It’s been a minute since I’ve talked about publishing on this blog. Mostly, I was just tired of giving advice. Still am.
Most of the work is doing the thing. Failing at it. Succeeding at it, and failing again until you find your groove.
Buttttt… our latest viral sensations have brought me out of hiding.
Enter AI and Dr. Cheyenne Bryant
These seem like unrelated, separate topics, but stay with me.
Lately, I’ve been noticing tons of creators with social media captions that use the same “It’s not x, it’s y” ChatGPT cadence, including authors.
Why are people who write books using AI to write their social captions? Isn’t being creative like, our literal job?
The “it’s not x, it’s y” cadence sounds like: “It’s not just a meal, it’s an experience.”
The words are also structured a certain way, and it is noticeable for those who know what to look for.
For me, it’s mostly noticeable when someone drastically changes how they write. Since I’m a poet, I compare it to suddenly sounding like a poetic professor. You’ve once been an emperor of typos, and now the words flow neatly on top of one another.
The phrases are very well-written, too well-written for a person who has never written in such a way.
It seems to mimic how professional writers write, except now everyone is doing it.
Suddenly, everyone’s Insta captions and Facebook posts are grammatically correct, inspirational, and profoundly poetic.
It is also profoundly fake.
While it might read pretty, it waters down the writer’s authentic voice.
I’d be remiss not to mention that this is not everyone. There are some fantastic, extraordinary writers out there, and for the record, AI is mimicking the genius of the real brain.
The most tell-tale sign is whether I can sense your personality in your writing, or if instead you just sound like an English teacher when you are not one.
The twist in all of this is that typos will become the new normal. They will signal that the person who wrote the piece is a human who makes mistakes and uses their own mind.
You Sound Just Like Everybody Else
What should be most disturbing is that using chat to write will have you sounding like everyone else in the same way that all those AI flyers look the same.
These flyers are always way too cluttered. There is too much information on them, and they end up drawing attention away from the core message, which is drowned out by so many colors and images.
This leads me to question if people are even trying to make changes to the prompts, templates, or whatever they are using.
As a reminder, Canva still exists and has some great free and paid templates from real graphic artists. For my poetry contest, I hired someone on Fiverr to handle the initial design, then paid for the source file. The source file allows me to go in and edit it into as many versions as I want without paying for them. So far, I have turned two graphics into seven to promote my sponsors and judges. It was the best $20 I’d ever spent.
Ya’ll are watering down your voice and image.
I’ve also been seeing a ton of new self-published books with AI/ChatGPT-generated book covers. I cannot emphasize how strongly I recommend not doing this.
You are likely damaging your author brand and marketing strategy before they even begin.
And this isn’t just my opinion. It’s what readers are saying.
An arts digital marketer and historical fiction/romance author conducted a survey asking readers whether they were interested in reading books with AI-generated art.
84% of the people who took her survey said NO.
Additionally, I have been monitoring the bookish community on Threads, and many readers say they don’t trust books with AI-generated covers.
If your book cover is AI-generated, it’s hard not to wonder if your book was written by ChatGPT, Gemini, or any other artificial intelligence software.
It’s hard not to wonder if you’ve put the hard work in to write or if the computer has done the writing for you.
Consequently, even if you did write the book, it’s challenging for readers to see you as an authentic voice.
The book cover is your first impression. Lose readers there, and they are not reading your book.
Speaking of authenticity, enter Dr. Cheyenne Bryant, the woman currently under fire for the legitimacy of her doctorate and the location of her dissertation.
Dr. Bryant also just published a book that people are saying sounds like it was written by AI.
With twelve 1-2-star Amazon reviews, it is littered with claims of fraud stemming from her latest allegations that she is not a real therapist or psychologist.
More of this in part 2…
The PBS Blog 