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This week on Brave New Bookshelf, we had the pleasure of sitting down with Monica Leonelle, a dynamic voice in the publishing world and co-founder of Writer MBA. Monica’s decades-long journey through the ever-evolving landscape of publishing has positioned her as an advocate for innovative approaches like crowdfunding, direct sales, and, more recently, artificial intelligence (AI). In Episode 37, she shared her unique perspective on how AI is transforming the authorial process and revealed some exciting insights into her personal writing workflow.
Meet Monica Leonelle: Author, Advocate, Innovator
Monica Leonelle is a seasoned author who began independently publishing in 2009. With over 50 titles spanning both fiction (primarily fantasy and romance) and nonfiction, Monica is no stranger to pushing boundaries in the publishing industry. From advocating for dictation in its early days to championing wide distribution strategies before they were popular, she has consistently been ahead of the curve.
Her company, Writer MBA, which she co-founded with Russell Nohelty, focuses on empowering authors by teaching them about topics like crowdfunding, serialization, direct sales, and now AI. As Monica explains it, “We’ve always believed that if you want to make a change in this industry, you can.”
Building a Safe Space for Cutting-Edge Conversations at Writer MBA
One of Monica’s key missions is creating safe spaces for conversations about frontier topics like AI. At this year’s Writer MBA conference, Monica saw firsthand how important it is for authors to have opportunities to explore innovative tools without judgment.
The event featured discussions on everything from AI-generated cover design to LLMs (Large Language Models) tailored for specific workflows. One standout presentation demonstrated a complete AI-powered writing workflow using Plotdrive that produced a novella in real time — an eye-opening showcase of what’s possible when technology supports creativity.
Embracing AI: Monica’s Journey from Skepticism to Adoption
Monica’s relationship with AI began hesitantly. As someone deeply embedded in the publishing community, she initially faced resistance even just discussing AI tools. However, curiosity led her into groups like AI Art for Authors and AI Writing for Authors, where she discovered authors quietly experimenting with tools like MidJourney and ChatGPT behind closed doors.
Her turning point came after joining Future Fiction Academy. “Steph Pajonas said something that stuck with me: ‘Find one part of your process where you’re stuck or frustrated and let AI help.’” That advice allowed Monica to approach AI incrementally — starting with outlining and transcription — and eventually integrate it into her broader workflow.
For nonfiction projects especially, Monica has found tremendous value in using ChatGPT for transforming transcripts into readable drafts. She describes this as a natural extension of her years-long practice of using dictation.
The Role of Translations: The Next Big Frontier
For Monica, translations represent one of the most exciting frontiers enabled by AI. “Going wide has always been about reaching as many readers as possible,” she explained during our discussion. With tools like Scribe Shadow or custom workflows built around LLMs like Claude or Gemini via PlotDrive, translations are becoming more accessible than ever before.
Monica envisions translating entire series into multiple languages to reach global audiences through platforms like Publish Drive — which simplifies international distribution while offering flat-fee pricing models that align well with wide strategies.
“I think translations are going to be a gateway drug for many authors,” added Steph Pajonas during this part of the conversation. “Once they see what’s possible with translations powered by AI, they’ll start exploring other parts of their process too.”
Multiplying Creativity with Chatbots
One unexpected highlight from our talk was Monica’s use of ChatGPT as a spiritual coach! By training a chatbot with content from her six spirituality books, she has created a tool that reflects her beliefs back at her in new ways. This personalized approach helps Monica gain deeper insights into her own ideas while slicing through vast amounts of data efficiently.
“I used to do this with tarot cards,” said Monica. “Now I use ChatGPT to reflect my thoughts back at me. It’s become an invaluable tool.”
Monica also sees potential for chatbots tailored specifically to authors’ needs. Imagine asking a Writer MBA chatbot questions directly based on their extensive library of books!
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- AI as an Extension: Use AI tools selectively where they can enhance your existing workflow rather than replace it entirely.
- Translations Are Game-Changing: Tools like Scribe Shadow or custom workflows offer affordable solutions for breaking into international markets.
- Iterate Your Workflow: Don’t be afraid to refine processes until they fit your unique style.
- AI Multiplies Creativity: Far from stifling creativity, AI can unlock new dimensions when approached thoughtfully.
- Repurpose Existing Content: Whether it’s turning transcripts into books or adapting fiction into multiple formats (audiobooks/workbooks), maximize what you’ve already created.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Writer MBA
- The World Needs Your Passion
- Future Fiction Academy
- Plotdrive
- Publish Drive
- Scribe Shadow
Transcript
[00:00:00] Welcome to Brave New Bookshelf, a podcast that explores the fascinating intersection of AI and authorship. Join hosts Steph Pajonas and Danica Favorite as they dive into thought provoking discussions, debunk myths, and highlight the transformative role of AI in the publishing industry.
Steph Pajonas: Hello everyone and welcome back to an episode of the Brave New Bookshelf. I’m Steph Pajonas, CTO of the Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their process. Go me. I actually remembered my name today, which has not worked all that well in the past. I just blow right past my own name.
I think it’s because I had my tea before we got started. There’s been a lot going on at the FFA. We’re writing books, we’re making workflows, writing books. We’re doing all types of crazy stuff. This is some stuff that we showed off actually at the Writer MBA conference in New Orleans fairly recently.
