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In this week’s episode of Brave New Bookshelf, we’re joined by Michael Evans, a dynamic force in the publishing industry and the creative mind behind Author Sidekick. Michael brings a wealth of insight into the transformative potential of AI in storytelling, extending beyond traditional publishing into exciting new territories like AI-driven movies and multimedia storytelling.
Meet Michael Evans, Innovator in AI and Storytelling
Michael Evans is a trailblazer in the publishing space, leveraging AI to redefine what it means to be a storyteller in today’s digital age. With a background in science fiction authorship and a keen interest in futuristic narratives, Michael has spent the last few years diving deep into the technological side of publishing. His work with Author Sidekick focuses on empowering authors to harness their marketing potential and connect more deeply with readers through innovative uses of AI.
The Abundance Mindset in Publishing
A key theme throughout our discussion with Michael was the idea of abundance in the storytelling industry. He challenges the traditional scarcity mindset, encouraging authors to see the vast potential for growth and impact that AI technologies can unlock. Michael emphasizes that AI should be viewed as a tool to expand the total addressable market for storytelling, allowing creators to reach new audiences and explore new business models.
The Rise of AI Agents and Their Impact on Workflows
Michael discussed the burgeoning role of AI agents in automating and streamlining author workflows. With tools like Claude’s Model Context Protocol (MCP) and integrations with platforms like Zapier, authors can delegate repetitive tasks to AI agents, freeing up time for more creative pursuits. Michael advises authors to evaluate their tasks using a quadrant system to identify areas where AI can add the most value, particularly tasks that are time-consuming but necessary for business success.
AI Movies: The New Frontier for Storytellers
One of the most exciting topics Michael talked about was the potential for AI-driven movies. As AI tools become more sophisticated, they offer storytellers the ability to create rich, multimedia experiences without the prohibitive costs traditionally associated with film production. Michael envisions a future where indie creators can produce serialized television shows and movies, tapping into platforms like TikTok to build audiences and test concepts.
He highlights the success of TikTok channels like Time Traveler POV, which creatively use AI-generated content to captivate audiences. Michael sees this as a precursor to a broader shift where indie storytellers can leverage AI to create and monetize content in new and innovative ways.
Favorite Tools & Recommendations
Michael shared his enthusiasm for several AI tools that are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible in storytelling:
- Hailuo: A powerful tool for animating images and creating dynamic video content.
- Suno and 11 Labs: Excellent for creating immersive audio experiences.
- ChatGPT: Useful for refining prompts and enhancing the effectiveness of other AI tools.
Key Takeaways
- Embrace an abundance mindset and explore new business models for storytelling.
- Utilize AI agents to automate and optimize tasks that are essential but time-consuming.
- Experiment with AI tools to create engaging, multimedia content that resonates with audiences.
- Stay informed about emerging technologies and be prepared to adapt to new opportunities in storytelling.
Resources Mentioned
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 the Brave New Bookshelf. I am one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO of Future Fiction Academy, where we teach authors how to use AI in any part of their business. We are rocking along as usual. I think that’s what I usually say when I hope up these podcasts. Like we’re just rocking around this
Danica Favorite: week it’s all good.
Steph Pajonas: We are, we’re doing a lot. We’re on here. And the effort to keep things moving in my life. We are having lots of interviews and doing lots of fun stuff with the podcast, and that is exciting for me, especially to see and talk to people that I know and enjoy talking to. And we’ll be doing that today.
But before that happens, I’m going to hand off to my lovely co-host, [00:01:00] Danica Favorite. How are you doing?
Danica Favorite: I’m great. I am really good. It’s I’m getting all this Steph time this week, we are recording a bunch of podcasts. Getting a few in the bank because it’s gonna be a busy summer. It’s exciting ’cause we get to see each other a lot right now. For those of you who don’t know me, I am the community manager at Publish Drive where we help authors and publishers at every stage of their journey from getting their manuscript formatted to using our AI tools to get the metadata and book descriptions and book covers for their book, as well as then finally getting your book distributed to the largest available marketplaces. And then finally, once your book is out there, we help you split your royalties.
So lots of cool stuff. And I love that we get to work with the FFA because of course if you’re like, I need help writing the book, they can help you write the book. They can help you market the book. They can help do all of the things.
And I love that between our two companies, everything you need for publishing really [00:02:00] is right there.
Super excited to be here and really excited to have our guest today, Michael Evans. Steph and I have known Michael for a long time, but I feel like I say that about most of our guests. It’s kind of a small world, but I love it.
So we’ve known and love Michael for a long time. He’s got his new business. Some of you may have heard of Author Sidekick and that is Michael’s lovely brainchild. And a few weeks ago I was reading one of his blogs on Substack. Gee, another person on Substack, so hopefully you guys can get on Substack.
But anyway he had a great blog on AI agents and I thought, we’ve gotta have Michael in to talk about this. And so we were talking to Michael a little beforehand saying, yeah, we wanna hear about the AI agents because people are really curious about it. And he says also I’ve got this other thing about AI movies.
And I’m like okay. I guess we’re talking about that too. So we’re gonna get some really cool insight from Michael today. Now I would like to introduce you to our good [00:03:00] friend Michael Evans.
Michael Evans: Hi so awesome to be here. Brave New Bookshelf. I am. I don’t have a bookshelf behind me, which is super sad.
But I am super excited to chat about ai. ’cause really if there’s any topic in publishing that excites me right now, it is ai. And maybe I think it’s such a broad topic that I think I might have some things excite me that maybe don’t excite others that maybe folks aren’t as aware of. So I’m hopefully excited to dive into some things that hopefully are new to some people here.
And if not, then hopefully you at least have fun listening.
But what I do with Author Sidekick is help authors unleash their marketing superpowers to help them somewhere books and connect with readers. And where AI always interests me is it’s, I think, an accelerant to a lot of people’s superpowers.
And also is this huge, real incredible tool that can be used to lower the cost of creation, make things easier, give you a another sidekick, really, because, I can’t be by your [00:04:00] side every single moment as the author’s sidekick. So I’m very interested in AI. I’m very excited to dive into this conversation, talk about it.
