Justin Welsh
Appearances
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
In a world of commoditized products, how do you stand out and become not a product people want to spend money on, but a person that people want to spend money on?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Totally. What's the point of an original thought if the next day it's duplicated to an infinite degree?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
So like, like, but I do, I do agree that there's tons of, uh, I was just watching a video on someone using perplexity and clode to do like SEO optimized articles. And like he was prompting perplexity and clode and like couldn't spell. And I was like, this is what happens. Like people can't spell, like they don't even know how to like do common reading and writing.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And I'm just like, is that a word? Like, do we need to know that anymore? I guess not, but maybe I'm just like a classical person, but like, I was just, I was very flabbergasted by that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah, that's what we're moving towards. But it's a muscle. It's like riding a bicycle. Once you stop writing on your own or thinking on your own and you let something else do it for you, it atrophies.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Sorry for getting you off your book idea. Continue.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah. So I've been thinking about, especially having grown my following and been approached by some publishing houses in the last year or so, just like the approach to becoming a published author. And I've talked to a bunch of my friends who are creators or entrepreneurs and have followings. And some of them have started the book process. Others have finished it. Some are...
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah, yeah. I use it to make sure that my writing is at a certain grade level for my newsletter and my social content. I know about what my audience likes to consume at, so I use it almost daily.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah. So, so basically the one functionality I use inside it is grade level. And I want to keep my grade level writing between seventh and eighth grade. Like I've run multiple, like a battery of tests against both my newsletter and my LinkedIn content. Not so much my, my like X content, because I don't think it matters. It's much shorter. The brevity is what matters.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Um, but I will push that through, uh, Hemingway. And I will basically, not just the grade level, I'll also look for sentences that can be more clear, clarity and conciseness, because that's something that I think I've become known for if I had to guess on social media is taking complex ideas and making them very simple.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And while I think I'm generally pretty good at that, there are definitely times when I overwrite, when I choose too many words, when I make things too complex. And so I love Hemingway for that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And I often realize that when I write, I use words that to me seem simple because they've become part of my lexicon from working in startups for 20 years, from being around people who are certainly more academic than I am. And so Hemingway helps me kind of bring that down seventh to eighth grade reading level. I've written in third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth, all the way up to 12th.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And I will look at impressions. I will look at reply rate on my newsletter. I'll look at engagement. And that's seven to eight for me is just like, where it hits.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
It's really interesting. I often wondered if there was a tool like this, like, um, you know, just very candidly as I've watched like Sahil and Ali Abdaal launch their books, um, I mean, the consumer or even their friends have very little visibility into, you know, there's rah-rah around it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
try and decide whether or not to get into that process. And it feels like it's really cumbersome. And there's a lot of unanswered questions. It feels like the negotiation, the advance, picking the agent, picking the editor. And maybe it's because I'm removed from it and I have not been through the process. But it feels cumbersome. And it feels a bit scary and intimidating.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And like, you might assume that it's selling a thousand copies or 5,000 copies a day, but the reality could be very, very different. And when someone's not like a New York Times bestseller, my question is always like, how close were they? Or like, what was the gap between them, you know, making and missing the mark?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And this is a service that it looks like I could kind of figure that out, which is really interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Totally. I'm like, what is this? This is crazy.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Oh, totally. Yeah. It's just like, I don't know, it feels like commoditized to me at this point. It's supposed to be new and unique and interesting, but like every visual that I see, and by the way, I'm not an AI artist and most people who use it are not AI artists with the prompts. So they're just getting generic output. And so everyone's generic output looks exactly the same.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I'm sure if you're a professional designer, digital artist who understands AI prompting, you can probably make something wonderful. But for 99.9% of us, that's not us.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah. A friend of mine is a 12-time New York Times bestselling fiction author writing crime. And he's in his 80s. And he will tell me all the time, like, he'll have a really creative idea for a book title. And he'll run it by me and my wife. We're like, we like that. And then he'll bring it back and be like, the publisher is actually going with something much more simple.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And I'm like, oh, I don't like that at all. He's like, yeah, but it describes what's inside of the book. And I was like, right, right. That makes sense.