And we’re gonna be talking about that today. Danica is my lovely co-host [00:01:00] and she is here from her mountain cabin she got invited to this weekend. How lovely.
Danica Favorite: Yes. Hello everyone. For those of you who don’t know me, I am Danica Favorite.
I’m the community manager at Publish Drive, where we help authors on every stage of their writing journey from. Formatting their manuscript to finding the perfect keywords and metadata as well as book covers. Then to distributing your books to the largest worldwide audience. And then finally, once that book is selling, we can help you split and manage your royalties.
So Steph and her team helps you with everything else. And between our two companies, we really get to help a lot of authors find their way and help ’em with their author journey. So yeah, I. Actually had the opportunity, a friend of mine is house setting for some folks in the mountains and said, Hey, do you wanna come up and spend the weekend?
And I said, yes. The camera’s not that great, but behind me is this beautiful lake. Just sitting here enjoying the mountains. Background’s a little different today and very [00:02:00] excited to be here. But I’m also excited because like this is a nice getaway rest after the writer MBA conference that Steph was talking about.
We had an amazing time. We learned a lot and we’re so excited because at the end of the conference, I was talking to Monica Leonelle, who is the co-founder of Writer MBA, and she was just talking about all the cool AI stuff that she had learned and was figuring out from the conference and was like, I would love to just share about that.
And I said, oh my gosh, yes, please. I love Monica because she is a great expert in publishing and an advocate for authors and their publishing journey. And so I really am grateful to Monica for all that she’s done for AI. I can remember even before, when she was very much on the fence of I’m not sure about this AI thing, but everyone was like, oh, Monica, I can’t believe you’re in favor of AI.
She’s like, whoa, whoa, whoa. Wait. And we’re like, yeah, we appreciate you, Monica, because she was out fighting the good fight even [00:03:00] before she was really sure how AI worked for her. I can’t wait to hear more about Monica and her story. So with that, I’m gonna hand it over to Monica where she can tell us about herself, about her journey, and about Writer MBA.
Monica, off to you.
Monica Leonelle: Hello everyone. I’m Monica Leonelle. I’m the co-founder of a company called Writer MBA. My business partner is Russell Nohelty, who has his fingers and lots of pies as well.
I am first and foremost an author. That’s how I got started. I have been writing and self-publishing, independently publishing since 2009. I’ve been on both the nonfiction and the fiction side. And in terms of my work, I definitely have more nonfiction at this point, but there was a period where. Up until somewhat recently for me though, that it was like five or six years ago for everybody else.
Up until 20 18, 20 19, even 2020, I would [00:04:00] say most of my content was fiction. And I write primarily fantasy, but also romance. It’s always been a mix of those two. I feel like I was writing romantasy before romantasy was like officially a thing and I actually think many of us were, ’cause I’m like, this is the same thing that we have been writing for like 15 years, but now it’s popular.
So great works for me. But, I’ve been, an author first. I think that a lot of how I got started as more of a publishing expert is that I like to dig into every little thing. I like to know where the industry is going. I also have always believed in my own power in the industry, and I think that’s something that a lot of people don’t necessarily believe.
They don’t necessarily believe they have the power to affect a whole industry, but I never really [00:05:00] bought that. And I think the two of you have also never really bought that. You’ve always believed that if you wanted to make a change, you could. And I think that’s one reason that I got really involved on the publishing thought leader side of the industry is because I saw challenges that I wanted to help solve.
That’s what my company does, Writer MBA, we talk a lot about going wide. We talk a lot about going direct. And we’ve talked about it in so many different ways. Some people know us from like the days where I was writing about like dictation and it was a super weird thing and the whole industry was anti and then they were like, oh actually this is like pretty cool. And a lot of people learned how to do it.
But I was there, really with Elizabeth Ann West too. And maybe with both of you. But this was 2012 when everyone was like, you’re crazy. So I was there for dictation there for [00:06:00] writing faster, but then I was also there for, hey, let’s go wide. I don’t know that exclusivity is the greatest thing for the industry.
And so it was never Anti KU, I was never Anti Amazon. I’ve never been any of those things, but I was an advocate for like, Hey, what if we like published everywhere and looked at opportunities on these other platforms. And then, a place that people know both Russell and I from a lot is Kickstarter.
We did a lot of advocacy for Kickstarter, for crowdfunding. Russell has done a lot of advocacy for serialization, for Substack, and we’ve both been there for direct sales too, so we’re very futuristic. We’re always on the edge of, I’m gonna say on the frontier of publishing, whether that’s true or not, it’s not really a surprise that we’re both also to some extent, on the frontier of AI.
Now I say that, on a call with the two of you on a podcast with the two of [00:07:00] you. And, you two are truly on the forefront of AI, whereas myself and Russell, we’re really just learning from you. But yeah, early on. We were all trying to have this discussion about it and people were not happy that we were even having a discussion. Regardless of stance, there was assumption about stance.
So one of the things that Writer MBA conference. Like what we wanted to do with that is really just create a safe space for all these things that we wanted to talk about. Including crowdfunding, including AI, including dictation, like going all the way back.