And I’m really grateful to you all for hosting this space, bringing together so many people in the industry to talk about this. ’cause there’s just, funnily enough, when there’s something this big, there’s also at the same time really not enough productive conversations being had about it. So really grateful for you guys in the work you’ve done for the community for years now on this front.
Really, you guys are pioneers.
Danica Favorite: Love that. I don’t think we know everything and that’s why we bring in the guests is to make sure we have the people who are doing the things that maybe we’re not doing yet, or can explain it a little better than us to be part of that.
Thanks for being part of this, and thanks for being part of that movement to help authors understand AI better.
Michael Evans: Candidly, like no one can even close to understand everything, like the speed at which it’s all moving at you. You basically have to be tackling this problem as a community to even approach having awareness.
Steph Pajonas: It’s true. Even somebody like me who’s working with [00:05:00] AI literally all the time, every day there’s only so much I can put in my brain and so many tools that I can be aware of because they’re coming out like a big fire hose, right? It’s like one after another, after another.
So it’s good to talk to other people and to see what’s going on. And this is one of the wonderful things about having this podcast now, because we can hear about these things from other people too.
Danica Favorite: To get started, let’s find out, I wanna hear about how you are approaching AI in publishing.
What is that approach? How are you seeing it and using it? What you’re seeing with the work you’re doing in publishing.
Michael Evans: Yeah. I know that y’all have brought on many different types of folks into the podcast. Many authors, many other people working a little bit more on the industry side, like me. I started off as a science fiction author, which I guess I’ve always been more a futuristic leaning.
This was back in 2017 when I was indie publishing and then really four years ago, but especially so over the last three and a half years have really diven deep on the industry side and thinking more about the technology side of [00:06:00] publishing and leading various ventures there. And now how I approach thinking about AI where I really spend my time is looking at what new business model opportunities and really how this industry can expand its total addressable market or the number of people we can impact through AI.
So that’s really what I’m excited about, is like how can we unlock new growth in publishing as an entire segment. And then I think for individual authors, there’s obviously incredible opportunity to utilize these tools to grow your own business and make things happen faster too, which of course I’m also interested in.
But if I was to be honest with what intellectually excites me the most is I think that very few times in history if we look back through the technology of information technology in particular, you obviously the printing press you have like distribution of mass media. You’ve got like the rise of big, big bookstores.
And then you’ve got the rise of the internet Kindle. And now we’re entering a stage where we’re having [00:07:00] AI and I think that AI should be viewed as big of a moment as these types of massive revolutions. We don’t know how it’s gonna pan out yet, but when a new technology window opens up, what I’m most curious for is not just what kind of creations can be made, but how do those new creations again lead to a new business model?
Because each time we’ve seen a shift in who makes money in publishing and how they make money, and also who’s paying for it and how they’re paying for it. In terms of these stories, I don’t see demand for storytelling going down. I see it going up. And I also see the impact of individual storytellers greatly increasing.
So what I’m most interested in now is when we think about the industry of publishing and we think about ourselves as storytellers, not authors, I think in five years the word indie author is going to be less and less often used ’cause it’s less instructive of what we’re actually doing. ’cause we’re actually storytellers, first and foremost, and authorship we think of in the context of books, in the format of the book.
But if [00:08:00] we’re able to use these tools to create mediums well beyond books and monetize and really reach discovery in industries well beyond what we think of as a traditional author, then we’re not necessarily indie authors anymore. We’re independent storytellers.
So that’s the question that I’m most excited about. And whether it’s games, whether it’s movies, whether it’s music, opening these opportunities up to more and more storytellers.
You brought up AI agents as well. I am curious to see where that goes. And I’m also very excited by how those can help, especially full-time authors. But I’m always wary when we think about automation from like a business operation standpoint.
I think that sometimes for authors who are just getting started, if you don’t have necessarily workflows in place yet, ’cause you’re just getting started, AI plays a different role for you and still a valuable role, but a different role than like an AI agent who might go out and be able to like, make all your newsletter campaigns and be able to go up and follow up with your readers and, create a thousand ad images of [00:09:00] you.
I know an author right now who has Hailuo and Midjourney running on their machine and has 1800 different short form videos being created in 36 hours to promote one of her books. And then that’s gonna go off and like actually, be a bunch of different tiktoks and Facebook ads, which is brilliant.
That’s less of a cool thing, although freaking awesome. Less of a cool thing if you don’t have a story yet that, has an audience that people like. ’cause otherwise, like why are you putting money behind something, right? And why are you creating 1800 videos to promote something that you’re not sure is a good product yet?
So I think that’s where like this segmenting of the conversation interesting. AI impacts so many different people in different ways. It’s not one size fits all.
But for me, the things I’m excited about are how do we help authors who are scaling do it without, basically killing all their time and being super stressed out.
And then how do we help authors at any stage, be able to not just be authors, but to be truly multimedia storytellers and to basically build their own mini Disney.
And I think that future’s not really a future anymore. It’s just unequally distributed. And maybe after this podcast, that future will be distributed to you.
Steph Pajonas: I am [00:10:00] so jazzed about this because I have been saying for a long time that AI is one of these, it’s like a force multiplier, right? So if you’re a little burgeoning author and you don’t have much yet, sure, putting AI into your process is gonna give you that next oomph up. You know where you’re gonna be going.
But if you’re one of these people that’s already got 30 books out, 50 books out, a hundred books out, it’s a force multiplier and boom, suddenly you are really huge. I feel like if you can just use the tools to just get you to that like next step, and then from there to that next step, after that you can use these tools in order to make that even better, even bigger, even louder, all the things that we need to do in order to reach our audience.
And I totally agree about the storyteller. I’ve been saying for a long time that we’re storytellers. It doesn’t matter if you typed that word onto the screen or if you spoke your story out loud or you acted it out in a one act, on a community theater stage.
[00:11:00] All of these things are stories and the way that we get them to people is not really the thing that matters so much, right? You want to be able to express yourself in a way that’s creative to you. So maybe that is with words or maybe it’s with images or video or these sorts of things.
So when we add in these AI tools and we’re getting the chance to express ourselves in the way that we’re excited about it shows in the final product and you’re gonna be able to see people’s stories come to life. That’s super exciting to me.
