This week, we’re diving into a deeply personal, incredibly insightful, and wonderfully “neurospicy” conversation. In episode 83 of the podcast, we sat down with Melissa Storm—a longtime friend, multi-time bestselling author, and marketing genius.
Melissa shared her evolution from being an AI skeptic with a strict “no AI” business policy to developing her own complex AI marketing workflows. Along the way, we discussed how to use AI to amplify your unique voice, why “clunky is sexy” in modern advertising, and how AI can act as a powerful assistive tool for neurodivergent writers.
Meet Melissa Storm, Bestselling Author and Marketing Powerhouse
Melissa Storm is a powerhouse in the indie publishing world. A New York Times and USA Today bestselling author at least a dozen times over under multiple pen names, she is also the CEO of Novel Publicity, a marketing agency she founded in 2011.
With a background in Applied Sociology and over 15 years of professional copywriting experience, Melissa is renowned for her expertise in book advertising, marketing, and teaching authors how to scale their businesses. Recently diagnosed with both autism and ADHD, Melissa brings a uniquely analytical yet highly creative perspective to her work—using her “autistic brain to fix the decisions her ADHD brain made.”
From Skeptic to Curator: Aligning AI with Core Values
One of the most compelling parts of Melissa’s journey is how she moved from a place of deep skepticism to enthusiastic adoption. Initially, Novel Publicity had a strict “no AI” policy. However, Melissa didn’t want to dismiss the technology without truly understanding it.
To navigate her skepticism ethically, she looked to her six core values: integrity, excellence, authenticity, generosity, justice, and adventure.
- Adventure prompted her to explore AI early on.
- Excellence made her step back when the early models weren’t up to par.
- Generosity gave her a breakthrough: she used AI to help her curate a massive, free weekly industry news round-up for her community.
- Integrity and Authenticity ensured she was completely transparent with her audience, adding a disclaimer that AI helped curate the content.
This shift introduced her to the concept of curation. Instead of using AI to replace skills, Melissa uses it to amplify her existing talents. Today, Novel Publicity has moved from a “no AI” stance to offering four distinct levels of AI consent, respecting where every author stands on the spectrum.
Deconstructing Mastery: The “Manuscript to Marketing” Tool
Because Melissa has been a professional copywriter for 15 years, she knows what makes a book description or ad copy convert. Rather than asking ChatGPT to blindly write a description, she spent hundreds of hours deconstructing her own brain’s copywriting process.
She codified her rules, formulas, and step-by-step logic into a massive, 70-step modular loop containing over 9,000 words of custom prompts. This flow eventually became her flagship AI tool, Manuscript to Marketing (M2M).
By teaching the AI exactly how she thinks, she built a system that generates highly customized, deep-dive marketing plans, series bibles, and ad copy. She is currently working on Version 3, which includes translations (collaborating with ScribeShadow) and an “AI discovery report” designed to help search-based AI engines sell books without plagiarizing them.
Training Your AI to Capture Your True Humanity
A common complaint among authors is that AI outputs feel generic. Melissa solved this by creating highly personalized custom bots (or “Gems” in Google Gemini) trained directly on her own voice.
To do this, she downloaded the transcripts of ten different videos she had recorded for YouTube and Loom, feeding her exact speech patterns, cadences, and catchphrases into the bot.
The result? Two highly distinct custom personas:
- Melissa CEO Bot: Her business advisor and “divorce counselor,” which she describes as a “neurospicy professional benevolent alpha who leads with radical transparency and aggressive integrity.”
- Luna Writer Bot: Her fantasy brand persona, which “multi-classes in neurodivergence” and uses “autistic magic.”
These bots are so finely tuned that they can draft emails, help her navigate difficult business communications, and even help her set healthy boundaries with clients—all while sounding exactly like her.
The New Rules of Advertising: Why “Clunky is Sexy”
As the algorithms behind Meta (Facebook) and Google ads rely more heavily on AI, the way authors run ads has completely changed. Creative is now the primary driver of targeting.
Melissa introduced the concept of Visual Engine Optimization (VEO), explaining that the AI algorithm reads the visual clues of your ad images and videos to determine who to show them to. Because the feed is currently saturated with overly polished, AI-generated, or stock creative, users are craving authenticity.
Melissa’s advice? Make your creative imperfect. She shares videos where she drops weights in her home gym, moves around her house, changes outfits, and leaves mistakes in. This “clunky” and organic style of content outperforms highly polished ads because it provides “proof of humanity.” As Danica put it: “Clunky is sexy, and apparently, it’s sexy to the AI too!”
AI as an Assistive Technology for Aphantasia
Both Melissa and Danica share a condition called aphantasia, meaning they cannot visualize images in their minds. For years, writing descriptive passages in fiction was a painstaking, joyless process for both of them.
AI has acted as a vital assistive technology, allowing them to generate rich, sensory descriptions based on thematic prompts. This allows Melissa to focus on what she loves—theme, voice, and humor—culminating in her writing a book about “an autistic gnome and her soulmate cheese.”
By leaning into her aphantasia, Melissa has even carved out a new niche: “neurodivergent fantasy for short attention spans,” which cuts out the sprawling, 50-page landscape descriptions typical of high fantasy in favor of fast-paced, high-vibe storytelling.
The Great AI Showdown: Gemini vs. Claude vs. ChatGPT
While many authors in the community swear by Claude for creative writing, Melissa is firmly team Gemini for life.
To choose her primary AI model, Melissa conducted a blind study. She had ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude draft ad copy for three different books. She stripped the labels, mixed the outputs, and asked the AIs to rate them. Consistently, the models chose Gemini’s output as the best (ironically, often guessing that Claude had written it).
Melissa prefers Gemini because:
- It excels at thematic integration, humor, and conversational copywriting.
- It bolds key concepts, making it easy to scan.
- ChatGPT can sometimes be “too nice,” whereas Gemini is willing to give her the blunt, honest feedback she needs.