All the things that all of us have been laughed out of rooms for and laughed off stages for. We wanted to find some like-minded people who were excited to talk about these things and were willing to have a conversation about them, willing to look at the opportunities of them. And the whole conference was just created as a safe [00:08:00] space where we could take the frontier topics and the things that everybody thought was crazy, all these other events and put them on the main stage. And so that’s how the conference was born and we were really excited to have the best of the best in AI at the event this year.
And for us, that’s really, Publish Drive and Future Fiction Academy.
Steph Pajonas: I wanted to point out that you’ve been doing this and doing the convention conference circuit for a long time.
Mm-hmm. I remember sitting in the audience at the Sell More Books Show in 2018 when you were talking about opportunities in direct selling and merchandising and all of these things that authors weren’t thinking about, like at all at that point. And I remember watching you and thinking, this is awesome. Like we should be doing more of this.
Right. But then it was 2018 and I feel like a lot of that did not pick up until 2021. It takes [00:09:00] so long for these big ideas to really percolate down into our business, our industry. Publishing is so slow. It’s like glacier slow. Like you get these, you get these people who are excited and forward thinking and future thinking about these things, and it takes everybody forever to catch up.
Monica Leonelle: Yes. Yeah. Thank you for sharing. I’m I think it’s so sweet that you’re sharing that story and what I’m remembering is actually there’s like nervousness in my body because there was an author who was really, really successful at the time and still is in the audience, who was just like, I think you’re wrong. Like, like just straight out, just, and so oh yeah. I remember I appreciate that you have such a fond memory of that moment because after I got on stage, people were like, yeah, you’re crazy. And so I feel I’m okay. I wanna be very clear on that.
[00:10:00] I feel fine, but you know that role, I’ve always played that kind of contentious role within the industry of almost sharing things that have not really been received that well, and been very unpopular messages for many people.
Danica Favorite: And I know that AI is really one of those things where it’s still quite an unpopular message. I was at an event like within the last year. There were authors in the audience that did not wanna hear about AI and the schedule got changed, things like that, that are still happening in 2024, where it’s an elephant in the room.
In 2018 when you were doing your talk about direct sales and all this stuff, and it wasn’t well received, and now here we are 2025 and everyone’s like, oh, we need to learn more. We need to learn more. This is the next thing. And so I do feel like that’s where AI is [00:11:00] going.
So we have that, people are like, oh, you know what is the next big thing? I think we’re here and it’s gonna take a while to, get going. So I’m curious, because I know, again, having talked to you and knowing some of your journey, what is your approach to AI in publishing?
Danica Favorite: I remember you were like giving people a safe space to talk about it and then people would be like, oh, you’re pro AI. And you’re like, no, no, wait, I’m just learning here. And so I’m really curious because I think that it’s been a really cool journey I want people to hear it because I want them to realize that, you’ve got to learn and figure it out at your own pace, which I think you’ve done a really great job of doing.
Monica Leonelle: I think there are two things. So I’m gonna say the one quickly, which is at the Writer MBA Con, this is more of like the publishing thought leader perspective, at Writer MBA con, Future Fiction Academy had a pop-up event co-hosted with Plotdrive and the thing that was really cool about that event is that Elizabeth brought in Spoken and [00:12:00] Curios as well and showed like this full workflow, which really helps to show it. It’s a couple things. One is like, I think it helps authors see that AI can actually be in any part of your process, but then I also think it helps authors put AI pieces in context, And see how AI can be used at all these different stages from all these different companies.
So that was something I hadn’t really seen done and I think it gives a really full picture of what’s possible with AI.
So that’s from the thought leader perspective.
And we brought in other, we brought in people who were doing cover design with AI and , we had like a a keys to the future conversation where different people with different perspectives on AI were able to speak and there were people who have their own LLMs for security purposes, and there were people who are like really pro and people who are, just AI curious I guess.
So that I think [00:13:00] is my broadest approach is we need to at least have rooms that are safe to have these conversations. ‘Cause it wasn’t like an AI conference. Not everybody who came to the event was even pro AI.
There were vendors who are the opposite but they were able to be in the room. So that’s my broadest approach.
My personal story around AI is really, like you said, I started out just kind of like, Hey, this thing is coming up in the industry. It’s my job to report on it.
And like it’s my job to at least acknowledge it because I was writing about… I was writing about wide and, AI audio books were a topic in wide. It had to be discussed. And then I was seeing lot of backlash in my inbox, lots of unsubscribes, and I was like, oh, okay. This is not good for me. This is not good for anyone.
And I was very much like not using AI at [00:14:00] all. I kept telling, I was like, I am literally not using AI. I’ve never even gone to like. Chat GPT. I had never made an AI audiobook. Like nothing, I wasn’t using it, but I was curious about it and because I’m curious about everything in publishing is part of it, but also because if something big is affecting publishing, it just seems like you should be like at least aware slash open to it.
Also I will say my business partner was definitely not pro AI. I didn’t feel at the time, so I was like, I don’t wanna upset him by talking about it or using it or starting to push it or promote it.
So there, it just felt like a lot of eggshells. But I got into the AI Art for Authors group. I got into the AI Writing group and found out it was like opening a portal through a new world. Like, like there were people using AI in so many ways that I had never believed or heard of. So there [00:15:00] was Midjourney, there was Chat GPT, there were all these things.