Michael Evans: Yeah. And also as well, words are really an abstraction or however you choose to express yourself are an abstraction of our ideas.
And I think like the truest version of yourself is the version of yourself inside of your brain that we all try to understand and no one really knows what’s going on in there, but we try to tap into that and we try and share that with the world and with our readers or viewers or whoever that category as you’re going after.
The AI conversations around it is LLM is ’cause there’s been incredible progress from large language models. But they have two interesting [00:12:00] effects is that it’s not just about, you using language now, be able to turn language into a bunch of other things, but it’s also being able to have your own language, really super charged by this thing that’s able to help you flesh out your ideas. So that you’re not having all this friction to say, okay, I have this beautiful idea, but I don’t know how to put it down into paper.
Guess what? This thing can help you now. And you’re not limited to just that tool. You can lean on author friends, you can lean on anyone in your life.
But let’s be real. If it’s 1:00 AM your partner’s sleeping and your author friends are all maybe sleeping or maybe they’re up late like you on Discord or whatever, you might just feel like this is the easiest way to be able to get help.
And it also extends, beyond just thinking about the creation of content, but thinking about the marketing aspect as well, which I love, which is like, how can we innovate more there?
Let’s say you hate writing newsletters, but you’re able to spend more time now thinking about how can we create an interesting experience for readers?
What’s that prompt gonna be to myself first and foremost, and then maybe to a machine that can lead to [00:13:00] something that’s going to actually engage folks.
‘Cause when we’re thinking about publishing the truth is that we haven’t seen some crazy disruption to the business model with AI. And I actually think that we’re going to see crazy disruption in other sectors, but that isn’t necessarily gonna be books.
Because even if you have something like Plotdrive, helping you create a book much, much faster than maybe you would be able to traditionally and still of great quality, right? Potentially even greater quality than you would alone. That’s certainly what’s possible today. That’s not a fictional future.
This sounds weird and it feels uncomfortable, but wow, someone created a book and let’s call it a day or two days of work versus maybe 14 or 15 days of work because people think it takes a year to labor of a book. Even in a pre AI era. I remember my fastest book I produce was 14 days, and I’m not the fastest writer in the world. Mind you, I’m probably in the faster end of the spectrum. But when we look at that from like a business overall industry perspective, 14 days to one day when it’s one person’s time isn’t actually all that disruptive.
It’s in the sense of an industry wide scope. It’s really hyper useful. It’s hyper useful for you as an [00:14:00] individual storyteller. But we haven’t seen publishing fall apart. We haven’t seen quote unquote, AI books, flood everything because that’s was never really gonna happen. But more importantly, our industry is based on a power law in which very few books sell a ton.
And the most of the cost and most of the advantage is coming in from the distribution aspect, by tapping into culture and being able to increase your word of mouth and being able to increase your distribution, either algorithmically or through some other sales channel, you’re able to get in front of eyeballs.
So that’s where a lot of the dollars are going into still, and they already were. Disruption has taken place, but it’s more disruption that helps you, the individual if you choose to use it.
But now what I’m seeing is something different, which is that there’s other sectors, movies, for instance, in games where the disruption’s going to be unbelievable because it never costs a million dollars to make a book.
You could make a book for in terms of human time, several thousand dollars, right? That’s the truth. Movies cost millions. Traditionally. You can produce indie film for much cheaper than that, but you’re still talking [00:15:00] about exponentially more than it produced to cost a book. Now, if we’re bringing that cost exponentially closer to zero, it’s not gonna be at zero, but exponentially closer.
We’re seeing massive disruption. Same thing in games, right? It costs, on average $60 million whatever to produce AAA game. And then you’ve got like everything else that goes into it, the marketing budget.
There’s these other industries that are being disrupted. Right now that storytellers now can think about how does my IP play into it? How do I want to now break into that? And where the conversation around AI gets really exciting. ’cause I think for so long we’ve had this scarcity mindset around this technology around there is only so many readers, there is only so many number one bestsellers.
So maybe it’s taking away from us. And I want to say I get that because you weren’t given a reason to believe in a ton more because yeah. This author’s benefiting it from individually, this author’s benefit individually, but there’s this disruption happening and who is it really helping?
It feels like it’s helping big tech and maybe the individual author’s taking advantage of it. And it feels almost like nihilistic go for it, but and yes, it’s great for that person, but what does this [00:16:00] really do for the industry? And a lot of people, again, felt like I don’t see the growth, so I only see downward slope.
I don’t see harm. I want to be very clear there. And I think that’s an important point. But what I actually see, which is really exciting, is unbelievable growth and that we’re actually able to tap into a much, much bigger market where the KU page read payout pool or whatever that’s a lot of money.
But I just worked for a single creator who this year, and I’m saying this because the information reported it too, their deck got leaked. So I can say this now and no one can get mad at me for the NDA. Mr. Beast is gonna make close to a billion dollars this year. So I worked for a single creator who’s going to make more than every author in the entire world combined, will get paid out in KU this year.
And that guy started with nothing and was making nothing like even five years ago really. So that’s why I believe in abundance, because the ceiling, that this is all possible in individual creators. Storytelling online is way bigger than you probably just believed 30 seconds ago.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I [00:17:00] like that you put it in the framing of abundance because I think that too many authors have that scarcity mentality. And it’s interesting to me because we don’t talk a lot about it. I know there’s like certain areas of the author community that will talk about it and certainly it’s an area that I really believe in.
And I know Steph also leans in that direction as well. It is just this idea that, we have to believe in that abundance and we have to look at things with that abundance mentality because there’s so many authors with that scarcity mentality who thinks that the author pie is this big, and each of us gets a slice of that pie? Sorry, I was holding up my hands in a little circle gesture to show a pie for those of you who are listening.
But yeah, like we’ve always been believing this lie as authors, that there is a pie. It is X number big. We all are fighting to get a slice of that pie. But if instead we say there is this abundance out there with no limitation and we can [00:18:00] all have as much as we want, that’s a totally different way of looking at it. And so thanks for bringing that up, because it’s a huge passion of mine and I never get to talk about it as much as I like, so I’m like, yes.