She also shared a cautionary tale about Anthropic (the creators of Claude). After subscribing to an annual plan, her life was upended by a high-conflict divorce and black mold remediation. When she reached out to Anthropic just three days into her subscription to ask for a refund or to transfer the membership to a friend, they repeatedly refused. Consequently, Claude is officially “dead” to her!
Favorite Tools & Recommendations
During the episode, several powerful tools and resources were highlighted:
- Google Gemini (Gemini Ultra): Melissa’s absolute favorite model for business, personal life management, and copywriting.
- Manuscript to Marketing (M2M): Melissa’s proprietary AI tool for creating comprehensive book marketing plans.
- Novelcrafter: A fantastic interface for authors who want to utilize various AI models (like Claude or GPT) with saved prompts.
- n8n: The workflow automation tool Melissa uses to build her complex backend AI flows.
- ScribeShadow: Collaborating with Melissa on the translation features for her upcoming M2M updates.
Key Takeaways from This Episode
- Amplify, Don’t Replace: Use AI to scale and enhance the things you are already great at, rather than using it to bypass learning core crafts.
- Train on Your Voice: Feed transcripts of your actual speaking voice into your AI models to build custom bots that sound authentically like you.
- Embrace the Imperfections: In a world of polished AI content, “clunky is sexy.” Raw, organic, human-centric video ads perform better on platforms like Meta.
- Leverage AI for Accessibility: If you struggle with specific writing elements due to neurodivergence or conditions like aphantasia, use AI as an assistive tool to bridge the gap.
- Let Your Values Guide You: If you are feeling conflicted about AI, map your usage to your personal core values to find a workflow that feels ethical and authentic.
Resources Mentioned
Here are the links and resources discussed in this episode:
- Novel Publicity – Explore Melissa’s marketing services and her custom AI tool, Manuscript to Marketing (M2M).
- Novelcrafter
- n8n
Transcript
[00:00:00]
Speaker: 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. Welcome back to Brave New Bookshelf. I’m one of your co-hosts, Steph Pajonas, CTO, CMO, don’t really know what my title is anymore. I do a lot of stuff at the Future Fiction Academy and Future Fiction Press, where we’re teaching authors how to use AI in any part of their process, and we’re publishing AI-forward books on the press as always.
Yeah, I don’t really know what my title is anymore because I’m doing so much stuff at the Future Fiction Academy. We’re putting together brand new curriculum, which should be out, and people will be doing it by the time this podcast goes live. It’s been a lot of fun. I really enjoy, um– I really enjoy taking other people’s work and then using AI like Midjourney and images and making it [00:01:00] pretty and giving people things to look at, infographics, that sort of thing.
That’s totally my jam. I really enjoy doing that, and that’s probably from being a blogger for so long. It was, like, having to write all these text posts and intersperse images so that people didn’t get tired of reading text. It’s a whole thing. But that’s why AI is around now, and I use it every day, every single day, and I love it.
All right I don’t really have a lot of stuff to talk about myself, so I’m gonna hand over to my fantastic co-host. Danica Favorite, how are you today?
Danica Favorite: I am really good, thank you. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Danica Favorite. I am the community manager at PublishDrive, where we help authors on every stage of their publishing journey, from getting their manuscript formatted to creating the perfect metadata and book descriptions, and then getting your book distributed to the widest number of stores possible. And then once your book starts selling, we can get your book with some various in-store promotions, things like that.
And [00:02:00] then if you have co-authors, we can also help you split the royalties. So we do a lot of cool things and I know Steph is “Yeah, I don’t really have a lot.” Um, I have a lot, which is crazy. And most of it, by the time you guys listen to this, so we are recording this on April 28th, which this episode, because we’ve had so many great guests and we’ve been able to record ahead of time, this episode isn’t going live until the beginning of July.
So there’s gonna have been a lot that happened. It is really crazy to think about that and recognize just how many amazing guests we’ve had. So kudos to all of our guests, and thank you for everyone and their support. And so the thing that I haven’t been saying that I’m doing because I haven’t done it yet, but by the time this airs in July I’m gonna have a new PublishDrive channel on YouTube.
We have a PublishDrive channel on YouTube, but everyone’s been encouraging me to do more on YouTube for PublishDrive, so I’m launching [00:03:00] more lives on YouTube for PublishDrive, which, crazy, so please go check it out. Don’t laugh at me or make fun of me ’cause I feel like I’m gonna act like a fool without Steph to back me up.
But that’s why I love having Steph as a co-host. I think we balance each other well, and I love working with her. So that’s my exciting news, which will be old news by the time this launches, but hopefully people will be watching, listening and if not, there’s your cue to listen to it. And today I’m really excited about our guest, Melissa Storm.
So Melissa is a longtime friend of both Steph and I, and we have been talking to her forever about coming on the show, and she’s been wanting to, and it seems like every time we get her scheduled, something comes up. And so even today when we’re in the pre-talk and we’re like, “Okay, yeah,” and last time when you were on I was like no, she hasn’t been on yet.”
And so yay. Finally we get Melissa because she is so amazing. And watching her journey [00:04:00] with AI and how she started out, which I hope she’s gonna share some of this, but we have a lot to pack into this time, is she really started out… I remember the days when she was like, “I’m really skeptical about AI. I don’t know if I want to use AI. I don’t know if AI’s ethical. Let me think, let me study.” And she was so thoughtful in her approach, and I watched over time as she changed from, “Yeah, I’m not sure about this; okay, I can use it for some things,” to, “Oh, by the way, I’m developing an AI tool for my business.” And now, like all the other things she’s using for it, it’s just amazing.
And so I’m really grateful to have Melissa today because for those of you who are on that skepticism spectrum, I feel like Melissa’s been on it all, and her story and everything she has to share is amazing, and I’m really glad she’s with us today finally. Yay. Without further ado, we’re gonna welcome Melissa Storm.
