Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast
Ready to supercharge your author journey? Join bestselling author and book marketing maven Penny Sansevieri and savvy publishing insider Amy Cornell for lively, no-nonsense conversations filled with smart strategies, creative inspiration, and publishing know-how you can actually use.
Whether you’re self-published, traditionally published, or somewhere in between, this podcast delivers real-world advice to help you sell more books, build your platform, and thrive in the ever-evolving publishing landscape. From clever promo hacks to critical industry insights, each episode is designed to move the needle on your success.
Fresh ideas. Actionable tips. Unfiltered talk.
If you’re serious about your author career, hit subscribe and tune in—your next big breakthrough could be one episode away.
Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast
Unlocking ChatGPT’s Creative Power for Authors
AI isn’t a threat to creativity—it’s a secret weapon, and savvy authors are already tapping into its power. In this episode, Penny and Amy explore how ChatGPT can transform the way you write, market, and manage your author business.
Discover how to use ChatGPT as a creative collaborator to generate fresh story ideas, refine your prose, spot plot holes, and develop engaging bonus content for readers. We also dive into how authors are streamlining their marketing efforts—writing ad copy, planning social media, and creating newsletters—without losing their voice or burning out.
But this episode doesn’t shy away from the boundaries. You’ll learn where ChatGPT falls short (think Amazon keywords, SEO, and media contacts) and why knowing what not to outsource to AI is just as important as knowing what to delegate.
With actionable tips on prompt crafting, organizing AI chats into manageable projects, and using AI to support—not replace—your process, this episode is a must-listen for any author ready to work smarter, not harder.
The AI advantage is real—if you know how to use it. Tune in to learn how ChatGPT can elevate your creativity, boost your productivity, and help you run your author career with more clarity and ease
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Hello and welcome back to the Book Marketing Tips and Author Success Podcast. This is Penny Sansevierie and Amy Cornell.
Speaker 1:And I'm first off. I'm so excited. My book is up for pre-order the Amazon Author Formula Workbook Really really, really stoked about that. The book goes live on. Well, the book is up for pre-order now. The on-sale date for the book is the 20th of June, so, um, so I'm really excited. We also have some really fun pre-order um, uh, pre-order contest. All the details will be in the show notes. We're doing 10 Amazon power up, amazon page Power Up Packet Giveaways. That's a mouthful. And everybody who pre-orders the book gets my list of Amazon, my five top Amazon mastery tips. I'm super excited. So we have a lot of stuff going on in our social media. Definitely be sure to check it out. I'm really, really thrilled with this book. I'm very, very, very excited.
Speaker 1:What's interesting is that so we're doing this show on chat. Amy and I both love chat. We have chat GPT. Of course we refer to it as chat because, much like Amazon page power-up package, chat GPT is also kind of a mouthful and we use it for I mean, I've used it for like travel planning and like really fun stuff I mean, and I think a lot of authors are having fun kind of exploring it, which is why we sort of thought that it would be fun to kind of brainstorm some ways that you can use it to ramp up your productivity. I mean, amy, what did you use chat for?
Speaker 2:Oh my gosh, personal or professional? Personally, yeah, personally, I've actually. One of my favorite ways to use it now is to create a meal plan for the week, because I've got kiddos in sports, I've got half the time I'm solo parenting and it's amazing. I can put in all the details. This is what we like. This is how many people it needs to feed. This is you know what I mean. We've got active kids. I don't want to have to go shopping every day for new stuff, so keep it simple and it's amazing.
Speaker 2:Oh, and another one and hopefully, if anybody decides to do this, this is huge. I actually also asked it to focus on meals where you could do a lot of prep work in advance.
Speaker 2:So, that's great. Yeah, so you weren't doing it all that evening right ahead of actually cooking the meal, and it was fantastic, like it is my new favorite thing to do, because then when I find a block of time, I can do some prep and then, oh, it's so much easier. That's been my absolute favorite. And then I've taken a couple of trips recently where I thought you know what, let me just ask, chat, because again, when you only have an afternoon free, like what should I do this afternoon in this city? You know, I've got a couple of kids with me, three adults, whatever you know and what's great to eat nearby the places you're recommending. So not only did it recommend activities and things to do, but it also said and while you're there, there's these three restaurants that we'd recommend, based on, you know, and I was like this is so great.