Michael Evans: Yeah. I think it’s super important for everyone to remember. ’cause the folks here who are listening to this, y’all are not gonna be the typical person, the author community and I mean that in a beautiful way. You are ahead of the curve here that, or you were just sent this and are now getting ahead of the curve. This is not your first time tuning into the Brave New Bookshelf. You probably, you see it. But I think that it’s very easy to lose the script because the meta narrative of society right now, and I’m not gonna get political, there’s no reason for it, but the meta narrative of society at large is scarcity. It’s this whole idea that, this person took away from us, however they did, whether they moved into the country or they automated something, it’s this idea of taketh away. They taketh away.
And I studied history of science in college. I love history as much as I love the future, and [00:19:00] history proves that there are periods of stagnation. Periods where things are scarce. But that was a choice that we made together as society.
So when I say that there, there is abundance, I’m actually not saying that as a certainty. I’m saying that as an opportunity. I’m saying that because we have to will that future into an existence and create it together. So if we’re not actively pursuing what could be and trying to create more and dreaming at the edges of what’s possible. Literally trying to create the Brave New Bookshelf. If that’s not what we’re doing, then maybe we will prove the meta narrative right. And that’s good for no one that’s good, for no pro AI or anti AI or someone in between. That’s good for absolutely no one.
So I think that’s our responsibility as folks who are here in this conversation, is you get to wield this technology, not just for your life, but for the unbelievable greater good of learning, disseminating and building a whole new culture and practice around an industry that can stand for and be much more than we [00:20:00] thought.
So I think that’s like my inspiring moment and I’m excited to get more practical, but that’s my big picture, like why I am so excited about this and why for a long time I think I was quieter about it. Mostly because I don’t have necessarily some AI tool that I’ve created or that I’m even planning to necessarily create.
I didn’t necessarily have a reason to be in the conversation in some big way ’cause I didn’t feel like I had that much to add, but then I realized the thing I have to add is hope. So I’m giving you that hope and I think we all need it right now.
Danica Favorite: I completely agree and thank you for the inspiring moment.
Like I said, this is a huge passion of mine. I know Steph is also in that same category, and I think you’re right. And that is 100% why Brave New Bookshelf exists is we wanted to be able to give that hope and to give that information and knowledge to other authors because seriously, you guys, I’ve said this on the show before, I am a tech dummy.
I’m really bad at tech stuff and I can do this. You guys can too. With that, let’s move into some of those practical things you were [00:21:00] talking about. Tell us about your practical stuff that you’ve got to share today.
Michael Evans: Yeah, let’s start with AI agents ’cause that was the first thing we talked about, but then let’s move into movies ’cause I’m excited about both.
But when it comes to AI agents it’s a space that, is evolving quickly, but with Claude’s Model Context Protocol which it’s like abbreviated MCP, but I’m no expert on it. The short story in it is that it’s essentially a thing that Claude built that allows AI tools to communicate with other things on the internet through Claude.
So that you can basically say, Hey, Claude, I want you to go do this for me in my Google Doc or go do this for me on this website if it’s hooked up to it. And theoretically, and this theoretical thing is becoming true very quickly. Zapier just integrated with MCP. I saw that announcement from their CEO I believe yesterday. Maybe it was today.
More of the internet now is being exposed directly to LLMs, which is interesting because we’ve used to been asking an LLM, Hey, like I have this idea, or Hey, can you output this thing for me? And it being a more like chat bot experience. But how I have seen this [00:22:00] described, ’cause I do not proclaim to be an expert on this in any way, is the chat bot interface of working with artificial intelligence in particular is very similar to maybe the like command line way interacting with the internet in the early days.
So we’re still waiting for great graphical user interfaces. Great actual like web browsers. Like the equivalent of all the things we use to interface with the internet now and my actual piece of advice, ’cause a lot of this stuff is I’m not prepared to be an expert teacher to you. I’m also so aware that it’s evolving and that a lot of these things when it comes to agents are literally just gonna change in three to six months.
So to not date this podcast, what you need to think about is one really key thing, which is in your business, think of it as a quadrant of four different types of tasks.
There’s things you absolutely love and create a lot of value for you, meaning money. ’cause we’re running businesses. I wanna be clear about that. Emotional value is great, but that’s the love part. So you love it and it creates a lot of like economic value for you. Then you have things that you love but don’t create a lot of economic value for you.
Then you have things you hate and that don’t create a lot of economic [00:23:00] value for you. Then you have things you hate and they do create a lot of economic value for you.
The things you love in general, I’m not asking you to immediately change your workflow or imagine how that could be different. I think that’s important, but that’s not where I think you should start.
And the things that don’t make you money and that you hate, I think you should stop doing. And I don’t even think you should think about automating for the most part. And if you have to do it like taxes. Fair enough. But I always bring in a serious question. If it’s not effective and it’s not making you money, do you have to be doing it?
For instance, I see a lot of authors talking about, automating their social media posts. And don’t get me wrong, that’s a cool idea, but if social media doesn’t make you money and if you’re still getting no views and no likes in your Instagram posts, cool, you just automated something that’s pretty much effectively useless. So that was a wasted time.
You’re better off thinking about how can you make the thing itself better, which you could use AI to do. Hey, my social media posts, I don’t wanna automate. I wanna think about how can I make them better. Here’s all my performance of my social media posts. Here’s my outliers. AKA, which ones have done better and why? So which one got a hundred impressions versus 10 on average? [00:24:00] And then feed it into it and literally try and have it tell you why it did better.
If you can’t think that yourself, ’cause you could also go through the same process yourself.
Now, the quadrant that’s really exciting to me is where you hate it, but it makes you money. And here are some obvious areas of it. If you’re selling direct, like all these Klaviyo or you don’t have to use Klaviyo. Similar like automation flows, like abandoned checkout, or abandoned recovery, excuse me. You might have like post-purchase follow-ups, you might have all these different things. Or another area when we think about like Facebook ads creating like a bunch of different images and Midjourney that like will be different variations to try and find winning images.
These are areas that are quite probably profitable for you. That’s a very good thing. If they are, I would love that. And, but you might also hate them.