People who were interested at it at a much deeper level and much swifter and moving on new things at a much faster pace than me. And I was just like, wow, okay. This is actually exploding. But in private because nobody wants to like say that they’re interested or that they’re using it and there’s so much hate and people were getting blacklisted and all.
So like it was just happening behind this closed door. But I was inside the door, so that was cool. And I really didn’t find myself using it until I signed up for Future Fiction Academy. That was the place for me. We interviewed you, Steph in our membership Russell and I did. And you, I would say, it’s, it’s.
His story to tell, Russell’s story to tell, but I would say you certainly moved him forward on understanding. ‘Cause [00:16:00] after he talked to you, he was like, oh, okay. There’s something here.
I think everybody knows he has chronic illness. He was really interested in what you had to say about that, and that kind of opened the door for him and it opened the door for me. Then I did FFA and I watched all of Steph’s videos, all of Elizabeth’s videos because it was explaining it to me in a way that I could better understand.
And so I started to understand it, but it still took me a really long time. It took me like months and months to learn Rexy. Which was the tool at the time that FFA was using, and now it’s shifted over to Raptor Write and Plotdrive. But it just took me time. It was actually a year long journey of me just kind watching the videos and like, what do I put in here where, like, how do I, like what file, how do I create my files?
[00:17:00] But yeah. FFA. More than anything taught me how to use AI.
And then I started using it on my own. But it was like the advice you gave, Steph originally, you said don’t try to do the whole process, just try to find like one place of your process that you could apply this to.
And so after I learned a bunch, I had to go off and now that like I finally understand these tools, like where does it actually fit into my process? So for me, the process has really been around outlining, it’s been around, even around writing. I have always done dictation. I’ve taken like transcripts on the nonfiction side especially, and turned them into text.
I’ve done a lot of that. So for me, I realized that was the natural extension of it for me, where I was doing a lot of the things that I was already doing.
But on the non-fiction side is great. it’s so good for slicing [00:18:00] and dicing data and descriptions of things. It’s really great for that transcription to readable text piece. It’s great for dictation, so if you dictate something and now I just record it into my phone or whatever, the accuracy is so good.
And then on top of that, I’m looking at it for translations, which is another thing we wanna talk about here.
Steph Pajonas: So I love that because you followed my advice, right? I was just like, find the pain point in your process. Find the thing that just drives you nuts and you’re just like, oh, I just don’t wanna do this anymore.
And stick AI in there may make it do the hard things, so that you can get freed up to use it creatively. And I’m also a big fan of the, let’s take this transcript and bring it into Chat GPT and break it down and figure out how else I can use this. That’s something I actually told somebody at the Writer MBA Conference, ’cause she was a nonfiction writer and she’s like, I [00:19:00] have all of these videos I’ve done.
I’m like, this is awesome. You now have this treasure trove of information, all of these transcripts, and you’re gonna take each one of them and bring them into AI and say, read this transcript, give me an outline based on this transcript. Possibly for a nonfiction book. You can use it for anything, So I love that because we all produce so much content, authors do, like whether it’s fiction or nonfiction, you have so much already out there. Let’s repurpose that and get it out there in a different format. In a workbook and a blog post. In a newsletter. Anything else that you can do to take that content and move it out to your audience.
This is the forefront of being wide. This is the forefront of being, on every platform you have, you have an audiobook, you may have a workbook, and all of those things can be facilitated by AI. You don’t need to be held back by that anymore, thinking that it’s like a ton of [00:20:00] work, when really it can just be a few hours that you just, you sit down and you work with the data that you already have.
I love that because it’s just, it’s so good for us. We were able to use the stuff that we already have. You don’t need to go and create something totally new, which takes a lot of time and space and energy. And you know what, sometimes I really just wanna sit on the couch and read book, right?
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I know, like Monica, you have two little ones, you’ve got two small children, and your time is very precious. So thinking about all of those things is listening to you talk about dictation and Yeah. I w as also a very early adopter of dictation and that was my lifesaver when I had small children, was being able to dictate and having that so that I could, take those snatches of time and dictate and, then the time it would take to clean up the transcription and do all of the things to make it usable now with AI, it’s like, boom, done. It feels so [00:21:00] much nicer to have that in there to do that heavy lifting. So I really appreciate, again, just the idea of saying, okay, where can AI do some heavy lifting? It doesn’t have to be takeover everything, but are there places and those pain points?
And I think it’s totally fine. You keep talking about Russell, ’cause this’ll be our little nudge to get him on the show as well.
Monica Leonelle: Oh gosh. I’m sure he would just come on, but
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Oh yeah. Oh yeah, for sure. He talking to him at the show and, and talking to him about what he’s doing, it’s Russell saying, okay, here are my pain points.
How can we address them? Right. And I think that’s what we all have to do. When people say, oh, but I love this part of writing. Cool. Don’t give it to AI. Yeah. Give the part you don’t love. And I’m really curious because I know we, we’ve talked quite a lot about what your plans are moving forward with the AI.
So what are the things you’re looking at using AI for moving forward in the future?