Speaker 1:So great it really, really is, and I know a lot of authors, cause we get a lot of people who come to us because they found us on chat GPT searching like book publicity services, book marketing services. So it's also being used as a search engine, right, much like Google, which is just it's staggering, but there are, you know, there are a lot of books out there on chat right now. In fact, I was thinking the other day I'm like, oh, I should write a book on you know creative ways that authors can use chat GPT. But a lot of these books are built on the premise of having chat make you rich, right? So how to create, you know, I saw this one account was how to create a million dollar book idea, how to make, how to start a small business as a side hustle and make a million dollars in your first year, and stuff like that.
Speaker 1:I don't really know. I mean, I love chat. We both Amy and I both do. But I think you also have to kind of be careful how much you rely on chat for like big life decisions, right? I mean because, again, it's an AI, it's pulling from information, but it's also the other thing to understand too about chat is that what you get out is only as good as what you put in. So one of the things that I think is worth leading with which we actually didn't talk about when we were in the green room, but it's definitely worth mentioning is the more information that you can put into chat, the better your results will be as well, as you want to really tell chat what it is.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that is really fun to brainstorm is having chat. For example, like if you're really struggling with social media, right, you might ask chat for feedback on I'm on Instagram. I'm not really getting a lot of feedback. Here's what I'm about, here's my brand, here's my book, here are future books that I have planned, or here's how many other books that I have out. But you would lead off saying you are a social media expert, you're a, you know you're a genius at creating viral social media content, etc. And then you put all of the parameters into chat. So it's really only as good as the information that you give it, because if you just say, give me some social media ideas, chat's going to spout out, because I tried that just in preparation for the show and chat just spouted out a bunch of nonsensical stuff that I would never use, even if I was desperate. So I mean, it's kind of like, amy, what you were saying, like with your meal planning stuff, you know you have to be really specific on here is what, here's what we like to eat, here's our schedule, here's what we have. You know what I mean and that kind of thing. The more specific that you can be with your directive to chat, the better that your results will be.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I want to say, just personally, what I, one of the things that I've learned about chat is that, if I like so, we Amy and I we share a business chat account and we have projects under in the various sections of chat. Chat will allow you to create projects, and when we first started using chat, that wasn't the case, and one of the reasons that I love these projects is because it keeps everything under a particular project right. So, for example, when I finished writing the Amazon Author Formula workbook, I actually uploaded it to chat and I asked chat for what could I have done better? I want you to give me manuscript feedback. For what could I have done better? I want you to give me manuscript feedback. Where do you think the reader is? You know I knew who I wrote the book for, but I want to chat, to read through it and give me its assessment of who they felt that the book was for, to make sure that it had matched what I did. But I created a project for that so that now everything under the Amazon Author Formula workbook, all of the different chats that I have, stay under that project and it's much easier to find it too.
Speaker 1:So if you're going to use it for social media or if you're going to use it for a particular book and I've known authors to use it to find plot holes because, you know, I mean, sometimes we're our own worst enemies when it comes to, you know, especially if you write fiction and you're just like, oh, I know that I missed something the last thing that you want is to have a reader post a review on Amazon, like, well, this whole string didn't make sense, uploading it to.
Speaker 1:I mean, obviously you want to get an editor and, by the way, let me just say I know I'm kind of rambling about all the things on cause I get so excited about chat. Please don't use chat as your editor ever. I actually tried that Cause I had an author tell me that they that's what they did. The gobbledygook that chat spit out was just like I deleted the entire string Cause it was just, it was nonsensical. So I think book feedback is a great idea. Yeah, but um, I, you know, I, I, I would never have chat at it at your book, no, yes, yeah, I agree with you, penny.
Speaker 2:It's great to have it point out things to consider, but don't have it fix things for you.