So where I’m really excited about agents is being able to say all the admin work of pressing these buttons of having to go in and go, okay, mailing list. Like I now need to go out to this segment, to that segment. You can just use natural language, right? To be able to execute all of these tasks.
Now, my one kind of qualm with AI agents is that I don’t know how much [00:25:00] the big platforms are gonna open themselves up to it. Specifically like I’m curious to see how open Facebook is to it. I’m curious to see how open YouTube is to it. They might not be, so there might be a lot of places where AI agents break, because I don’t know how far they’re gonna be able to extend themselves. Obviously you have like operator with ChatGPT that can do a lot itself too. We have to see how tech plays together.
But when it comes to mailing list providers, it’s a very clear area where you should start to think about, okay, how can I take the best practices of what an incredible email looks like and only do that? So instead of thinking about writing 10 more newsletters. Every week I have to write a newsletter. I want you to think about writing the SOP, the standard operating procedure for the best newsletter ever.
With examples, ’cause examples gonna be good with example headlines and create one thing. And maybe it takes you more time than what you’d normally write one newsletter with, but if you build that crazy prompt, you’ll be able to use that forever in the future.
And now that prompt could also be used eventually too, to [00:26:00] just send it out the yourself, like the go, go for it, Claude or whatever. So I think that’s where I’m really excited about automation for authors when it comes to agents, is diving deep into specific workflows, building out incredible prompts by creating literally the best possible version of what that thing could be, and then never having to make any one thing ever again.
So that’s a little bit hyperbolic, but not too hyperbolic because if you give something one really good thing. It can create 10, 20, 30 different versions of it.
So that’s how I would think about it. When you’re thinking about automating, dive deeper, come up with better prompts, and also more importantly, because it’s gonna take time to do this right, really think about do I need to be doing this? Is it actually profitable for me? Is this something that actually generates value in my business? Or can I just not do this at all and move on with my life?
Steph Pajonas: Yeah. I love agents. Because mostly I can get them to do the things that I really just don’t wanna do. So that’s definitely goes down into that [00:27:00] quadrant where it’s like the things I don’t like to do, but I know that they move the needle, so I’ll get the agent to do that. I’m definitely, at this point in my life I’m almost 50. I’ll be 50 in January where if I hate it and it does not move the needle, it’s gone. That quadrant of my life does not even exist anymore.
Michael Evans: Get it out. Get it
Steph Pajonas: out. Go bye-bye. But I would love to come back and start talking about the movies. I’m interested in this as a lot of people who know me or have been around the Brave New Bookshelf for a while know that in the beginning of the year, I experimented with doing some audio chapter versions of my books with AI images, which I sometimes also turned into AI video as well. And I would edit them all up and put onto YouTube. And it was fun and it was seriously really inspiring and exciting. But it was also frustrating sometimes because the technology wasn’t necessarily there yet.
I kept having a lot of inconsistencies with my images and whatnot, but I could tell [00:28:00] that for shorter works, especially things like a 30 second reel or a TikTok or these sorts of things where you’re trying to show the vibe of your book and show the way that you want your readers to feel when they’re reading it, that it was really good for that kind of stuff.
And I know that is something that you’re super interested in.
Michael Evans: Yeah, first of all, have you seen the TikTok page, Time Traveler POV?
Steph Pajonas: No, I haven’t. I will go look it up when I’m done here.
Michael Evans: Yeah, it’s great. And a call out to folks listening. Great page. So I think they’re doing something that is a very interesting framework to approach this.
So when I was working for Mr. Beast, I took a brief, like hiatus in the publishing industry for folks who don’t know it, and I went to go work in the strategy team for Mr. Beast. I had like kinda three different areas I worked on.
One was data and analytics for the main channel, which is why I was talking about using ChatGPT as a thought partner to get an area of your business that might not be generating economic value for you yet, but you hate, instead of thinking about automating it, thinking about improving the process first, then, automating that process.
And, a lot of that [00:29:00] came back to data when it comes to at least marketing and discoverability, which I imagine is going to be where most of these tasks bucket into for folks when it comes to the, it’s not working and I hate it and I wanna automate it. It’s wait, they’re not working. Red flag, let’s dive in.
I did platform relationships which was fun, but then I also was able to dive really deeply into new technology and AI and how we could use that to make the videos better itself. But also thinking about like brand new disruption to the whole process they have.
When it comes to where I see the opportunity right now in AI video, it’s imagining completely new or new genres within existing content formats that never would’ve been profitable to ever create. Time Traveler POV is a really good case study of this.
They would be incredible marketing for historical fiction author. They’re essentially creating future histories or mostly like past histories. Okay, one of the videos I remember very distinctly, you wake up in Chernobyl, right?
And you have 11 labs doing the different sound effects. They’ve just prompted different things. You could also use Suno for this as well. I love both tools. I actually like, as a joke now, we’ll pull [00:30:00] out Suno with friends and be like, oh hey, let’s make a song for this, right? We have an inside joke now we have a song for the inside joke. ‘Cause it’s fun. 11 labs I feel like I use just more for like purely business context, but SUNO is really fun.
But regardless, that’s their audio track. They’re then bringing the audio track together with clips that they’ve taken Midjourney to make the images and then Kling to animate it. I honestly think, I never know how to say it, I think it’s hail is how you say it. It’s really good. I think it’s better than Kling, to be honest with you. I don’t think it’s maybe as widely known as Kling, but I like it more. Regardless you take then the static image or your image prompt and then bring it into either Kling or Hailuo. And then you’re taking that and then actually making the short form video and they’re literally walking you through, right? What your life would be like for 30 to 60 seconds if you woke up in Chernobyl.
That’s very interesting. You would never be able to create that without AI. Let’s be real like AI or to be fair with us. Still advanced technology using AI and enterprise software tools that are extremely expensive using like top line, some of the best sound effect and really incredible visual effects centers in [00:31:00] the world, where that one minute might cost you several hundred thousand dollars to produce. That’s traditional way of doing it, which there’s no TikTok in the world that like, unless you get a hundred million views, that video is not gonna be profitable spending that much on a single TikTok.
