AI doesn’t need to replace your thinking, your writing, or your relationships. Used well, it can help you get more from what you already have.
When Jane Tabachnick joined me for Let’s Talk Book Marketing, we started by talking about AI and quickly moved into a much bigger conversation about how authors can use it without losing what makes their work valuable in the first place.
Your ideas. Your experience. Your voice.
Jane, founder of Simply Good Press and Author Alchemy, has spent years helping nonfiction experts publish and leverage their books. Like me, she sees enormous possibilities in AI, but she also believes there are places where it doesn’t belong.
One of the first things she said was that she isn’t a fan of using AI to write your book.
Neither am I.
Your book should come from you, but once you have your ideas, expertise, stories, and content, AI can become an incredibly useful assistant.
Here are five benefits from our conversation that are especially useful for nonfiction authors.
1. AI can save you hours of work
One of the biggest advantages of AI isn’t doing something you couldn’t do before. It’s helping you get through the smaller tasks that often take far more time than they should.
Jane talked about asking AI to create something she needed and having it completed within minutes with only a minor adjustment.
Think about how many of those jobs sit on your marketing list.
You may need to organize ideas, turn rough notes into a first draft, create a checklist, develop interview questions, pull key points from a chapter, or brainstorm ways to use material you’ve already created.
None of these tasks needs to eat up an entire afternoon.
AI can help you get started faster and give you something to shape, improve, and make your own.
The real benefit isn’t replacing your work. It’s freeing up your time for the work that needs your experience, judgment, and attention.
2. AI can help you get more mileage from what you’ve already created
This is one of my favorite uses because most authors already have far more material than they realize.
You don’t need to keep creating from scratch.
A chapter can become an article, a checklist, or a worksheet. A podcast conversation can become a series of Substack Notes. A presentation can become a tip sheet, and a transcript can spark ideas for a workshop, course, or lead magnet.
Jane and I talked about cutting, dicing, and slicing your existing material instead of constantly wondering what to create next.
Your book alone may contain months of useful marketing content.
So instead of asking yourself, What should I create next?
Try asking, What have I already created that deserves another life?
AI can help you spot those possibilities and turn one good idea into several useful pieces of content without making you feel as if you’re always starting over.
3. AI can help you sound more like yourself, not less
This might sound strange when so much AI-generated writing feels generic, but generic output often starts with generic input.
Jane talked about teaching her AI about her audience and her voice, and I do the same.
One of the easiest ways to do this is to give it examples of how you naturally speak and write. Podcast transcripts work especially well because they capture your phrasing, rhythm, and the way you explain an idea when you aren’t trying too hard to sound polished.
Then, instead of simply asking AI to “write an article about book marketing,” you can give it your material, your point of view, and examples of your voice.
You still need to edit the result because your judgment matters. You know when something sounds like you and when it doesn’t.
The goal isn’t to let AI speak for you. It’s to help you express your ideas more clearly without sanding away your personality in the process.
4. AI can make research faster, as long as you check its work
Jane shared a simple practice that every author using AI for research should remember.
Ask for the sources.
AI can help you gather information, find resources, explore trends, and identify useful starting points much faster than doing everything manually. But speed doesn’t guarantee accuracy.
AI can still make mistakes or present something with great confidence that turns out to be wrong.
That’s why your role matters even more.
Ask where the information came from. Open the original source. Check the facts. Decide whether the source is trustworthy enough to use.
As Jane put it during our conversation, it comes back to an old principle. Measure twice, cut once.
AI can shorten the research process, but it shouldn’t replace your judgment.
5. AI can help you reach more people, but human connection still wins
This was my favorite part of our conversation because it brought us back to something I believe strongly.
Book marketing is still about people.
Jane summed it up beautifully when she said, use AI, but don’t ignore humans.
Some of your best marketing opportunities come through people who already have the attention and trust of the audience you want to reach.
A podcast host has listeners interested in a particular subject. An association has members dealing with a specific challenge. A Substack writer has built a community around an idea. An industry publication reaches readers who already care about your area of expertise.
Those relationships give you access to one-to-many opportunities instead of forcing you to reach readers one at a time.
There’s also another advantage.
When someone with an established audience introduces you or your book, you don’t arrive as a complete stranger. Their introduction creates a level of trust that’s difficult to manufacture through a social post or an Amazon listing.
AI can help you identify those opportunities, research them, prepare your approach, and develop ideas for how you can serve their audience.
But the relationship itself still depends on you.
And I hope it always does.
The real opportunity isn’t AI. It’s leverage.
Authors don’t need another shiny object.
They don’t need 15 new tools or another complicated marketing system demanding more time, energy, and attention..
What they need is a better way to use what’s already there.
Whether it’s your book, ideas, expertise, content, or relationships.
AI can help you stretch all of them further.
Use it to save time, explore ideas, repurpose your work, simplify repetitive tasks, and uncover opportunities you may not have considered.
Then bring your judgment, experience, personality, and humanity to the result.
Because AI may help you market your book, but people are still the reason your message travels.
Try this
Choose one piece of content you’ve already created. It could be a chapter, article, podcast transcript, presentation, or newsletter.
Then ask your favorite AI tool:
“Give me 10 useful ways I could turn this into something new for my audience without simply repeating the original content.”
Perhaps you’ll discover you don’t need another new idea.
You need to get more mileage from the good ideas you already have.