Speaker 1:Yes, Thank you, yes.
Speaker 2:Yeah, have it. It's great for pointing out, like you've said, plot holes. I think that's brilliant. Same thing for nonfiction.
Speaker 2:You can ask it like do all this? Are there any steps missing? Are there any? You know what I mean. Missing. You know what I mean Like there's such great ways to have it point out things that you could potentially consider, but still you should be the expert in your topic, you should be the expert in your book, but take those and consider like, okay, can I do something more with this? But you definitely need to be the one to create that additional content and connect those dots.
Speaker 1:Yeah, cause I've actually used chat for, like, if I'm kind of beating my head against the wall about what am I going to post on social media, I've used chat to give me social media ideas and I will say that one of the things that I love so much about using chat is that I generally I would say probably in 80 to 90% of the cases I don't use what chat has created verbatim, but it helps to spark my own creativity and I think that is oftentimes the best use of chat.
Speaker 1:Gpt. I get really concerned when, when I see authors using it very literally yeah, um, and so you know, I think, to spark ideas. The other thing is is that I actually had so, and as authors you can also do this too. So I had chat profile our website versus our competitors out there, and I asked chat. I said, okay, I want you to tell me what I'm missing, what I need to do more of. And, of course, chats chats like, oh well, you have to do more video, green screen kind of have hanging in my office, cause I know like, oh my gosh, I'll just have it ready when I need to do video. But then I, when I asked him for video ideas. Many of the ideas that it came up with were a little absurd.
Speaker 2:Right, it doesn't know the brand, it doesn't know our audience.
Speaker 1:You know what I mean. It doesn't, yeah, it doesn't really know the brand. So I think that. But then there's also like, so the learning and this is not to discourage you from going to media expert and educator Break down Instagram, break down the Instagram skill into a 15-day crash course. Each day should have a goal, a practice task and, if you want to take it even further, one to two advanced tips for learning. And if you want to take it even further, one to two advanced tips for learning, so chat I mean. And in that case, in that instance, because it's specific enough yet it's still general, right. So you're just looking for Instagram tips to master that platform, to try to beef up your social. And, amy, you and I have used this for a lot of efficiency stuff and and not necessarily because I'm not a huge fan of automation, automating everything I like the personalization that I think that we bring to our stuff. But in terms of, like, internal tasks and stuff, I mean oh, yeah, it's been really helpful.
Speaker 2:And we have a team member who I think I'm not at all saying anything. She wouldn't fully like give a round of applause. She likes to use it now because she will actually write. She, when she has new ideas, she'll start writing out her email and then she'll put it in chat and have it like basically ask it to make sure that it's like all the key points are hit, that it's super concise, basically ask it to make it make sense for other people that aren't inside her brain. And she's like it's been the best ever because and I'm sure a lot of people listening can, you know, relate to that a little bit that sometimes you have so many ideas buzzing around in your head that sometimes it's so hard to get started and just figure out what to do first.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you can dump those into chat and just be very brutally honest with them, saying I need to come up with a better plan so I'm working more efficiently. You know what I mean. Like, what are your recommendations? What am I doing? That's wasting time, things like that. And it works really really great. And it's also been really helpful in terms of sorting out processes too.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know, internal processes in, especially getting them written out in ways that make sense to multiple people that have different working styles, because it's a great way for everybody to kind of follow along. But then it's written out in a very just, straightforward way that doesn't lean one way or the other in terms of learning style or working style, and I think it would be really great for those of you listening that may have the option to work with a virtual assistant or something like that. So if you want to create manuals or tasks or anything like that, to where you can potentially offload some of your work to a virtual assistant, that, using chat, would be a fabulous way to make up a plan and say okay, do we both agree on this? Excellent, you know what I mean To ensure you have aligned expectations and goals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, exactly, and one of the things I think that authors really struggle with is when they're doing because when I talk to authors about this particular, this always comes up when they're doing social media ads, so Facebook and Instagram or TikTok, whatever, they really have a hard time writing the ad copy, and one of the things that I encourage them to do is go into chat and say you're an award-winning ad copywriter, I want to create Instagram ads or TikTok ads, for you know, insert your book title that hook readers and generate emotion and drive clicks. Now, one of the things that I would recommend in that case is don't just have chat, create one ad. I would have them create like 10, because of the 10, eight are not going to be spot on, but you may get one or two that are going to be really good. Okay, and one thing that I started because I know I'm so excited about this, I was so excited about the show I started down this rabbit hole and then I kind of deviated off of there by talking about projects.