But now that you can spend, let’s call it for real, it’s like you’re spending less than $10 on the credits for this, right? It’s less than 10. And able to create this now it becomes profitable. So they’re getting hundreds of thousands of views per video. They’ve grown their channel from nothing to over half a million followers. I believe it’s at 600 K now. When you’re listening, it might be more. Each thing is this unique entrance into this world. This is storytelling in a different context and different format. But what I love about it is they’re very much recognizing the limitations of where AI is at. Like in this very moment.
You mentioned, character consistency now has gotten a lot better very recently. So you could literally imagine like they started this a couple months ago. Okay, that limitation’s gone. But that this format they built around when that limitation was in place there isn’t great limitation around like world and object.
So they’re [00:32:00] not trying to create this type of long form content right now. What they have done is something very interesting. You’ve built a huge audience now that could one, buy a book, but two also could want a full length film for you. And if I’m thinking about how I’m building an audience and selling before I create, this next version of media, I’m going to TikTok, I’m going to reels, and I’m thinking, what is the movie that I want to create? And then if I wasn’t creating a movie, but creating a little show in that universe that was sixty second snippets into it, what would that look like? And then do that. So you could do POV, you could do comedy, you could do tons of different formats, right?
That work. But adopting existing formats that are already viral. POV is one of them. And then taking it to this fictional context, like fictional day in the life of characters is like very interesting. A day in the life of someone, like in 23,000. If you’re a science fiction author. A day in the life of someone who’s married to a billionaire, that’s freaking cool, right?
A day in the life living on Jeff Bezos’s yacht. That’s a fun TikTok. These are [00:33:00] things that would do well. Like they would immediately grab someone’s attention.
If you wanna get into the opportunity I’m about to discuss, which is the opportunity coming to AI movies, which is not too futuristic. If you wanna get into that now, it’s about building an audience that loves similar content to yours and ideally also overlaps with your books.
And the ways that you now can market your books are incredible and bonus tips. Take the best performing reels and videos and make them paid ads. You can make a really entertaining paid ad around, I’ll use another example, like a werewolf, or I know an author who had spider cats, which is cool. So you have this Spider cat video that’s, maybe you fall in love with a spider cat. That can be a thing. Okay, this did well on TikTok, let me now run paid ads against it to sell my books.
But then the bigger opportunity, or maybe not potentially bigger, but an equally awesome opportunity. We’ll see how big it is it’s going to be now, if viewers are coming to you for these videos, they like these videos. What happens when we can turn 30 to 60 second videos into 10 minute episodes and those 10 minute episodes become 10 episode long seasons or 20 episode long seasons?
Now vertical movies is like close to a billion dollar annual a [00:34:00] year market. Quietly, people don’t talk about this, right? Just like people didn’t talk about all the things indie authors are creating and how we were tapping into markets and creating content that was never profitable on a traditional bookshelf, right?
So now these new technologies leading to quote unquote new bookshelves that we’re able to create things for.
And what I’m really excited by now is thinking about this future. What does that look like? That’s indie led, which is really what I’m now investing my time and energy and corralling my own army to build and thinking behind this future for movies where we can think about serialized fiction and eBooks and actually create serialized television shows that anyone can create, probably starting vertical.
And what I found is that the issues that exist with character consistency now are gone. The issues that consist with, world consistency are like still an issue, but I don’t know how big of an issue. And given the content that exists now, that’s still making money, I’m not clear on what is minimally viable from a customer [00:35:00] standpoint, from an engagement standpoint. But we are scary close to it.
I’m now ready to start diving into testing that and actually saying, what does indie led serialized television shows look like? What does the business model look like from the ground up?
How can we go and do that? So I’m expanding with a group of like 10 authors right now where we’re all literally going out as a group and doing this and trying to document SOPs and building this just in our own little Discord server.
I’ve got a bunch of friends. I’ve an engineer who he’s dropping outta school right now and he’s building the monetization for this. I’ve got another guy who just quit his job in Hollywood and he’s going all in on now learning more about these tools from, again, an SOP perspective. I’m literally nearly going all in behind the scenes on this opportunity around.
I am utterly convinced that there’s a business opportunity in AI movies that we’re right at the cusp of customer engagement probably already being there in terms of these products being more than good enough.
I think that we’re at this stage now where if you took you a hundred hours to write a book, I think you can do a movie in about a hundred hours. [00:36:00] I think we’re getting close to that. Why not take your IP that’s in a book and bring it to the screen?
That’s what I’m really going all in on. Fictional content already has high demand on even social platforms, which, YouTube was traditionally known to be more of a edutainment or maybe vlogging or lifestyle platform, game shows or whatever. Not like for fiction.
Alan Chicken Chow’s a great creator who has 90 million followers insane all on YouTube following his fictional show. These are Gen Alpha folks watching it set in like a fantasy high school. And it’s crushing it. It’s not episodic. There’s tied together, ’cause YouTube’s algo doesn’t work well with episodic, but young kids already watching everything native to social, they’re not even going to Netflix.
So the future Netflix is you, it’s indie creators already.
And you know what’s really scary is that Gen Alpha’s gonna be in high school like basically now. And Gen Alpha’s literally gonna be adults. So like we talk about Gen Z being kids any, but they’re not kids anymore. And Gen Alpha’s now the new generation. Gen Alpha [00:37:00] doesn’t care about Netflix, right?
So Gen Alpha cares only about indie creators. And you could think about it like the people who grew up just with the audiobooks and eBooks, they don’t even know what traditional publishing is. Random House, who is she? So that world and thinking about your business in that world, getting familiar with these tools, using these tools to advertise your books now, to build an audience now, and then thinking about that audience and not a distant future.
You have insider knowledge. It’s almost like insider trading at this point where the Kindle’s about to come out and you know it, and now you’re preparing for it and you don’t have to prepare for it. I’m a freak. I’m weird like that. But at least being aware is nice.
And you’re now aware, like the Kindle’s coming out, the Kindle moment for tv. And if I’m in Hollywood, I’m scared or I’m quitting my job to go and do this. But if I’m you as an indie storyteller I’m incredibly excited because you don’t need anyone to green light your film anymore. You don’t need multimillion dollar budgets.
