gives you the content and we all know we also talked about like how it's not always true, so we have to double check our research if it gives us something that looks like or may be not correct. When you take your content like, say, you put your book content in there and you're doing some book marketing with it and you bring it back out. What it back out, what's your typical process of going through it and tweaking it so you make it your own voice style and or make it more authentic to who you are or what your book is about.

Travis

19:18

It's a great question and let me, for the viewers, say when Lynn here says book content, she means the blurbs or the social media posts. We are not writing books through AI. We're not dropping an outline and asking for a book. I love individuality and using it to get feedback about a chapter or a book is one thing. I do not promote creating entire books through AI. But once I have dropped my content in and I get back out the one or two paragraphs I want from that social media post you mentioned in my own voice, I literally do that.

19:57

to create something you know: 1980

20:31

And if there's something you could do to make your ad more personal and if it is a video, why not do that voiceover in your own voice, if you can, and if you're not, even if you're going to have an AI read it so you can grab that recording or whatever you're going to do with it.

20:53

You want to read it how you want the viewer to experience it, so sometimes the words don't fit when you do that and you realize I need to take out this phrase. Or, for example, instead of saying a great tweak, is it instead of the book trailer or the words or the voiceover or whatever, saying find my book on Amazon? When you have your book out there on more than just Amazon, depending if you publish Draft2Digital or IngramSpark, it's going to be in a much wider base. You don't want to say find my book on Amazon. You want to say find my book in all the places you shop for your books, or find my book in all the fine literary retailers. Again, depending on the tone and the mood, whether you're playful and fun or whether you're a little more grandiose and you want that to match your content.

Lynn

21:51

Yeah, that makes sense. That totally makes sense. And so when you're using AI, is there any type, is there any specific prompts or anything you would say that you avoid doing because you found that when you use a specific type of prompt or word or phrase, that it doesn't give you, like, the quality content that you're looking for from your book material that you've put in there and prompted it on.

Travis

22:16

I can't think of anything in specific, but that's because I most recently used chat, gpt, and it understood what I was going for, like I said, with an amazing few amount of words, whereas the other ones it felt like you had to go in more with a bulleted list than a conversation and I don't remember anything specific. But that's why I'm like go try multiple AI, see what works best for you, and if you're on a budget which really, if you're self-publishing, you probably are on a budget of some sort Instagram, you can go into their messenger and they have AIs in there and you could try it with them. You could try Facebook, lynn. You mentioned Gemini with, I guess, google and everybody's got one nowadays Canva, which, again, is often recommended.

23:13

Use the tools you have and you know. First, there'll be less of a learning curve and also, I'm guessing you like it. That's why you're using it. Now, if you don't like it and you're using it, take a day and go explore the other ones. You might be like they're all AI, they're all the same. No, no, they're apparently not, and I would have thought the same thing till I started messing around with different ones.

Lynn

23:40

So yeah, yeah, I found a little bit of a difference with them and my my preferred program du jour is definitely Claude. I love Claude AI for helping me with some title suggestions, things like that, like making checks for my books, things like that, and there's so many different tools out there. But, like you said, there's so many tools out there it can be overwhelming to choose from. But I'm sure almost anybody who's listening to this has an AI and a tool they're already using. But I'm sure almost anybody who's listening to this has an AI and a tool they're already using that Try that one first, right, if that one is doing what you need it to do, and if not, there you know, look at another program that you already use and see if that one works as well.

24:19

But I think definitely the most, the one that is the most well-known is chat, because they're the ones who came onto the scene the AI writing like a couple of years ago, and so I think most people are definitely at least heard of chat and have not used it, so real. Just one last question, travis what would you recommend for somebody who wants to get into writing with chat, like taking their content and putting it in chat. Gpt or Gemini or another AI. What are some pieces of advice you would give them?

Travis

24:48

what are some pieces of advice you would give them. One of the hardest things for me in writing besides marketing we'll move that topic aside is finding good, reliable beta readers, and that's one of the things I have found with these is and just recently I have never had any AI read my book previous to just a few weeks ago and I put one in that I'd already published and everything. So it's out there and got feedback on that. Which funny thing is I put in the very first book I ever published and then the latest book and asked it about the growth, and it thought I published the last one first and the first one last. So it like gave me how much of that's grown and I'm like it misunderstood, which is something you'd get in conversation also.

25:40

Um, because it's like oh, your first one was light and humorous. This one is much more epic and detailed, and I'm like because that's an epic fantasy. This is a tongue-in-cheek fantasy and it's not wrong, but yeah, I got it reversed, so it's a matter of Lynn. I'm so sorry I lost a question in my tangent there.

Lynn

25:59

Oh, the question was what would you recommend for people who are just starting out using AI for writing their content for their book? Like, what are some advice you would give them? There may be like a mistake you made or something that you tripped over at first and and you're like, oh, I wish I'd known this.

Travis

26:14

I don't have anything like that, but I will give you general advice of know your tool, just like you would know a person you hand the book to, at least minimally. Experiment with different ones, just like experimenting with different people that you look to for advice. Know the tool at least minimally before you jump in it and don't take the first one that gives you feedback as the end-all be-all. Look at these other tools also and see what works best for you. Sometimes you need a wrench, sometimes you need a screwdriver. They're both excellent tools, useful in many different places, but it might not be the right tool for that job and with the way it's changing, in a year you might need to switch to a different one, a new one or an old one, because the new one has wandered off.

Lynn

27:09

Yeah, that was good advice, Good advice. So, travis, I know people who are listening are going to want to reach out to you, whether they're watching this on YouTube or on Substack or listening to this on any of the podcast audio. Where can people find you and what book would you like to share with them? That is maybe your most recent book, or, um, one of your favorite sci-fi books that you've written that you really want to share with the audience.

Travis

27:33

We'll start with the easy one. That's the latest book I just put out. Actually, I have another omnibus I put out, but this is the Travelers in book one through four all pulled together and that's a really fun one. It ties a lot of my series together with the one character that had been threaded through the other series. This one goes back to him and attack on him throughout time and dimensions and it's written in four sections fantasy, steampunk, weird west, cyberpunk. And then the fourth section is very much in his head and only in the end, so out of time and space. But I definitely have enjoyed writing it and I'm loving the responses I'm getting from it.

28:13

You can find that and all my other books, audiobooks, podcasts at travissivartcom that last name is the same as the first, but written in reverse. Travissivartcom and other than that. If you want to email, the email is on that website. The live writing stream is on that website, as well as all the other things. And yeah, reach out to me, drop me a line, let me know if I can help you out.

Lynn

28:41

Awesome Sounds good. Well, if you are listening to this or watching this, definitely reach out to Travis. He's a fun, amazing and very creative and artistic individual. Always have great conversations, Travis, thank you so much for coming on to the Publishing for Professionals podcast today.

Travis

28:56

My pleasure. Thank you for having me.

Lynn

28:59

All right, my friends, remember to start your book today, because if you keep putting it off to tomorrow, you won't have a book. So definitely jump on your book and start writing.