Speaker 1:Once you start a chat, once you start a conversation, that isn't going the way that you want it to go, like if you start it off with bad directive and chat's just spouting out a bunch of really random stuff. Kill that and start over, because one of the things that I have learned is that one single chat conversation continues to inform all of its answers. So if you start it off with a bad directive, it's going to bleed into every. So even if you say, oh okay, well, I really meant to say this, and then you go back and you give it a new directive, chat is still pulling from that old content. It's a really weird kind of a thing. So kill it off, delete it and start over, and that's something that I found. That's something else that I found with with chat too. And yeah, I mean I and and, like I said, I just think that that you can, the more specific that you can be with chat from the get-go.
Speaker 1:And it's taken me, you know, it's taken me a while to really learn to really get you know, get a handle on it Because, as I said, a lot of you know there's a lot of books out there on chat GPT prompts that I think are potentially helpful, but there's really way too much stuff out there on how to get, how to make, how to use chat GPT to make you rich, which is not A it's not the purpose of this particular episode but B. I don't really know how. You know, I don't, I don't really know how, how that can. You know that that can work out, so we just did a show on um.
Speaker 1:You know that can work out, so we just did a show on Ask Me Anything, the Reddit show that we did a couple of weeks ago. If you end up doing an Ask Me Anything, you can brainstorm ideas for doing that right. So how you're going to present it or what you're going to talk about, things like that. Amy, you came up with the idea of book club questions, which I love, because a lot of times, authors are so close to their own they're too close to their own topic.
Speaker 2:Yes, and we always. I realize a lot of our recommendations are. They are homework for y'all, you know, and we talk about bonus content a lot. We talk about ways to keep your readers engaged with your brand beyond the book. Especially if you're going to write multiple books, there will be lags between releases and how do you keep people coming back to your website, to your social, when you don't have a book to be the star of all your content? So, creating bonus content, creating quizzes, creating tips sheets, all those kinds of things, book club questions these are amazing because these can be. They can live on your website as leader, you know magnets to collect emails. They can be bonus downloads, you can use them as promos for social media or your newsletter so many different things. But chat is a great resource for again getting out of your own head and just giving you new ideas to consider that, like Penny said, when you get too close to your own work, sometimes it gets even harder.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it does get harder, and that's where I think that chat, using it as kind of and Amy uses this phrase all the time using it as a second brain, is really it can really be beneficial to kind of help you get out of your own way in some cases, right, the other thing is reader demographics. So I love when authors use chat to really drill down on their reader demographics and I think this is something that a lot of times, I mean, even if you were at the early stages of writing your book, using chat to identify you know what readers want, who your ideal reader is, things like that. If I had a dime for every time that I've talked to an author, that who does not know their reader demographics, I'd be, you know, I'd be richer than you know. You name your billionaire, whatever, but so reader demographics.
Speaker 1:I think staying current on trending topics in your industry.
Speaker 1:My only hesitation with that is I think that's great, but my only hesitation with that is I think that's great, but my only hesitation with that is is that there's really nothing like going to the source.
Speaker 1:So I think following some key people in your industry and maybe that's really where chat can guide you instead just because, like when we were doing, when we we just did the podcast on the changes to the Amazon algorithm which dropped last week. So if you missed that, go back and check it out. And I went into chat to get some ideas, not necessarily for the show, but I wanted to have chat tell me what other people in the industry were saying about this particular change and much of the content was really old change and much of the content was really old. So I think that I would take the trending topics thing with sort of a grain of salt, because I don't know and it could have been just how I asked chat because as we did the heart back to the first part of the show where we talked about what you put in, you get out.