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah, you've strung together the most AI tools in history to do a really cool process. I'm actually really impressed. I go about as far as Perplexity, ChatGPT, and Cloud. These are all really interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And you might get into something without having all of your questions answered. And so I'm thinking, and I made a note here around AI, but I'm thinking through that process in general, and how do we make that process easier? And since I kind of jotted down some of these ideas, I actually think people are starting to approach that problem already.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Wow, that's really cool. That's a huge process.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah. It's, it's really interesting as you're, as you're going through this, like, um, I mentioned something during the book design part where I said, 99.9% of us aren't AI artists, nor do we understand how to prompt AI to create beautiful art. And I may have just answered my previous concern or question where it's like, how do you become the next Jack Butcher?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Well, it's no longer about the stroke of the brush or how you move the mouse. It's more about prompting. How do you become a world-class prompter, which in turn, the outcome is world-class art? so I guess I have to like focus my brain on thinking about how, how the world changes that way and what being great at something looks like. And I think it's going to be a lot around prompting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah. I was talking to an entrepreneur the other day who remained nameless, seven-figure entrepreneur in the digital space. knowledge space and has a team who basically takes his content and chops it up and creates it for different social platforms. And he's like, I'm kind of frustrated because their prices are going up. And I was like, how are their prices going up? Explain that to me.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
With all the AI tools available right now... the service they provide their prices should be going down or you should be like, you should be spending one day next week, like designing all of your prompts. And if you really want somebody else to write your content for you, like the following week, you should be able to press a button and do it yourself.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Like, uh, I can't imagine like service companies for copywriting right now, like having the gall to raise their prices. Maybe I'm wrong on that, but like, I don't know. I see that going away fast.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I saw the guys from Basecamp have come out with something called once.com. I haven't done a deep dive onto it yet, but it seems to be a way in which to get your book out pretty quickly. I believe that James Clear and Tim Ferriss are working on something as well that seems at least tangentially related to that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I think this is going to be a huge industry. Just helping people produce longer-form content, whether it's AI-created or not, irrelevant. And getting it to the masses in forms that they're used to, I think is going to be just... ripe for like tons of players as you're already showing me right here. Right. I've got tabs open. Right.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Here's a question I have that maybe you haven't thought about or maybe you have and you'll answer here in a moment. I've got one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine different tabs open at the moment. As you kind of go through this creation, who takes all these point solutions and becomes the all-in-one for this?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I think that's an interesting question is why do I have to use nine services for producing one outcome? Why can't I use one service for that?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
So my big question around that is just like, how do we streamline the process of becoming a published author for folks that don't want to go through the really difficult process of doing so?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Really cool. I'm looking at it right now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah, I think this happens in every single problem that I have today in my business is solved by several different point solutions that don't communicate with one another. The last startup that I helped build was a medical startup that essentially did exactly that. Took every point solution a physician used and put it together in one all-in-one solution and sold it at a better price.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
That's why it's $200 million in revenue today. I see that exact same thing coming to everything that a creator does, everything that a writer does, everything that an entrepreneur does will be at first spread out amongst 9 to 10 different apps and then put into one. And I think that's like, how do you become either one of those 10 or the one?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Can I give you an example of something that I've been thinking about recently?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
as a creator across multiple platforms, like let's think about my workflow on a regular basis. So everything that I do starts with a tweet, right? Like I might try and think of something interesting or useful to say on, on X, right? I throw those out there because there's a short feedback window.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
So, you know, you, you get feedback in 10 minutes, you know, whether this thing's going to go well or go poorly once you, once you push it out there. Since I'm pushing stuff out there on a consistent basis, I have a lot of, pieces of content that I can choose to use in different ways. Oftentimes what I'll do is screenshot that, add some context. It's a LinkedIn post, right?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Do that a couple of times a day, figure out which one works the best. I can take that same screenshot, same context, move it over to Instagram, copy the tweet, bring it over to threads. Like there's just a million ways to sort of organize this stuff.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
That in and of itself is one problem that needs to be solved because like going back and forth between different notion tabs, different publishing tools becomes very cumbersome and confusing. Then add to the fact that inside of every discovery platform, I want to bring my audience to my website, have them do a deeper dive on learning about me and what problem it is that I solve.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe it's Writebook. That's right. Once.com was the product before that. I'm confusing the two. You're right. Yeah, Writebook. Exactly.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