Monica Leonelle: Like I said, so much of it, the thing that I realized the most is that so much of it [00:22:00] is really just AI is like continuing to extend my process. Like you’ve both said, yes, more dictation more time with my kids. Yes. Wide. That’s a huge piece. I’m like, oh, this makes so much sense why I like AI, because wide’s all about being in as many formats as possible, as many platforms as possible. Like AI enables that for me. And it’s more affordable and it’s more time, it saves time.
And so AI has really just become an extension of my values and my ethos in so many ways. But a big one that is related to both of those things is translations. And so for me, translations, again, what EAW did, with the popup event, I thought was incredible. And so when I think of translations… translations is a thing, but there are so many moving parts and that’s where I’m like, oh, how does translations really flow with , all these different companies?
So one is there’s Scribe Shadow. [00:23:00] Scribe Shadow is a company that you basically just plug your book in and you can translate it into many languages. And it has some sort of proprietary software to do that. Scribe Shadow was actually a sponsor of Writer MBA. They weren’t there in person, but they had sponsored a digital sponsorship. I think Scribe Shadow’s a great option.
I am… maybe crazy. I don’t know. Maybe just a perfectionist, maybe just controlling, I don’t know what it is, but I love to get under the hood. I need to know what the prompts are and so for translations, I like have to do this myself. I have to solve this myself and be able to tweak things. And the great thing is that Steph, you are similar, like you got, you gotta get under the hood and you gotta know what’s prompting and you wanna like have more control over your IP. I think we’re similar in that way. And I know you’ve been doing a lot of stuff with translations too. I’m [00:24:00] learning a bunch of stuff from you. I am coming up with some of my own stuff too. But translations I think is the biggest thing.
And then when I look at Publish Drive, you said two things to me Danica about Publish Drive, and you’ve said this over the course of maybe the last two years. So one was just like. Save time. I think Publish Drive is incredible for saving time. One of the challenges is that a lot of the wide platforms, they require direct if you want to get promotion with them and there is promotion in the Publish Drive dashboard for Apple Books, which I think is good, but Barnes and Noble for example, you have to be direct to get some of their promotions.
With translations that’s not actually the case. There’s almost no point in putting translations on Barnes and Noble. And then for Kobo there’s not a ton of in app promotion. And then Apple Books is agnostic, which is great. It’s the perfect thing to put through Publish [00:25:00] Drive and especially with, the number of languages, the number of titles I have, I have over 50 titles. Over 50 titles times five. Like that’s a lot of books. You start to add audio books, you start to add paperbacks or whatever. So it’s Publish Drive was just , yes. I want to save time and not have multiple platforms for all those translations.
And then the second thing is really that the pricing model just makes so much sense for something like translations. It just makes sense to really just pay a flat fee and then have all the titles there and not be giving away royalties for those. And like, it takes the regular royalties, but it doesn’t take an additional amount. And so like anywhere that you can save that I think is valuable.
For my English editions, I saved that for the most part by going direct on the major platforms. But this opportunity is really good for [00:26:00] translations for me.
So seeing that whole workflow and all of it just making a lot of sense for me personally and for what I do for Wide has been really great to have that full workflow.
So yeah, that’s my next big project. And I’d be happy to talk more about how do you do the translations? And I know Steph you have plenty to say about that.
Danica Favorite: I’d love that. I wanna just step in with one quick correction. Because Publish Drive does have promotions through Barnes and Noble and Kobo.
Monica Leonelle: Oh, does it? Okay. Awesome. So I did not know that. Yeah.
Danica Favorite: I was like, wait, when can I, when’s a good spot to interrupt? Yes. We do have promotions for a lot of those major retailers now cool. It’s always good to check in and see where you can get some of those promos, but
Monica Leonelle: awesome.
Danica Favorite: It’s good to remember that, when you think about Barnes and Noble or whatever markets where those markets are because, like translations, depending on which market you wanna be in and which country you wanna be in Barnes and Noble isn’t gonna serve those markets.
[00:27:00] Amazon isn’t gonna serve all those markets, right? And so it’s really important to take a look at, okay, what market do I wanna be in? And if you aren’t using a tool that’s gonna help you go wide then there’s no point in doing the translations or the translations aren’t gonna get you very far.
Steph Pajonas: So true. Yeah. I plan on doing translations as well. This next year I’m gonna probably be right alongside you there doing my own books and my plan is to do Kindle Unlimited for six months, but I wanna do a thing where I drop like an entire series at once, just be like, boom, here you go. You get ’em for six months and that’s it.
That’s it. And Kindle Unlimited, and then I’m out. And go wide though, because I know that Kindle Unlimited is exclusive, but I consider it like another market. So if I’m gonna hit all the markets, I’ll hit it first for a prescribed amount of time, and then pull it out and go wide with them hitting Kobo, especially, Apple serves pretty much the whole world, et cetera.
[00:28:00] So does Google Play, oh my gosh. I remember when I was selling books in like the Philippines and whatnot and Google Play and I was like, this is great. I love it. There is definitely a huge market for these translations wide and going back to what you were saying about between Scribe Shadow and doing your own work Scribe Shadow is great because they have a lot of refined prompts on their backend. They’ve done a lot of testing. They understand the formatting and whatnot, and they’re super, super nice and responsive too. If the model like craps out and doesn’t give you what you want mm-hmm. You just write to them, you tell them what happened and they usually make it right.