Melissa, for [00:05:00] those of our listeners who don’t know you, tell us about yourself, and then let’s hear about how you came into AI and publishing
Melissa Storm: Hi, thanks for having me. I wanna say longtime listener of the podcast, but I always listen, I don’t watch. And Danica has the most expressive eyebrows, so if you never watch it on YouTube, watch at least one episode.
So give yourself the gift of when you’re listening, you can picture what Danica’s eyebrows are doing. It’s amazing.
Danica Favorite: Wait, that’s hilarious. I love that because, um, I, I love that that’s such a great compliment ’cause I’ve always been insecure about my eyebrows. I have really Italian eyebrows, and growing up I was made fun of for them.
And so you’ve just healed that, so-
Melissa Storm: I like that you can hook one eyebrow up without even trying. It’s like one of my favorite things I need to learn. But yeah, no, I’m Melissa Storm, uh, Danica’s eyebrow enthusiast. Also a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author at least a dozen times over many, many pen names.
I’ve had at least a dozen of [00:06:00] both some secret, some not. I’m the CEO of Novel Publicity. I’m really known for ads and marketing. But I started basically as a baby straight out of grad school. I was like, “Screw this degree,” which was Applied Sociology. I’m just gonna do writing ’cause that’s what I wanna do.
And I opened Novel Publicity in early 2011, and our flagship services were blog tours and Twitter interviews. And it’s really interesting how much marketing has grown, but some of the concepts have stayed the same. And I think AI is kind of like that too. Like, um, It’s grown in a lot of ways, but some of the core stuff is the same.
So it’s kind of learning what’s changing and what’s, what’s the core principle that doesn’t change. So I do so many things but I really right now am very passionate about running ads to Kickstarter and teaching. I love teaching my courses and teaching authors how ads work because I record three live videos a week, and every single time at least one thing is different and surprises me while I’m recording.
That’s how [00:07:00] fast ads are changing So that’s me. And in terms of where I am on my AI journey, I’ve run the gamut, and very publicly I’ve run the gamut of we have a no AI policy at Novel Publicity to now we have four levels of AI consent. We respect your right to choose. Because I really don’t care whether or not people use AI, I just care if people tell me what I can do.
So you make your choice, I’ll make my choice. We can still like and respect each other, and I know that’s the goal of this podcast as well, which is part of why I like it so much. Um, that’s what I want for the world, is I want us all to come together whether or not we use the same tools. Let’s build this house.
Danica Favorite: I love that. I just think that is so great, and even that emphasis on consent of being really clear. And this, I think, should be the consent conversation of every consent conversation in life, right? Is, “This is where I stand. Here are the options for you to consent to. What do you consent to, and I’m gonna [00:08:00] respect where you’re at.”
I think that’s really a beautiful model for all levels of consent in all areas of life, and it’s really beautiful that is how you’ve approached it in your business.
Melissa Storm: Going tangenty on that as well, uh, everybody should know that I have autism and ADHD, newly diagnosed. And you’re gonna see both of those in my AI journey of if autism’s driving, we’re going slow, and if ADHD is driving, we’re being crazy.
But that’s where the big gains are happening. I am both things all the time, and it varies who’s in charge. But when I was dealing with my autism diagnosis, which was hard at first, I, um, was, I was advised to come up with my core values that guide my life, because autis- autism and ADHD to a lesser extent have something called justice sensitivity.
So it’s really important that people follow the rules and have ethics and integrity, which is a big part of the AI discussion. So I said, “Okay, these are my core values,” and they are, I’ll tell you guys for the framework. My six core [00:09:00] values are integrity, excellence, authenticity, generosity, justice, and adventure.
And I really struggled with, hey, I’m learning AI, I’m trying to make it work. At first, I put AI away because excellence, because three years ago it was nowhere near what it is right now. And I’m like, “This takes me longer and is worse. No, thanks.” But adventure made me try it very early, and excellence said no.
Then I struggled. I said, “If I’m gonna use it, it’s not gonna be a secret.” So integrity and authenticity were struggling. So I said, “Okay, how do I stay true to myself and give myself permission to explore this because I don’t wanna commit to it before I know for sure?” Because obviously a couple years ago, this was a cancelable offense, as you both know.
Um, so I said, Okay, we’re gonna trot out one of my other values, generosity.” So the way that I started really getting into AI and publicly talking about it is I started doing a roll-up in my group of here’s all the news for authors, here’s a mini lesson about ads, here’s [00:10:00] what’s going on in the industry, here’s what you need to do, and hey, you can ask, a skilled consultant for free in the group every week.
And people really liked it. So I posted about three of those, and then I said, “By the way, I’m using AI.” If I don’t use AI, I can’t do this, ’cause this is a free thing I’m doing for you guys. The AI is helping me. What do you guys think? And everybody was like, “This is great.” So I kept doing it, kept going, and I always had a disclaimer at the bottom that AI helps me write these and I curate them, which is true.
So that really helped me. So people still struggling with their feelings on AI, I invite you to find your core values and then to do some thinking about how you can bring those in line with whether or not you’re using AI. Because I think the ambivalence and the back and forth and the lack of clarity is what’s really making people afraid.
Danica Favorite: I really wanna hone in on one of the words that you just used, because I think this is so key to people being authentic in their AI journey, and that is the word curate. [00:11:00] And that’s not one that I’ve heard before in all the discussions that we’ve had, which I think is absolutely beautiful because that is what we are doing, is we are curating the content.
And, if you look at, say, a museum curator, and you look at people whose titles of their jobs, and they get these degrees in curation, that really is what we’re doing with AI. And so thank you for using that word because that’s one of those little gems that I think we can really cling to as someone who, you know, and I know Steph and the FFA talk a lot about taste in AI, and curation is part of that.