You don’t need to impress someone. Some set of actors, which we love actors and I think actors will have a [00:38:00] place, right? ’cause a lot of this is gonna be hybrid too, to be completely fair. But the fact that we can do fully native AI generated films and that you in your bedroom can create video, but never use a camera, is a moment just as big as having the iPhone camera.
And we saw platforms like Instagram come out, Snapchat, YouTube totally evolved being mobile first. Facebook evolved being mobile first. That shift is just as big because just as now. Anyone can create with their camera, anyone can create with their mind.
And I am just so incredibly excited. So we’re gonna need new platforms, we’re gonna need new business models for this, but it’s not completely brand new because I think we’re literally bringing serialized fiction and opening it up to other creators.
So that’s what I’m literally working on now. I have nothing to announce outside of I’m spending time in it and experimenting it behind the scenes. And my excitement might, be 10 x what it should be. But I think that there deserves to be some excitement here. And you deserve to look into this too.
There’s gonna be new agencies that come out. There’s gonna be new studios, AI native studios. There’s gonna be whole new jobs built around this, [00:39:00] right?
So literally like you could be a highly skilled, video prompt engineer, video AI movie maker. And these people could be very valuable. Imagine taking a revenue share of established IP in the indie space that might not gross millions of dollars, but might gross tens of thousands, multi six figures in something like this.
I have no intention of doing anything like that. I just wanna go build a platform and see if the business works because that’s what I love, the network effects, the platform side of things. But when it comes to, you guys listening.
If you have any itch to do things besides just writing books and wanna go in for more. I see this as there’s gonna be a hundred successful businesses spawned from this and thousands of people who make a living doing things like this. And no one, literally no one in the world is doing this right now.
There’s not a single person where they’re making a living doing this. And in two years we’re gonna look back and be like, oh, there’s thousands of jobs that are created. So maybe one of you listening has that job. Maybe one of you listening is one of those creators who’s able to make a living doing something like this.
Maybe one of you listening works with someone doing that and goes, I don’t care, but I wanna at least know. So this is my call out to you. Pay [00:40:00] attention, watch this space and get interested in these tools. So my action item is like, use these tools, have even more fun with it.
And yes. Think about how it can benefit your business today. ’cause it will, but also think about the skills you’re building. And how those skills are gonna be valuable tomorrow.
There’s nuances to these new tools, but they’re also similar, right? They have similarities. They get more and better and more powerful over time. But the thinking of working and collaborating with this thing is what you need to do. And I want you to take this away from writing, away from just, I’m making copy and now to, how do I turn my experiences into things that aren’t just books? Because for me, in my world, beyond the book, that’s what I’m jazzed about.
Danica Favorite: I love that. I love that. Thank you. That was a lot. In fact, it was just the idea of all of this stuff, I’m like, yeah, I wanna be on the movie thing.
That sounds super fun. And I’m like, okay Michael, I want in on all of this because that is something I’ve always wanted to do. And it’s really interesting what you’re saying about the technology not quite being [00:41:00] there yet, but it’s coming.
Steph, how many times have we said that in this podcast from day one about something we wanna do? Oh, the technology’s not there yet, but it will, and then it comes sooner than we think.
Steph Pajonas: A million times at least.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. Yeah. I love your advice for people to just jump in and start and play with it and learn it, because that really is where everyone is gonna have that leg up.
The other thing I really loved about what you were saying is the possibilities of all the new jobs that are gonna be created. I have a good friend of mine, she’s in a mastermind that I’m in, and she helps write the curriculum for the school district for their computer stuff.
Whoa. And she’s writing the AI curriculum for her students. And I think what we’re gonna see, whatever the generation after the A or whatever like that next generation their classroom assignments is going to be making these movies. So that is the future. [00:42:00] And it’s exciting to me that we get to be part of that.
And I’m so grateful to you for sharing that with us. Usually we ask about the workflow, but you’ve given us some really awesome workflows. I think like our last question about your favorite AI tool. You’ve talked about a lot of tools, so can you pick a favorite? Is there one that people should really start looking at or is it like, no man, just check them all out?
Michael Evans: I think Hailuo’s impressive. And it’s lesser known, and it’s impressive. So I think you should check that one out. Because what it’s capable of is really cool. And specifically as well, if you aren’t using Chat GPT to help you make better prompts for things like Midjourney and for things like Hailuo and any of the tools you use I would recommend doing that because a lot of times you just have to play around the prompting, which I know you all talk about all the time.
But if you don’t have to necessarily come up with all these innovations yourself. You can literally use AI to help you use other AI better, which is hilarious, but it’s awesome. So don’t just get lost using this tool. You can go to [00:43:00] ChatGPT be like, Hey, chat I’m trying to accomplish this. Tell me what a great prompt would be like for this. That context will be really helpful for the other tools you’re working with. But yeah, Hailuo would be my one tool. I don’t wanna overwhelm people with any more than I already shared.
Steph Pajonas: That’s a great way to get people to go and check out these new tools that are on the market. Because, we’ve got Kling, we’ve got Runway. Those were like the granddaddies of AI video. And now we’ve got all these new burgeoning companies coming up that are doing really cool stuff too. They see what the foundation companies have done and they’re like, yeah, but I’m gonna do that different and better.
And then you get a chance to reap the benefits and rewards from that. So thank you.
Michael Evans: Yeah. I love, no I’m excited.
Steph Pajonas: I love learning about new tools, so that’s awesome.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I especially like the ones, where people are talking about them and where you can give us that guidance of this is a good tool, because I think every day, it seems like in the AI for Writing Authors group we get, oh, hey, I heard about this tool. What do you think about this tool? It’s some brand new tool no one’s ever heard of. And we’re [00:44:00] like, yeah, but like to have something that, hey, this is a new tool and somebody’s got experience with is really good because there are a million tools out there, but as you pointed out they’re not all gonna last.
I like that we’ve got that recommendation of what seems to be a good tool that’s gonna last.
Michael Evans: Yeah, there’s so many other tools. I think what we’re waiting for in the video space, I’m not building something akin into this, but we’re waiting for a sort of Cursor native to like making AI videos because that’s super, super needed.