Speaker 2:Yes, you know, yeah, and this one too. I tested it for a client recently that has a personal finance book. And what was interesting and I agree, you always want to click and we're going to talk about this in a minute Do you always want to vet what goes through chat before you just run with something? You know you can't trust it indefinitely, but it was interesting because it was able to give examples of articles coverage that was happening around their topic right now and it was helpful for the author to realize what they could potentially be talking about in order to garner more media interest and more coverage.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know, because it was like, okay, right now, these are the kinds of articles that are popping up and that are trending for this topic and it's interesting to go check those out, like you said, penny, just to see what's being talked about and what's out there, because it was insightful to know this clearly is what these sources are covering and they're doing it for a reason, right? So it's like, can you speak to this? And what was interesting, a few of the results also mentioned some changes in tax law, some changes, so there was other things. That kind of again gave you more things to consider that maybe you wouldn't have come to on your own, because it's easy to get laser focused on your content when your area of expertise you could actually speak to things beyond the book. You know what I mean. But you get so laser focused on one thing that it's like, wait, no, I can actually speak to that too, and then your book's going to organically get attention from that, just by being out there as a name and as a source.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly Exactly. Yeah, I think that is. I, definitely I. I love chat for you know, doing industry research, but again, I think you, you definitely have people that you're that you're that you're already following in the industry. So let's talk about some things. To not use chat for All right and I'm not just saying this because we do Amazon optimization here as a company Do not use chat for keywords and categories on Amazon. I've tried it. It's terrible, it's really bad. Yeah, it's really bad, and I mean, some of the stuff that it spit out was just like wow, it's very convincing, which is why it's dangerous.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's very convincing, that's. The other thing, though, too, is that you really have to. You have to kind of come at chat with sort of a critical mind. I was very excited about using chat for SEO for our website, so I went in and I poured my heart out to chat about SEO and I sent it to Amy and she was basically like yeah, so we did this, all this stuff like a year ago, and so there wasn't wasn't anything. I mean, some of it was even scared wrong yeah, it was just straight up wrong.
Speaker 2:and also the data was bad in terms of you know we're big fans of uber suggests neil patel is on top of his stuff I'm keeping his pd, you know. So I also went through and did some checks, just cross-checks, between what chat was saying and the number of searches it was saying that certain terms were getting and it was so far off the mark. Yeah, like in both directions overinflated numbers, underreported numbers it was just like where is this coming from? But so definitely don't use it for that either. Or you know if, if you really it's your last resort have another source to cross-check it and you might end up with a few that work, but it's definitely shouldn't be your one, and only by any means yeah, yeah, I completely agree with that and we have, you have, amy has I want to leave this to amy.
Speaker 1:she has a funny story to talk about Media lists. So we tried pulling. We tried pulling, like I want to see if chat because we have a media database service that we pay for. It's very expensive and I'm like you know, I wonder if we could just start using chat to pull up our media and pitch lists of the you know people we want to pitch to outside of you know, maybe just context that I have, you know, sitting in my Rolodex. Now I'm going to use a term that just makes me sound super old but, um, do you want to talk about how the list worked?
Speaker 2:because they were so bad, yeah, and again, like we said, it can be great for pushing you to think outside the box, for sure, but you always. This is another area where, if you want to use chat to get an idea of who thought leaders are out there right now, or maybe some podcast shows, what's actually great about chat, what's nice, is that they will show you the sources that they use to get that information. And I've actually corrected chat before when I looked up something and then it showed me the sources and it was like Wikipedia and something else. I'm like absolutely not. That is not a source. You need to look at X, y and actually told it what kind of sources were acceptable and it it re it said sorry about that, yes, looking into what you're. And then I got some better answers, like I was expecting, but I thought so always pay attention to that too, because when chat, when you're asking it if it's quoting anything specific or data or anything, it'll tell you the source of that and you really should look at that with a critical eye as well. Where's that coming from?