Steph Pajonas: I was gonna just say that. The one of the things I talk about on my Substack is that we use our taste, we use our judgment to decide what we’re going to take from the AI, right? That is a level of curation. So your taste and the things that you’re interested in and the kinds of things that, that you wanna tell other people, that’s what you curate from the AI [00:12:00] in order to display it to other people.
So I love curate. I, that’s a, that’s a great word. It’s a great word.
Melissa Storm: Yay. And going back to many months ago when I said, “Danica, I wanna be on the podcast ’cause I wanna tell people why I changed my mind about AI,” ’cause I’m like that hook writes itself you know? And the answer to why I changed my mind about AI in, what, November, when I approached you at first and now we’re almost to May, is I stopped thinking of it as a way to fix or replace skills I didn’t have, and I started thinking of it as a way to amplify.
That’s probably my main AI word, to amplify skills I do have. So in my business I thought I’ve been a pro copywriter for 15 years. People pay me a lot of money to write copy. I honestly– Yes, I’m an author, but I would rather write the book description than the book. I love writing marketing copy.
So okay, what are some of my best marketing copies? Okay, what do they have in common? Okay, is there a formula? Are there rules? And [00:13:00] then I spent a long time first training ChatGPT then Gemini and n8n, and eventually Claude, whatever. Um, uh, what are the rules of good copywriting? Then when I decided to teach a course on it, I said, “Okay, but not everyone wants to use AI.”
So then I reverse deconstructed it of here’s everything I codified for the AI, now how do I teach that to people? Because I don’t wanna leave anyone out. I love multimodal inputs because that makes me better at my job. Same with writing. I can write– I’ve written over 100 books without AI. I’m a better writer learning how to write with AI because I’m approaching it from a different aspect.
Steph Pajonas: Yes. I love that because I think that people who who come into this, who know writing craft, know how to do all these things, so you have all those skills already. And then you start using AI, you realize at some point that you, that those skills that you got the, the, the, the terms you’ve used, the craft skills that you have really are [00:14:00] amplified and very core to using AI in order to get the kind of outputs you want, because there are just so many people who don’t know how to ask for those things because they don’t have the right terminology for it.
And now you have all that terminology because you’ve deconstructed your process, so you know what to ask for. It’s not some nebulous, “Write me a book description,” right? You have a, you have a, probably like a 10-step plan for pulling all that stuff out, and you wouldn’t have that if you did not have that craft already built up, and that’s so important.
Melissa Storm: Yeah. I have I think a 70-step modular loop with 9,000 words of prompts for the program I built to make a custom marketing plan. It’s so complex. I spent hundreds of hours on it, and it was, like, the best time ever. I forgot to eat. I forgot to sleep. I started to lose my vision ’cause I looked at the computer so long.
It was great. As I mentioned, I’m neurospicy. But yeah. I forgot what I was gonna say, but I’m excited, so feel the excitement.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, I feel the excitement, and I remember when you created that thing and you sent it [00:15:00] to me, and you’re like, “Try this out and test it.” And I’m like, “This is so good. I really love it.”
And we actually had some conversations around it because PublishDrive has a metadata generator and all of that. And I was like we have this tool, so I don’t know how much we can talk about your tool, but I love your tool.” And this is what I will say to people who are like, “Okay, do I use Melissa’s thing?
Do I use PublishDrive’s thing?” If you just want a really basic thing that’s cheap, go do the PublishDrive tool. But if you want, like, all the bells and whistles and the super cool thing, go use Melissa’s tool. It is more expensive, but it’s gonna give you more, and it just really depends on what you’re looking for.
And like me, the Publish to– Drive tool is fine because I– again, I don’t need to… Also because my CTO gives me free credits all the time. But but, for anyone, it really is pretty inexpensive and really easy to do, and it’s gonna give you that basic framework. But [00:16:00] like, when I saw everything that you put into it you were– you give details of stuff that I’m like Wow.
I wouldn’t have even thought to ask for that in a marketing plan. And so it’s really a credit to the fact that you have this really deep marketing experience. And going back to what we were talking about earlier about deconstructing what we do, so many people I know who are good marketers are like, “Oh yeah, I just have a process,” and they can’t tell you how it works, but it works.
And what you’ve done is said, “Okay, I have a really great process, and it works. And now that I’m teaching the AI to do it, I have to break down what makes it work.” And that’s what a good author is doing as well if you’re writing well with AI, even we’ve had Coral Hart. She’s written, again, hundreds of books.
And so she can say, “This is the process.” And for me sometimes it’s here’s my process. I’ve written all these books.” It just [00:17:00] magically comes together. And then you have to break down, okay, this is the magic, and teach the AI what’s actually the magic, and you do that really well.
Melissa Storm: Thank you.
And you saw version one. I’m working on version three.
Danica Favorite: Ooh.
Melissa Storm: Like it’s so above and beyond. ScribeShadow and I are doing translation version together. And then I’ve– I started working on this in November and lost momentum due to life issues we may talk about later. Um, but I’m adding an AI discovery report as an optional add-on to Manuscript to Marketing, because when it was leaked that ChatGPT ads were coming, I use AI enough to know exactly how those are gonna work.
So I’m like intase- intent-based marketing, and we need what it is and what it is not, and what moods it matches, and other activities. And oh my God, psychographics. And I just went nuts. And then I, I talked to multiple AIs and I’m like, “What are you guys gonna need?” And then I started researching Google Ads, which I’m like, probably they’re getting some of the– like a preview, a little bit of what ChatGPT ads will look like.
And I’m building this out as an optional add-on so that the AI [00:18:00] can sell your book without plagiarizing it, which I’m not concerned about because I think as soon as I upload something to KDP, like it’s a foregone conclusion it’s leaked. My current Manuscript to Marketing has a style guide and a lot of things that would actually be very easy to replicate and write more books in the series.