So every piece of content has to have a relevant piece of deeper long-form content that is related to it so I can drive someone naturally in the next call to my website. So, hey, you want to learn more about this or want to go deeper on this? Go check out this article. Go check out this newsletter. I have a repository of newsletters and articles.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
It's not easy for me to find which one is most relevant and therefore make it the call to action. It's like that's another problem that should be solved with one click of a button. I use Cloud Projects for that. But today, Cloud Projects doesn't talk to Tweet Hunter or Tapio or any of the publishing tools that I use.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Then I want to meet smart, interesting people who I can start to network with on social media. I do that on platform. I do that on LinkedIn. I do that on X. I do that on Instagram. That doesn't exist in the publishing tools. It doesn't exist in cloud. So there are these disparate problems that I have to solve through all these different tools. And I'm thinking to myself, why not one tool?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Why can't I do this inside of one app? And why don't I build that? Why wouldn't you build it? I would. I mean, it's something that I'm very interested in building. I figure, you know, If I solve my own problems, I'll probably solve a thousand other people's problems.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Same. Why can't I focus on writing one good idea? Even if I don't want to use AI for that and I just want to write myself because I like to write, but once I write one good idea, why can't I hit one button and just be like, go all the places you're supposed to go and do all the things you're supposed to do? I just want to be the creative.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I don't want to figure out how to stitch together all this different stuff. Just like, let's build that automation now, right for fun and hit the button and everything works. That's the world that I envision AI being fun in, in less taking over creativity, I guess.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
and, and very candidly, this is my opinion, by the way, I like, I can't, I don't have data to back this up, but I think I can in a, in a weird way, which is like, I use Tapio and tweet Hunter and I like Tebow and I think his team builds really good products. Um,
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
But in a way, many of the products that are on the market today, and it's not just in the creator space or the publishing space, are not too dissimilar from one another. They are becoming more and more commoditized. And I think what is most important is if somebody uses it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's under the once brand here. Yeah, I use Hey.com, which is a product from the Basecamp guys. And I love all the simplicity that they've built into their products. And if anyone is going to attack that model, this doesn't seem to be tied into becoming a New York Times bestselling author or getting published under a big brand.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And so what I'm seeing is the companies that are standing out in the publishing space, like a Tweet Hunter or a Tapio, have the big creators behind it. The big creators use it. The big creators talk about it. They sponsor the big creators' newsletters. They're in front of the big creators' audiences.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And you might look at that in another tool and they might, at first glance, look relatively similar. But if you know that I use it or Sahil uses it or you use it, you're just more inclined to use it as well. And so I think... For someone like myself, how do I leverage, how do I use that advantage?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
You know, as I'm thinking about both solving my own problem and building something that isn't commoditized and then combining it with, you know, a brand and a person who's known for creating content. Those are things that are kind of percolating in my mind at the moment.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Dude, totally. I actually think I buy from a lot of creators just as a tip. Yes. There are creator friends of mine who create something that I absolutely have zero interest in consuming. And when it comes out, I'll buy it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Because if I read 100 of your tweets and 1,000 of your posts and I read your newsletter every week, the least that I can do, these are small businesses, the least I can do is give you a tip. So when your product comes out, I will buy it.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And I think a lot of people operate that way. Some people don't, but a lot of people do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Some people are the opposite.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah. Yeah. But I, I appreciate you sharing that because I think that's, I think that's big in the future is like, In a world of commoditized products, how do you stand out and become not a product people want to spend money on, but a person that people want to spend money on?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
This seems to be a way to sort of instantly publish your own book. But I actually think that is just as good an idea as disrupting the traditional publishing model. This seems to be faster, better, easier, have less friction for those who want to get started. And do we see a major disruption? Do people in 10 years not publish with huge publishing houses anymore?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah. It might even be the opposite of what it is now, where it might be 90% the people and 10% the chocolate, which could be interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Cool. I like that. That's cool. I might have to look for that product or at least follow their story. I'm not familiar with that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I'm feeling good, man. I didn't expect to go there either. You had way more tactical information on the book stuff. So I think your audience can... Someone will run with that. I think what I hope that people take away from this is a lot of the stuff that we talked about in just solving your own problems. I think a big part of startup ideas, at least in the future, is going to be