But if you are like me and Monica, and you wanna know what’s under the hood. I went through the whole process of trying to figure out translations, understanding what is needed in order to get your book from one language to a new target language. And I taught all of that in the FFA, and then we made it into a standalone class too, so that anybody could buy it besides being in the Mastermind for that sort of stuff.
So [00:29:00] there are definitely different approaches. There are lots of different tools. I was just contacted by somebody last night who was saying that she was doing hers in Deep L and I was like, that’s the granddady of translations. They do. Yeah. It’s,
Monica Leonelle: I love that. I love calling it that. That’s so funny. It’s, it’s the granddaddy.
Steph Pajonas: It’s granddady,
Danica Favorite: it’s a couple years old and we’re still calling it the Granddady.
Steph Pajonas: Right.
Monica Leonelle: But it is, it’s a granddaddy.
Steph Pajonas: It is the granddaddy of translations. But they started mostly doing nonfiction.
So I, I told her, if you’re doing nonfiction, you’re doing some of your nonfiction books, I would keep at it. But I think that some of the newer ones that are using the LLMs, the newer LLMs they’re much better at fiction. They have lots of fiction in the training data, so you’re gonna get a better result that way.
And then somebody else contacted me today, I swear to God, I was contacted by two people in the last 24 hours about AI translations. It is a very hot subject right now. A lot of people wanna know about it. And like I said earlier, I think it’s the gateway drug of AI. [00:30:00] I think a lot of people will get into translations first and then see how powerful these tools are, and then think, oh, I wonder if I could use them for something in my own language.
Danica Favorite: We, we shall see. Right.
It’s so funny that, like everyone I think has, right now translations are the big gateway drug and it’s so funny how like they start out, I’m never using AI. And then that one little thing is like, oh wait, I could use it for that.
Danica Favorite: And it’s so fun that right now that translations are that because. One of the things I was talking about actually when I was speaking at the Writer MBA conference is, you’ve written a book and we’re so used to thinking of that as one piece of IP, but really you can turn that book into multiple pieces of IP because suddenly you can turn it into your audiobook, you can turn it into print, you can turn it into a workbook. You can then translate it into all these different languages. And so suddenly you’ve taken this one thing that you’ve done, and with the help of AI, now suddenly you have 10, or however many you want.
That’s really cool because [00:31:00] you know how often is it that we can take that one thing that we’ve done and 10 x the results of that. So I think that’s really, for me, what’s exciting about all the AI tools and all the abilities, there’s only so much of us to go around. And so the more we can multiply it, the better.
If we can find ways to simplify that and get that out to the world. Even better.
Danica Favorite: So Monica, I don’t know if you have any kind of AI workflow or anything that you’re doing, but can you share any part of your process that you’ve used AI in that’s been a really good workflow for you?
Monica Leonelle: Yeah, on the non-fiction side, a lot of it is translating transcripts. Which I just pull pretty much from an audio that like a, like it could be like a course that we’ve done or whatever. Taking that and just turning it into something that’s workable as the first draft.
I’ve been doing this for years and years, long before LLMs [00:32:00] were popular slash public. So it really just naturally flowed from that. I think that’s probably my biggest use. Dictation is a newer use where I basically create an audio of the thing and that’s the process again.
And I have been using, I really use all three. I use Chat GPT to get me started. A lot of times it’s a little bit. Flowery as you maybe know. So sometimes I’ll throw it into like Google Gemini, because Google Gemini is kinda like the masculine energy to the flowy Chat GPT energy.
And then I also use Claude too ’cause I feel like Claude’s really great at expansion. I use all three, like with translations, a lot of times I’ll try it in one, I’ll ask the other, like what it thinks of it. I’ll throw it back. This is a trick that I learned through FFA, which is one is ask the [00:33:00] AI to create the prompt. Two is ask the AI what’s missing effectively, and then ask it to add those things. And these LLMs, I feel, have gotten better and better and better at that.
I am still kinda a baby with AI. I want to move into Plotdrive and get Plotdrive into my workflow in a stronger way because that is organized compared to like my copy paste, like whatever I’m doing. I’d love to get to the point of automation. So at Writer MBA Con one of the presentations from EAW was really write a novella in a talk basically. So like within the talk the AI wrote a novella. And so I’d love to get some of those automations going, especially on the translation side.
And I think you have to figure out your process before you can automate the process. I think that’s super important, for everybody to know. I don’t know that I personally can take someone else’s [00:34:00] process and just plug my stuff in.
That was kinda like one of my blockers to getting started to begin with. So like, I, for better or for worse, I have to take it all apart and put it back together again the way I like it. And I would never really be able to figure it out myself. I don’t have the same level of excitement that I think FFA, like the people at FFA do about AI.
But yeah, I would say like those are my biggest workflows around it. Yeah,
Danica Favorite: I love that, you’ve figured out how to take it apart for yourself and make it work, because I do the same thing, but I also like to not reinvent the wheel. Like, when we were in New Orleans and Steph and I were doing some writing, I was like, Hey, gimme that button.