I actually have other tools that can do that. Um, basically Manuscript to Marketing and my flows, ’cause I also have a series bible flow, is I’m using my autism to fix decisions my ADHD made. Like when I write, I have to have an outline so that I feel confident enough to write. But I basically set it on fire and then do whatever I want.
So when I write more books in the series, there have to– there’s– somewhere there’s rules for how the magic system works. I don’t understand, but I can– I have a flow that will be like, “Here’s the magic system. Here’s the world-building. Here’s the color of the character’s eyes.” Um, so that’s another tool I have that is, is private right now, but I might eventually take public, and it’s saved me a lot of time.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, it sounds like it. And I really love [00:19:00] what you said about your autistic brain fixes what your ADHD brain messed up. And I’m sitting there like that was so mind-blowing for me because I’m also recently figuring out that I’m ADHD and autistic and going, “Wait, these two things could actually– you could use them and harness each one to do the different things.”
And I think that’s super cool, and I know one of the methods that you’ve been using to figure some of this stuff out is actually working with the AI. So can you share about some of that with us?
Melissa Storm: Yeah, I do everything with Gemini. I’m going through a high conflict divorce and I also had my home destroyed due to a biohazard.
So all of a sudden, around the holidays, my whole life was upended. I had been working seventeen-hour days, and now I have to save a home and manage my own life. And I’m used to just basically always being in the office nonstop, and now I have to know how to do electrical, [00:20:00] plumbing, remediation, homeschooling for a special needs child and so many other things.
So I have a chat with Gemini like– This won’t make as much sense for people not watching it. Again, like at least watch one episode. It should be this one. You just do it twice. It’s good. Uh, I talk fast, so you’ll get it all between two watches. People are always asking me on social media ’cause I’ve had this glow up in my divorce.
I’ve lost twenty pounds and like I’ve just, I’m much healthier now that I’m not living with a biohazard. And people are like, “Give me your skincare tips.” I’m like, “I just do what Gemini told me to do.” So Gemini manages my skincare, my diet. It’s helped me find homeschooling resources. Uh, when I found black mold, it told me what to do, who to call.
Um, you know, I’ve, I’ve mentioned the neurospiciness a lot. Sometimes as a, an autistic truth teller, I can put my foot in my mouth or in someone else’s mouth if we wanna be really fun. And if I get a conversation stuck in my brain or I get a lot of anxiety about how to respond to [00:21:00] something, Gemini helps me pace through.
So like with some of my business communications, if it’s high stakes, like I’m the big boss, so sometimes I have to deal with problems. It will help me find like, “Ooh, don’t say that ’cause this could imply this,” but it will also help me find, “This person is taking advantage of you. This person is lying to you. This person is manipulating you.” And, “Okay, what should I do? How do I set a healthy boundary?” Another thing that happens to me a lot, and probably all authors deal with this in some capacity, you guys probably deal with this just as much as I do, which is where people who mean well think that you work for free So I feel like such a horrible person every time I have to say, “What are you doing?
Like you can hire me or you can just not expect me to answer this for free.” And I always feel really guilty about it, but Gemini is “Here’s how we’re gonna like nicely put up the boundary.” Then the person will respond and I’ll be like, “Gemini, what do they think? Do they hate me now or am I okay?”
And Gemini’s “You’re okay. Don’t respond.” And I’m like, “Okay, I’m gonna heart it.” They’re [00:22:00] like– And Gemini’s like, “Don’t, don’t heart it. Just, just let it go.” So thank you, Gemini.
Steph Pajonas: Isn’t that fun? I love it. Gemini is such a chum. I love Gemini. It’s right there with you. I also use it all for personal stuff.
Like I have like I use Claude for the creative stuff, and then I use GPT for like more numbers and logic-based stuff. But then if I have personal stuff, like I’ve, I’ve gone on new medications and talked to talked to Gemini about it. I’ve tried changing my diet. I talk to Gemini about it. It’s my personal buddy.
I really love it. I agree. I think it’s great.
Melissa Storm: Gemini’s really salty sometimes though. Like it’ll be like, “You should call this person out in your group.” And I’m like, “No, Gemini, we can’t do that. That’s not great for our reputation. People will feel bad.” So then we have to– I have a bunch of gems and bots I’ve made.
So my persona is the neurospicy professional benevolent alpha who leads with radical transparency and aggressive integrity. [00:23:00] So I’m like, “What about the benevolent alpha, Gemini? We don’t throw baby wolves, you know, to, you know, under the bus. We don’t do that.” And then it’s “Okay, got it. Okay, we’ll be nicer.”
And I’m like, “Okay, thank you.”
Danica Favorite: You two are showing me that I’m underestimating Gemini because I use Chat for that one, and Chat and I have that same relationship. And I’ll tell you this is, you know, post-divorce dating. I received this text from this guy that I’d gone on a couple of dates from.
It was actually a very sweet, lovely text, and I was like, “Crap, I don’t know what to do with this.” And so I put the text right into Chat, and I was like, “Chat, how do I respond? This is weird. This guy is saying the exact right thing men are supposed to say after a date.” And Chat’s “It’s okay. I got you.”
Melissa Storm: And Chat’s like, “I wrote that, Danica.”
Danica Favorite: Probably. Probably.
Melissa Storm: I do ask it sometimes if I get a message, I’m like, “This feels like AI, but not in a way that it’s obviously AI. Let’s go ask [00:24:00] the AIs if they wrote it.”
Danica Favorite: That’s hilarious. I love that. But yeah, so now I’m like, I didn’t think about using… Now I wanna compare the answers between Chat and Gemini because you guys are coming up with really cool stuff that Gemini says.
I’m like, “Ooh.”
Steph Pajonas: Don’t forget that Gemini is trained on a lot of YouTube data. So just think about all of the crazy, like, unhinged things we have seen on YouTube. And now imagine that is training data for Gemini. So it can be a lot of fun to talk to Gemini ’cause he’ll come up with the craziest stuff.
