Generative AI and large language models (LLMs) have developed rapidly in the last few years, and now represent one of the most controversial topics in the publishing world. We regularly survey our partners to understand how they’re using different platforms and technology and to share those insights with our audience, and we recently did the same for AI. We heard from over 1,200 authors who told us how they’re currently thinking about AI in relation to their work.

EDITORIAL NOTE: Most critics of AI, including creator platforms who are taking steps to suppress the use of AI, are responding to the emotional backlash without having taken it upon themselves to consider the various uses of AI.

• Many unscrupulous creators use AI to deceive their audience.
• This can take the form of deepfake political news.
• Others use AI to generate fictional stories as though they were true, such as short-form interspecies animal stories, whose conventional counterparts have attracted more than their share of views and likes. Many of these conventional stories are either true or they are untrue. We are given only the word of the storyteller to suggest they are true. The use of AI at the present state of the art to tell these stories only makes it obvious to most that they are untrue.

• Generative AI is also used, on the other hand, by storytellers of fiction or nonfiction who would rather not spend a small fortune on paid artistry services to illustrate their stories.
• This includes me, for example, at GoYrOwnWay.com in my use of generative AI to illustrate historical accounts such as Plato’s Timaeus and Critias, better known as Plato’s Atlantis, which unfortunately did not come down to the modern era with original illustrations.
• Many, many other nonfiction creators use generative AI occasionally to dress up their narratives with engaging illustrations or animations. In general, there is no suggestion nor reason to believe that these uses of AI are deceptive. This includes illustrations in eBooks, such as those in the second edition of Back Up Your Data!, soon to be available on this site.

Critics and creator platforms, however, riding the momentum of the emotional backlash against AI and unknowingly captured by the transparent groupthink bubble that surrounds it, continue to disparage and restrict its use without considering its perfectly legitimate uses.

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A large, engaged email list is a valuable asset for any author. It’s an audience of readers that you control — unlike audiences you might be able to reach on social platforms or retailers. And it can be deployed any way you want: to grow reviews for a new release, to drive sales of your backlist books, to help out an author friend, and more. The beauty of your email list is that you decide.

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Book awards are not only a wonderful honor for an author or publisher, but for self-published and traditionally published books alike, they can also stir up media attention, influence reviewers, and support promotional efforts. Below, we’ve compiled a list of well-regarded book awards that authors and publishers should know about (and can submit to!) — but first, let’s talk data.

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Display advertising can be an incredibly effective way to reach new readers and sell more books. But you only have a couple of seconds once a reader sees your ad to capture their attention — which is why your ad needs a compelling hook that will catch their eye and get them to click.

We’ve gathered 14 ideas for hooks you can use in your ad images and examples from advertisers who used them well — which of these hooks can you use in your own ads?

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A Simpler Way for Authors to Create Websites

BookBub is best known in the author community as a promotional service that helps boost book sales, but we’re always exploring ways we can do more for authors. Today, we’re excited to share an early look at a new service we’re working on — an easy-to-use website builder designed exclusively for authors called Author Websites by BookBub.

Here is the ePubGuru implementation of Author Websites. It’s also linked at the bottom of my Bookshelf page.

• First, I created subdomain author.ePubGuru.com. This allowed me to extend my investment in the ePubGuru.com domain at no additional domain cost.

• BookBub automatically issued an SSL certificate for the subdomain along with their hosting service, leaving their nominal hosting fee as my only additional cost for this service.

• The content, which is automatically generated in the first instance and selectively editable thereafter, is hosted at BookBub, so the only material addition to ePubGuru.com was the subdomain and the link to the Author Website at same.

The Author Websites builder goes out and magically finds all of your published books, then uses the supporting materials you’ve published with them to flesh out the listings. These include the cover images, titles, subtitles, descriptions and links to all of the platform entries where customers can learn more about and buy each book. You can add to or remove these links, as the site builder may have missed one here and there or added duplicate entries it may have found on different platforms. By way of their easy-to-use interface, I removed two duplicate entries and added a link dedicated to the audiobook version of my Profound Accordance title. The only thing left to do was fill in any missing content as described above, for which Author Websites presents placeholders so you don’t miss any, and style the resulting Author Website to my liking. All I did to finalize the site was choose the website template and change the color palette (2 clicks).

It took a day or two for the site to go live and for the SSL certificate to propagate, so wait at least that long before troubling Customer Support with these issues. Additional services include email marketing lists, Google Analytics hookup and more.

As noted above, the content is hosted on BookBub but is automatically generated based on material you should already have on file for your books. They don’t (yet) offer site backups but that’s not too big a concern for this reason.

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Whether you’re looking to grow your author platform, fine-tune your advertising campaigns, try new marketing strategies, or make the most of BookBub’s tools, these top posts are packed with insights to help you achieve your goals.

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Now that I’ve been using Canva for about a decade, I teach other authors how to use the tool on my Canva Tips for Authors YouTube channel. In this post, I’ll share my best tips on using Canva to create book marketing materials. The tool has a lot to offer, but I hope this gives you a good introduction to the kinds of content you can create.

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There are many ways to beautifully display ebooks in your social media posts and digital marketing campaigns. In this post, we’ve compiled 38 stunning bookstagrams of ebooks on Instagram from authors, publishers, and book bloggers who’ve amassed demonstrably high levels of engagement for these posts. There’s a wide range of examples here of different ways ebooks can be positioned, from fancy arrangements to simpler (yet effective!) photos, so we hope this inspires you whether you want to stretch your creative chops or snap a quick pic.

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Promoting your books is a crucial component of reaching more readers and getting in front of your audience. While there’s no single promotional tool that is universally effective for books, one strategy that many authors rely on is display advertising. And this strategy is broad — display advertising can encompass many different platforms, tactics, and goals, and is infinitely customizable to each advertiser’s unique business.

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