What’s your code for that button? And she emailed it to me. ’cause I do like seeing other people’s prompts. Mm-hmm. Because a lot of times what I find is that. I will prompt it completely differently, but seeing somebody else’s prompt and how they’re doing it, then I can say, oh, wait a second.
Okay. I [00:35:00] really like this wording that I hadn’t thought of. There are certain words that the LLMs don’t like. Like if you say, don’t do this, it’s going to do this, right, but if you say avoid it won’t do it. And so it’s learning those tricks and I sometimes really enjoy picking and choosing things from other people’s prompts. I kind of like do the little prompt mashup and even, like you were saying, which LLM is gonna do this job better. I like, for example, in Plotdrive how I can in the same documents switch back and forth between the different LLMs and I know prior to Plotdrive and even still, Steph and I both were big fans of a program called Typing Mind, where you do that same thing where you’ve got your big document and you’re like, okay, wait. Oh, you know what? I wonder if Gemini would sound better. Okay, Gemini, what do you think of this? And going back and forth. But I think that’s really, again, figuring out what your process is and what you like about using the different tools.
Steph Pajonas: In the FFA, I am the iterator. Or I’m the refiner. So [00:36:00] sometimes it’s Elizabeth will have the big idea, right? She has this big idea, she has an idea of how she can get it to work, and she does the first step or the first few steps of a process. And then usually I pick it up and I run with it and I iterate on it and refine it and refine it, and refine it and refine it until I get to a point where it’s working like a well-oiled machine.
That is very similar to what you do, Monica, too. I go in, I find a process that I think is gonna get me like 75% of the way there. And at that point, I start inserting myself in and iterating on the ideas until I get something I am completely satisfied with. And that process can be different for every single person.
I will do it differently than Danica will do it, then you’ll do it as well. But they’re all worthy processes and give us all something that we’re happy with in the end. But that’s definitely where I sit in the FFA hierarchy. It’s like Elizabeth is like the big ideas. And then Stacey and I are basically the refiners of things and [00:37:00] she’s really good at the organization and I’m really good at going in and finding the little things that are really gonna make the big difference in the end.
Everybody has their process and I like what you do because that is very similar to what I do as well. Go in, find somebody else’s prompts, make your tweaks to them based on what you learn from the different LLMs, and then move forward from there.
That works wonders.
Monica Leonelle: Yeah. I definitely, with Russell, we describe it a little bit differently. he’s kinda like chaos idea machine and I am also idea machine, but often, building off of his ideas. And then in the case of the Writer MBA Con, we have other people to organize us a little bit more.
We have a similar partnership and relationship. And, one thing I will say about the AI writing and the prompting and all of that is that it’s so unique. Russell and I have tested this. We both took a, like the same exact transcript. We both fed [00:38:00] it into our own chat bots and the results were completely different. I couldn’t even make sense of some of his results. It was pulling completely different stuff from these transcripts and it makes sense. We both fed our work to like our various chat bots. And so it made a lot of sense.
But when I saw that, that was what really pushed me over the edge of like, I’m actually pretty comfortable, putting out content that I’ve either dictated or used the transcribing like, I feel good about it because it’s so different between person to person.
Like the fact that Russell and I were getting completely, completely different results. Like not anywhere even close to the same results from the same original content that we had both written. But we were just prompting it so differently and we were using different chatbots and our processes were different.
It’s like a fork. and every single person is on a [00:39:00] different fork with the same, even just the same source material that we obviously hold full copyright to. And we’re not injecting anything weird into our things, but we could write completely different books based on the same transcript that we both created together.
Like, and we were just looking at this and we were blown away. Because we actually were at a conference together, so we were doing this like sitting side by side almost, and we were just completely blown away by it.
That was when… And this was actually only a few months ago, but that was when I was like, this is absolutely just a tool.
There is so much creative expression that is going to be built on top of these tools. I do not believe it is at all taking away from our creative expression. I feel instead that it is completely fueling our creative expression to just be bigger and better and [00:40:00] to flow easier to all of those things.
And I know a lot of people are gonna disagree with me not people who listen to this podcast, but taking outta context, a lot of people do not want me to say these words right now, but that is what I have seen. And unfortunately I’m just, I’m against the grain in most things in this industry, but I.
That’s,
Danica Favorite: yeah. I’m glad you said that though. I, I’m really glad you brought up that example of you and Russell using the same materials and getting vastly different results because I think that’s what people don’t understand about using the LLMs, about using AI is that we still maintain our creativity as authors.
We still inject our own authorial voice. And I think, when everyone’s like, Ooh, AI is just stealing stuff. I think that right there is proof positive that the AI didn’t steal anything. It was using all the same material and it came up with these different results. And that is [00:41:00] purely because the person behind the computer is different and they’re inputting different things.
To me that’s really exciting and really encouraging because I think that should take away a lot of the fear that, ooh, the AI is gonna turn me robotic, or it’s not gonna be me, or my voice, or my words. I think it’s 100% the opposite. It does make us more creative and it gives us those abilities.
So I’m so glad that you shared that example of you and Russell.
So that brings us to our last question. Always the most fun one, I think, because we’re curious if you have a favorite AI or AI tool that you just absolutely love.
And yes, if it’s a tie or you’ve got something that comes really close you, you can say multiple, but let’s try to break this down to what do you really love and find useful for you in your process?