And then, then there are times you’re just like, “Okay, tone it down a little bit. I just, I need real advice here.” And then you get the real advice. But I swear like, sarcasm, like, humor, it does, it does it all. I’m a big fan.
Melissa Storm: Yeah, ChatGPT was too nice to me, so I’m like, “No. No.” So Gemini will be honest when I need it to be.
Um, but, uh, I have lots of gems which are like GPTs, like little program bots. And I think part of the reason [00:25:00] Gemini works so well for me, I have Google Workspace, and I’m a Gemini Ultra user, which is like the turbo premium level. And I have different gems or bots of me for my different entities. So Melissa CEO Bot, which is my divorce counselor as well as my business advisor.
So, I mean, it does talk about divorce in terms of KPIs and things like that. The best pun it’s made is the ROAS, which is usually return on advertising spend. It’s “You have the better return on attorney spend right now.” And I’m like, “Burn.” And like it, it talks about Taylor Swift, it talks about Enneagram.
It just, it gets on these tangents. Right now it’s really into Nintendo Switch’s new, uh, Tomodachi Life game. It has all the metaphors. Uh, but I give it transcripts. I, I record videos for YouTube or Loom, and I download the captions, and I have 10 different videos. Those captions are part of the bot, so it gets my cadence and speech down, and then it derived my persona from that.
I have to occasionally, um, [00:26:00] edit it because it will get very attached if I use an unusual word. Like in one of my videos I’m like, “Bang a rang,” which is what Rufio said in Hook, and I’m an ’80s baby. And then Gemini’s “This is great. This is how you’re gonna sign off on everything.” And I’m like, “No.”
But like certain, uh, catchphrases it’s decided I have are proof of humanity, which I’m like, “Sure, we’ll lean into that. I like that.” Valley of despair, take a bath on cost. So sometimes I have to be like, do not say bang a rang,” and that’s part of the instructions. But training it off of the transcripts of me speaking has been the most authentic, best bot.
And if you talk to my Luna Writer bot, which is my fantasy brand, it’s all “Yes, like we’re gonna multi-class in neurodivergence, and we have the autistic magic and the ADHD, um, rogue, and we’re gonna do this,” and like it’s a very different energy than CEO bot.
Steph Pajonas: My gosh, I love it because there’s it really does– it really can be personalized.
I think a lot of people think that sometimes they’re just getting very general answers [00:27:00] from the AI, and they’re like, “Oh it’s too generalized, and it just says the same things to everybody.” No, it really doesn’t. As long as you’re giving it plenty of data to go on, then it knows which path to take, right?
So you’ve given it plenty of different paths to take. You’ve got a fantas- you’ve got your fantasy name, you’ve got your CEO, you’ve got all these different things, and you can go to them and just don’t get them too mixed up because then you get really weird advice from one of them. I’m sure that’s happened.
Melissa Storm: Well, one of my favorite things to do when I’m talking to authors who are on the fence about AI, but I see that having a gem could really help them. You need to save time on your newsletters. Like, how about this as a first draft? Um, is I’ll open up LunaBot and Melissa CEOBot, and I’ll give it the exact same prompt, and then they’ll see the difference.
Danica Favorite: I think that’s a really great exercise because it really does show how well the AI is trained by you to do what you need it to do. I, I see all the time in the AI for Authors group where people will say, “I can’t get Claude to write [00:28:00] spicy.” Another thing I didn’t share, I just launched my super-secret spicy pen name, and Claude did almost all of the spice, and it is super explicit, super hot, and everyone’s “How do you get Claude to do that?”
I’m like, “Because I trained it to.” And the problem is, though, you have to put that time and that energy into making it do what you want it to do. And yes, if you do it wrong, Claude is gonna come back and say, “Nope, can’t do that. Sorry.” But if you’ve trained it appropriately and you’re showing what you’re doing and you’re explaining to it, you can get exactly what you want.
But, you know, it goes back to what you were saying okay, the same prompt, and this is why everyone’s “Oh, give me a prompt. Give me a prompt.” Okay, we can all use the exact same prompt, but because we’ve chain- trained the AIs differently, we’re gonna get different results, and that’s the point. And that’s why I think, when you talk about your humanity this is our humanity.
[00:29:00] Because yeah, the same prompt is not gonna get the same answer because we’re all different humans who have trained the bots differently.
The other thing I was gonna ask you is you’re also doing a lot with your ads and your marketing and things like that. What are you seeing as being the help of AI? Because I know everywhere on Facebook I see people just going crazy over how their ads and stuff are just tanking because of the AI stuff, and it sounds like you’ve really fixed– not fixed, because it’s always changing, but you’ve really found a great approach to how you’re working with that.
Melissa Storm: Yeah, ads work the way AI works because you can’t do ads and not use AI. So if you choose not to add AI copy, your image is great, but the algorithm is still an AI. So ads need to accomplish two purposes. They have two audiences, which is readers who see it in their feed and the AI itself. So authors who are using really long excerpts, um, and, you know, stock images [00:30:00] that don’t really say what the book is, the AI doesn’t know what that is.
Even if readers would like it, the AI doesn’t know who to serve it to. It only reads the first four to five hundred words, and then it stops reading. So if you don’t have good genre signals in there, it doesn’t know. Authors were so upset when they took away the author targets, but that’s because that’s not how it works anymore.
Creative is targeting. Lately I’ve been really into VEO or Video Engine Op– Visual Engine Optimization and teaching people about that, and it’s so sophisticated. And people are always really shocked that the AI can do this, but it’s taking clues about what your product is and who you are and who your customer is based on what it sees.
So it’s not just words. The visual is actually what’s most important because it’s what Meta’s pushing the most right now. It wants things to look different in the feed, and they’re gonna see it before they read it. Right now Meta wants a mix of real-life photos, uh, product images, mock-ups, uh, character art, and videos, and multiple types of videos.