‘Cause for those who like, aren’t familiar with the coding space Cursor, allows you to pull in all these different models into one code space and then allow you to like, be able to work with them all. So it’s like an AI native, like IDE which we’re waiting for in kind of video. If folks have been familiar with video, i’d say in writing we used to word use things like Word, which nothing wrong if you still use it, but you might use something like Word or, there was other iterations like Scrivener that were helpful. I think in the video space, this sort of analogies been like Final Cut Pro, Adobe Premier.
And those tools are useful and I’ve used and been [00:45:00] on those timelines for hours and hours. And Cap Cut now is like the new sexy version, but we need a version talking natively with different AI tools. So as like a call out to the community, I think that’s something for everyone to collectively keep your minds on. Someone when they do that, and come out with that. I don’t know. There’s gonna be competitors. We’ll have to see who’s best. ’cause obviously Cursor has the Windsurf competitor, which got bought by OpenAI for 3 billion. Not a bad outcome for those folks, but I think that’s what I’m waiting for because that’s gonna make this whole process easier.
Oh, new AI tool come out. Cool. I’m just plugging and playing this in to my same timeline that we’re using to make movies anyways. ’cause we’re not reimagining, just like with books, we’re not completely reimagining what a movie looks like. We’re reimagining how to make it, who can make it, and then by proxy what can be made, which is exactly what’s happening in books.
So I think tying that together into one workspace is like absolutely needed here. And I apologize that doesn’t exist now, but that’s part of being early here, right? Because coding had its big moment, really fall of 2024 video is like having its moment now, but I don’t think it’s had its like Claude moment yet when Claude had, its like sonnet update and was like, oh my God, [00:46:00] okay, coding’s really good now.
Or the Chat GPT update when three actually started to get better, right? With oh, okay okay, like 3.5 now ChatGPT is seriously good at writing. It’s like another level. I don’t think we’ve had that video yet. So that’s the other thing that I think we should all be wary of is your expectations should be slightly muted.
This isn’t insane yet. It’s impressive, just the fact it’s possible. But these tools are quote unquote behind where writing is. I don’t know if behinds the right perspective, but like it feels behind.
Steph Pajonas: I was gonna say, I think that Adobe will probably be the first one to market.
They have AI tools already built into Photoshop. Why wouldn’t you build them into Premier? So I have a feeling that they’ll probably be one of the first. And Apple as well is working with a lot of AI companies and doing a lot of AI stuff. And I’m sure that it will be in Final Cut Pro in no time but there are these sexy new tools like Cap Cut and whatnot that are probably gonna beat them to the market.
So it’s just gonna, it’s possible. We’re just gonna have to hang in there and see what comes of it, because that is the exciting part. Who’s gonna hit it first?
Michael Evans: [00:47:00] I know it’s a cool space to watch.
Danica Favorite: But here’s what I was thinking about as you were saying that, especially if you want to be an early adopter in the space, start learning it and using it now.
I think about the FFA and where the FFA started and having their clunky tools and all of that, that I know some people still use and love, and now they’ve been able to put that in a wrapper and have Plotdrive, which is super cool and so much easier, at least in my opinion. I know some people would disagree and that’s okay, but being part of that early adopter and that early development space, that’s really the key because that is how you’re going to learn and how you’re going to be at the front of the race.
Gosh, Michael, I’m so glad you were here today. You have given us so much to think about. Like my mind is just whoa, there’s so much more we’re gonna get to do with AI. And I love that I’m excited even more than I was before. Do you have any final [00:48:00] thoughts, anything left that you wanted to share with us before we let you go?
Michael Evans: Yeah, Kindle Unlimited is gonna pay out what, 700 million to authors this year. Netflix is gonna make like 36 billion or something like that. YouTube’s gonna do 40 billion in Ad Sense. If indie storytellers are even able to capture 10% of the current market through these AI tools and what’s happening and whether it’s new platforms and existing platform shifting, if 10% of that revenue can now be going to IP that has been created by our community, I am, that’s insane.
And I actually really do believe it could be a lot more than that, but if we just think about 10%. 10% disruption here, everyone. It is mind blowingly big change this industry. it’s not gonna 10 x industry ’cause there’s more than just KU payouts industry, but like this is.
Mind numbingly big to this industry. And to think that this is just the beginning. ’cause it’s true, there’s more disruption to come and other even bigger industries and more immersive formats that will be created and that we’re also getting to currently disrupt too, which will be future podcast. Because this [00:49:00] whole revolution’s not stopping anytime soon.
So my ending call out to folks is that this future comes faster than you think sometimes, but also the future can be bigger than you think. Because the context here is so big.
Steph Pajonas: Let’s aim for 10% then and more. Into the future. Definitely. Yeah. All right. So thank you so much for coming by, Michael. It was awesome talking with you. I love talking with you ’cause every single time I leave and my brain has exploded and now I’m thinking about a million other different things for me to get involved in. So everybody who’s been listening, come on by brave new bookshelf.com and check out the show notes.
I’ll make sure that you get the link to Michael’s Author Sidekick Substack, especially because he’s on there talking about this kind of stuff and more. And you definitely want to be in the know and get all of the information before anybody else does. Yes. So come on by.
Come on by. And, read the show notes, click on the links. We would love for you to come by also and and subscribe to us on [00:50:00] YouTube. Do all that good stuff. Find us on Facebook, like us there as well. Any closing thoughts? Danica?
Danica Favorite: No, I think you got it. Look at you. You even remembered the whole like and subscribe thing.
I love it. We’re, see, we’ve, this is the great thing about recording all these great episodes all at once. Again, thank you Michael. Thank you everyone for listening and watching. And as always, if you do have questions, if you have things you want more information about, please do get in touch with us.
We would love to hear your suggestions, your thoughts. We haven’t done a call out for this in a while because we really have had so many great guests lately, but if there’s a burning topic you wanna hear more about, please let us know and we’re do our best to get a guest on to talk about that. So thank you everyone, and we look forward to seeing you next time.
Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. We’ll see you guys all next time. Okay. Bye everybody. Bye!
Thanks for joining us on The Brave New Bookshelf. Be sure to like and subscribe to us on YouTube and your favorite podcast app. You can also visit [00:51:00] us at bravenewbookshelf.com. Sign up for our newsletter and get all the show notes.