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
being cognizant enough to pause when you actually have a problem. I go through problems all the time, day after day after day, the same problem. And it actually takes me weeks and sometimes months to pause and be like, why haven't I solved this? Because we're so busy and we're so heads down that that becomes a problem.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And I think a lot of folks, if they can make themselves stop and think through those things, we'll start to see ideas flowing in much faster than they normally do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
They can go to justinwelsh.me. That's justinwelsh.me. They can follow me on X or LinkedIn. And that's about it. They can subscribe to my newsletter, The Saturday Solopreneur. Send out one newsletter every Saturday morning, four minutes or less, 220,000 solopreneurs subscribe. They can and will.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Great chatting with you, man.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Is everything done through something like a right book? And I don't know, there's a part of me that says that that's possible or likely.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And then I'll argue whether I think it's a good idea or not. Totally.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I'm not, no. I'm looking up now.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah, might even be the opposite of what it is now, where it might be 90% the people and 10% the chocolate, which could be interesting.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
As soon as I hear you going down this step-by-step building a book with AI, my mind pulls back to this quote. I forget who it's attributed to. It's popular, so I'm sure someone will know who said it. It's something to the effect of, I think it was on Twitter. I don't want... AI to write my books and do my art and like all that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I wanted to do the dishes and like pick up my room so that I can write books and do art. And so like, I just wonder from a long-term perspective, if everyone's writing a hundred books, and by the way, I recognize that not everyone's going to do it. People always ask me, what if everyone was a solopreneur? So I get that it's a stupid question.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
But if a lot of people are doing that, does the art of writing a really strong and powerful book with compelling study and user experience, does that die? Do you think about that when you outline this stuff? Or does that just sort of you separate yourself from that as you're thinking through it?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah, it's an interesting... Just to be clear, I think AI is fascinating and I'm also not a person who's like, oh, because I like the creative side of things and because I like unique and personal art that I somehow don't believe that AI will overtake those things. I do.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
My big concern around it, and not to cut you off on your book idea, but my big concern around it is you say people are going to become... experts or have a very unique point of view and there's going to be staying power around that. I think a huge concern that I have is like, how?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Someone gets one inch into a journey that they're really excited about where they have a really unique and meaningful perspective. You're talking about using Jungle Scout to see trends. There's going to be much more complicated software at that point in time. Someone's going to see that right away and say, this person is getting some form of traction.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Before they can get traction and get a leg up and get staying power, let's just steal that. Let's just take that. And so I just wonder, how does someone go really deep, get a ton of traction in an area of expertise, and stand out in a sea of people creating hundreds and hundreds of things based on what that person has already just started? I feel worried about that.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I struggle to envision a world like that. Does that make sense?
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Huge risk. I totally agree. I am not anti-AI. I don't find it to be a particularly fabulous writer at this point in time. It's certainly getting better. Claude is the best I've seen. I think ChatGPT writes pretty terribly. I've tested it out on a bunch of different things. But again, we're only a few years into this thing. Fast forward 10 years, I think it's going to be tremendously different.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
I think about someone like Jack Butcher. He's like, as internet art... And by the way, that's only because this is my ecosystem. So I might be blind to those who came before him and were creating something similar. So I'm speaking within the realm of what I know on the internet. When he came out and started creating art, he got some traction.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah, of course, man. Greg, it's really good to see you. And I know you swung through my living area many months ago and we got a chance to have a bite to eat together. And so here I am ready to talk to our buddies.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
It became, oh, I can look at that and know that it's something by Jack. I can see his style. I know that's a visualized value piece. And as we've gone over time... You've had maybe five or 10 or 15 or 20 or 25 sort of knockoffs of that, and it's kind of getting faster and faster and faster.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And I fear for a world, and not to kind of, again, take this back full circle to what I worry about, but I do feel for a world or fear for one where a jack butcher gets traction on one piece, and the next day there are 10,000 pieces just like that. And it's like, how do you stand out in that noise? And it's a question worth answering. The answer is you have to.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
And I just wonder what a world full of noise looks like.
The Startup Ideas Podcast
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
Yeah. I fear for that trend. By the way, it doesn't mean it's not happening. Who cares what I think emotionally? But I do wonder what a world like that feels like.