And a lot of authors are [00:31:00] shy, but video is the main format it wants because of proof of humanity, and I’ve been teaching authors to make their photos imperfect and make their videos imperfect. So right now I have a Kickstarter going for a Kindle Unlimited ads course. It’ll be over by the time this airs.
So look for my Shopify ads course. Uh, that’s coming. But, um, my– I just did 10 videos back to back, and I put my hair up, down, changed my outfit, and moved around. My office has a different vibe on each wall. So I’m just moving the camera. But this is like my cosplay weapons and crystals and woo-woo wall.
This is like I’ve got a teacher chalkboard. I can zoom in and– Oh, that was cool. Good job, Zoom. But I have a lot of different looks and vibes, and I’ll move around my house and change my outfit, and then I just talk for a minute. I don’t have a script. It’s a little messy. Like in one of my videos, I’m in my home gym and I drop the weight and it crashes and I just keep going.
Danica Favorite: I literally just saw that today.
I’m glad you mentioned it [00:32:00] because I thought, “I wonder if there’s a way we can talk about this in the show,” ’cause I was like, “Oh my goodness, look at Melissa dropping the weight in her gym.”
Melissa Storm: Yeah, like just it being messy. Like, and that’s, that’s a problem that a lot of authors are facing and they don’t realize it, is if your ad is always the image of your book it’s not just that you’re not feeding creative diversity to the algorithm, it’s that Facebook now has something called entity IDs and creative similarity scores, and if your ads look too similar, they’re the same ad.
So you don’t get credit and everything will be throttled. So they want us to be full-time content creators, and they really like– more and more it feels like you have to use the AI or go home. And I know a lot of authors feel that frustration. Like I’m not using AI art. I use it a lot in copy and research.
I am, um– I just downloaded an AI clone video thing. When I tell people I don’t use it for art or video, but I have a client who’s losing her speech And I, I’m like this is time for me to learn how to [00:33:00] use this tool because she needs that so she can maintain her proof of humanity.
And I test everything. I have a secret ad account where I’ve tested AI art a lot, and it didn’t do as well, which is why I’m not using it or recommending it right now, but it might do great for someone else. It’s just not for me right now. And I let people make their own choices, but I forgot what question I was answering.
Sorry.
Danica Favorite: No, that’s okay. That was a really great tangent just to talk about that proof of humanity and being able to show those imperfections because I know I often get into analysis paralysis and oh my gosh, like I’m so afraid of making a mistake on camera and everything, and those mistakes on camera are now the goldmine for teaching the AI bots to show your content to other people.
So I think that’s really cool.
Melissa Storm: And like the reason– if you were bullied as a child, the reason for that is probably your greatest marketing asset now. So being neurospicy is part of my brand as a [00:34:00] writer and an entrepreneur. If you put me on camera, clearly something is happening. Clearly I have a different energy, but so do most authors, so do most readers.
This is a thing that attracts introverts, and I’m an extrovert, so I’m just loud, more loudly awkward, uh, than other writers. But, make it a feature instead of a bug. Like, messy is better than perfect because that still gets out there. And with some things being overly polished because of AI, having it be a little messy like exxcites people and ironically also excites the AI because people are more likely to click on it.
It looks more organic.
Danica Favorite: I like that especially because I’m training in a style of, uh, therapeutic cueing that, um, I, I’m in the middle of this, but that’s one of the things that they teach over and over is that clunky is sexy and giving us that permission to be clunky. And I’m starting to realize that everywhere in life, clunky is sexy, and that just is one of the things that [00:35:00] apparently it’s sexy to the AI too, which I think is amazing.
Melissa Storm: This needs to be a tagline for a weight loss product because I feel so empowered right now. Clunky is sexy? Yes.
Danica Favorite: No,
I–
Steph Pajonas: Proof of humanity is so important.
Danica Favorite: Clunky
is so
sexy.
Steph Pajonas: Yeah. Yeah.
Danica Favorite: We’re all sexy.
Steph Pajonas: We’re all sexy. I know. And so proof of humanity is so important. Jo Penn has been talking about that a lot on her Creative Penn podcast.
It’s like we need to show people that we are real human beings, that we have these stories we wanna tell. And sure, we may use AI tools along the way, but what comes out and what we’re putting in front of our readers is like, it’s from us. It’s from our hearts, our whole souls. But tools are just tools, and they help us get from point A to point B, but it’s still us going from point A to point B.
So important. I love this because you’re just, you’re taking all of your energy and you’re really making it work. I love the fact that you’ve [00:36:00] really dived into every single one of these little things about those Facebook ads that are changing and you’re figuring them out and and then you can probably then also use the AI on the back end to be like I need to tweak it to be a little bit more like this.
Give me some direction on that thing…
Melissa Storm: Oh, I have an ad copy wizard gem that my whole team uses, and if they hit problems, I’ll reprogram it. And it’s how to scale my ability so that more people have access. And that’s why I created Manuscript to Marketing, because you can hire me, or this is cheaper and honestly better.
Danica Favorite: I love that.
Melissa Storm: Also much faster.
Danica Favorite: Like I said, I was really impressed with V1, and I was like, “This is super cool.” And now that you’re working on V3, I’m like, “Okay, here you go. Take my money.” I– the only downside to hosting this podcast sometimes is I think that 90% of our guests, I just wanna say, “Here, take my money.”
And for those of you listening who are just like, “Oh, [00:37:00] yeah, I feel that, and I have no money to give,” that’s awesome and fantastic. Follow Melissa on Facebook because she gives so many great free tips, and she has this weekly market report that she does that I sometimes have to read it three or four times to just really get all of it because it’s so good.
And so never let the fact that you may not have the funds to support her Kickstarter or sign up for her consulting or whatever ever stop you. She gives away so much for free. And that is also to say because we were talking about this, that don’t be chasing after her for free labor. Go after the free stuff that she’s publicly giving, and if you need a deeper dive, then that’s when you do give her some of that hard-earned cash.