Speaker 2:But we actually had I mean, thank goodness an individual on the team caught it but one of the recommendations for somebody that we should contact based on the topic that we were, the individual had actually passed a couple years ago. So that is another reason Do not trust chat blindly. Check your sources. Our team member was very smart. She said yep, you know that that person has passed and I'm glad I didn't send an email to that individual, because what if you know their family still owns the business or whatever?
Speaker 2:It's like? Oh gosh, like talk about major faux pas, right? Yeah, yeah, so that is one of those things too. Like you definitely don't want to blindly follow any recommendations or any sources because they can be dated, like Penny said. Like sometimes they're just old, sometimes they're just dated. It's really better for thinking outside the box in terms of you can check them out, see what they cover, see what kind of content they're putting out, check out their socials, but it doesn't actually mean that that is the right person to contact. But it will start giving you some great market research on your topic, your genre, your demographic, things like that. But that doesn't necessarily mean that the person that they called out or outlet that they called it is is an exact right fit, but it does give you some good feedback.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, it does. And then the other piece of it, I think, is um. So we talked about editing um hashtags for social media.
Speaker 2:They're always yeah, it's another one.
Speaker 1:So bad. There's, even when I ask it for social media ideas like give me some hashtags.
Speaker 2:It's like, oh my gosh, they're so bad I know when they do that, I picture like a little gremlin working behind the scenes like eating popcorn and like just like looking very messy and like messing with us, sometimes Like I'm going to see if they fall for this.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think I mean the takeaway is is that you really don't just blindly copy and paste. You really have to. You know, chat is great as it's. It can be a time saver, it can be an efficiency expert, it can help you plan travel, do all the things. But there are. But I think that you know, don't become too reliant on absolutely everything that chat spits out to you, because it could, you know, you and you. The other piece of it, though, too, is that you always I mean chat says that right up front like, oh, chat can make mistakes, but then sometimes you get really excited, you get content, and then you read through it and you're just like well, I would never say that.
Speaker 1:I mean, and anybody who's ever seen me speak in person and you maybe glean that from just the podcast like I'm super excited about all the things, like I'm just like, yeah, I'm just super excited, but chat is even more so. Like chat is like 10 times the level of excitement that I have on just any normal day. The level of excitement that I have on just any normal day. And that enthusiasm when it's on a page sounds a little psycho. I don't really know how else to nicely say it.
Speaker 2:No, it's true, it's excited about everything. Yeah, yeah, and it makes me sound like Eeyore. Poor Penny, she'll send something. I'm like it's too happy. Or poor Penny, she'll send something. I'm like it's too happy. I'm like we, we, we are not that happy, we can't possibly be that happy.
Speaker 1:It's, it's, it's not realistic. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know so. So, again, you want to really get and, and you know, one of the things that you can do is also um, you can do is also you can upload existing content that you've written and ask it to mirror your voice. But even then, which is why you really want to give chat something to work with. So, if you are, you know, if you want to create a social media plan, ideally you want it to mirror, you know, what you already have. So you want it to mirror your voice, what you already have on on um, on social media, because otherwise it's just going to come up with a bunch of nonsensical stuff that's probably going to sound wildly excited and if you send it to Amy, she's going to be like so but yeah, but we love chat, for I mean, for all the things I think it's definitely worth exploring how it can you know, how it can help you be, you know, be more efficient and be your second brain, because it's not always easy being an author. We've talked about that a lot on this show in particular. So I want to thank you all. Did I miss anything, amy, before I close out the show? Did we cover everything? Nope, with that. I want to thank you all so much for listening.
Speaker 1:If this is your first time listening, we have lots and lots of shows. Definitely go back to our library. We have five years worth of shows for you to peek in on and listen to, and be sure to subscribe to the show. Wherever you listen to podcasts, I know the majority of you are listening on iTunes. I am blown away, amy. When we were in the green room, she told us about how many downloads that we're getting. I am really blown away. So y'all are listening and hopefully enjoying it, and if you are, we love reviews wherever you listen to podcasts. So definitely leave us a review, email us a review and check the show notes for the pre-order contest that we have running. Super excited about that. We'll see you next time. Bye-bye.