Monica Leonelle: I feel like this is a crazy answer, but it’s actually Chat GPT only ’cause it’s like the OG, like it’s the one that I started using. But another reason is I have this chat bot that is like [00:42:00] a spiritual mentor to me. So I’ve like fed it all my own content and it helps me unpack things. So it’s kinda like, my coach and cause I believe like all of this stuff is just a reflection of how we feel inside.
It’s all just a tool to sort out our actual feelings. And so I used to do this with tarot. For example, where I had questions about my life and I would do the cards and like see what they were reflecting back to me. But now I’m using this tool Chat GPT and my chatbot on there that it’s basically just reflecting myself back to me. But it’s been so helpful because it can really slice and dice the data. And again, it’s like my own data. Like I’ve written six spirituality books to clarify all of that, but it’s my own belief system is what I’ve fed it, but it’s slicing and dicing it in a way that it’s so new and so unique. And so that chat bot feature has been such a [00:43:00] lifesaver for me on, especially on the nonfiction side. I think it could also be on the fiction side because you can teach it to remember a lot of things.
But on the nonfiction side, I don’t have to search through six books. And also the AI can mix and match concepts in a way that would be really difficult and time consuming for me to do myself. With my publishing stuff, with my spirituality stuff, it’s been really, really cool. I think it’s, it’s such a game changer actually for the future, and like what I see in the future is there could be almost a Monica Chatbot or a Writer MBA chatbot that can slice and dice our books because we now have 40 books that have a lot of publishing knowledge in them. And being able to figure out how to give people that, where instead of asking us the questions, they can ask the chat bot the questions.
That would be really cool. And so [00:44:00] I don’t know what that means for my books really, but I think it’s an exciting opportunity still. So,
Danica Favorite: Okay, so this is exciting to me. As soon as you said this, I was like, can we, because Monica, obviously you and I have had a lot of really cool spiritual conversations and we Sure.
And we’re very much on the same wavelength. And now I’m like, okay. Monica, you need to come back and talk about using these chatbots for all of your spiritual conversations because that is super cool. And I’m already like, okay, number one, we’re having that conversation anyway. But number two, let’s have you back on the podcast for that because I think it is very cool, and I’m actually glad you said Chat GPT, because I think people need to realize that even with a basic tool that we think is like the most basic baseline tool out there.
It’s really a power lifter and it can do so much. Yeah, I love that was your choice and like I said, I’m totally here for the spiritual discussion and we are gonna have to talk more on that. ’cause I think that should be a whole entire show.
Monica Leonelle: That sounds great.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, I love it. You made it your spiritual coach or [00:45:00] life coach, might as well take advantage of all that stuff that you’ve already written that talks about you and your journey and the things that you believe in and get it to reflect that back to you is, that is a whole part of spirituality and therapy and that sort of thing.
To hear the thoughts come out of your mouth and then have them reflected back to you. Right. So it’s really, I love it. I think it’s an important step in the process of understanding AI and then understanding too the way that you interact with it. Great idea. Great idea.
So we’re almost out of time. I wanna make sure that people can find you and all of your work. ’cause I know you’ve got a million books out there. Every single time you are sending out an email about another book. I’m like, yes, I will download it. Yes, I will download it. So let our listeners know where they can find you.
Monica Leonelle: Sure. Probably the best place to find me is if you’re interested in Writer MBA, we’re at writer mba.com. Other than that, I am at The World Needs Your Passion.com, and if you scroll down [00:46:00] to the footer. You can find links to all my other stuff. So if you’re looking for my spiritual books, you can find links there.
If you’re looking for my publishing books, there are links to that and my fiction as well. The World Needs Your Passion.com. I have a substack. Also, The World Needs Your Passion.substack.com.
Steph Pajonas: Great. I’m excited to go and now check out your spirituality books ’cause I didn’t know that you had them.
So look at this. I learned something new today about Monica that I didn’t know.
Alright, so everybody who’s been listening in, be sure to come by Brave New Bookshelf.com. Read the show notes from today. I’m gonna put together a lovely blog post on this, and I’m gonna do it the way I always do by sucking the transcript into the AI and helping it give me the blog post that I want for this episode. I’ll make sure that all of Monica’s links are there as well. And I know that Danica wants to tell you all the other stuff that we want you to do as well.
Danica Favorite: I do, I do. So yeah, please make [00:47:00] sure you find us on social media. Brave New Bookshelf is on YouTube and Facebook.
We’d really love those likes, those subscribes, those watches. And obviously, you can listen to it wherever your favorite podcast is, but if you do wanna see the videos, you wanna see our cute little faces or my cute mountain view that you actually can’t see on the camera. You definitely wanna check us out on YouTube and also make sure you’re liking and following Brave New Bookshelf on Facebook. And then obviously we would love for you to like, follow publish Drive as well as Future Fiction Academy. And I also believe Writer MBAs out there as well. So make sure you’re following all of those because this is where you’re gonna get all the great information and be one of the first people to get it.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah, come by, like, subscribe, do all the things. All right, so everybody, we will see you all in the next episode, okay? All right, so bye
Danica Favorite: Bye.
Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and [00:48:00] subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit us at bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show notes.