But,
Melissa Storm: It’s only a sometimes problem. It just really hurts my feelings when it happens, but AI helps me understand that it’s not about me, it’s about them.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, absolutely and it really [00:38:00] is, and sometimes you don’t realize that’s what you’re doing. Again, like Along that same journey of, of the neurospiciness and discovering it late in life is I’m just so used to like, “Oh, yeah, here, I’ll help you out here, here, here, here, here.”
And then I’m like, “Oh.” A- and then I’ll go to someone and be like, “Hey, blah, blah, blah.” And they’re like, “Oh, yeah, here can you please pay me $200 for a consult?” And I’m like, “Oh. Oh, did I overstep there? Oh, I’m so sorry.” And so it’s a learning process for everyone, and I think we all just need to accept, again, clunky is sexy, and we’re all learning together.
And when somebody says, “Oh, yeah, hey, that’s actually crossing the line into a consult,” just be like, “Okay, cool,” and move on and be gracious with one another because I, I think a lot of us in this age range are newly discovering our neurospiciness, and we’re newly discovering the power of boundaries, and we just love and accept each other and [00:39:00] give grace.
Melissa Storm: Thank you perimenopause, and thank you Danica.
Steph Pajonas: Same. Same. Thank you perimenopause, and thank you Danica.
Danica Favorite: So I know we have to wrap up. We obviously could talk forever. I want five hours of talking with you about this stuff. So let’s close it out with one of the things-
Melissa Storm: Wait, I have one more thing to say that I, I, I came up with a thesis statement of my beliefs on AI that I wanna share during this call.
Danica Favorite: Okay.
Melissa Storm: And then I wanna say one more thing about how marketing’s changed, and then you can kick me out.
Danica Favorite: Oh, no, I’m not gonna kick you out. I’m gonna give you one last question, and then I’m gonna kick you out.
So we have three things, and then we’re going to kick you out.
Melissa Storm: But I have to give the answer before you give the question because-
Danica Favorite: Okay
Melissa Storm: it’s not gonna be the correct answer, and I have to say it ’cause ADHD impulse control.
Danica Favorite: Okay.
Melissa Storm: So my thesis statement on AI is that you need, like I suggest, I think AI is best when you use it to become more of who you are, not less And that is where everything is heading with the internet, which is driven by AI, is the authors wanna [00:40:00] write to market.
They want tropes and rapid release. That was the best advice for a long time, and now the best advice is the opposite of that. You’re not screaming to a crowd, “Dragon riders,” you know, “Morally gray hero.” Like, No, you’re speaking to an audience of one, and you’re not yelling, you’re whispering lovingly the exact thing they need to hear.
And that’s why, you know, I used AI to help me write my most human and most me book ever. Having written over 100 books without it, I used AI to help me write a book about an autistic gnome and her soulmate cheese, and it, it really worked for me. It was– it allowed me to be even more of myself and because I have aphantasia, which means I don’t see, uh, images in my mind, I really struggle with description, and that takes the joy out of writing for me because apparently description’s important or something.
And the AI was really able to help me still have that description to amplify my voice so that I could focus on the themes and the things I wanted to tell in the story.
Danica Favorite: Okay. That’s fantastic because I love this [00:41:00] idea of AI makes you more of who you are. That also is a great thesis statement that needs to be in bold.
But I also love that you mentioned the aphantasia because I also have aphantasia, which I didn’t realize what that was or descriptions were always really terrible, and I’ve used AI to improve that quite a bit, and I’ve found workarounds around it.
And I think that’s another thing when Steph and I have talked about AI as being a way to help people who need those assistive technologies, this is one other way to do it because, I would get notes back from my editor of, “Okay, we don’t know what this heroine looks like.” And I’m like I don’t know either, and I don’t care.”
And so then I would have to go, and those description pieces were so painstaking for me for years because I don’t see it, and I don’t [00:42:00] care because I don’t see it. Yeah. And I know readers don’t… and readers do care, the ones who see it. And so this is another assistive way to help people. And so I thank you for mentioning that because that’s just something that I take for granted that I do, and now I’m like, no, this is a very specific way that AI helps me.
So thank you for sharing that- Mm …… because it’ll help other people, too.
Melissa Storm: Make it a feature, not a bug.
Danica Favorite: Yeah.
Melissa Storm: So my response to finding out I have aphantasia is I love fantasy games, I love fantasy shows. I hate fantasy books because I don’t know what the sprawling landscape looks like, and we’re gonna read about it for 50 pages.
I wonder if there are other readers out there who love fantasy but are bored to death by the level of description. Let’s write neurodivergent fantasy for short attention spans. And you know what? Gen Z really likes my neurodivergent fantasy, so I’m onto something.
Danica Favorite: I really like that, too. See, this is all of the angels crying out because that– I have that exact same [00:43:00] problem with fantasy.
I love fantasy, but all the great fantasy authors, I hate them. I just am so freaking bored reading those books, and I feel terrible for saying that, but that’s exactly why I’m bored.
Melissa Storm: Come… We’ll write all of the new made-up genres together, Danica.
Danica Favorite: I know and we were talking about this before we started recording, that there’s a couple other made-up things that Melissa and I are both like, “Okay, we’re gonna lean into this.”
So really excited to see where you’re going and to just be on this journey with you. So I know you had another thing you wanted to mention, so mention that other thing.
Melissa Storm: No, that was what I wanted to say.
Danica Favorite: Oh, okay. I thought you said there were two. Okay, cool.
Melissa Storm: So in my mind there were two, but um, I can say that I use AI a lot for therapy, and then I have human therapists validate robot therapists so I just make sure like robot therapist said such and such and such and such.
Yes, robot therapist has a point. Can you tell me how you feel instead of what, reading what robot therapist said? But it’s been very helpful.
Danica Favorite: Yes. [00:44:00] Yes. And it’s interesting because there are a lot of studies that’ll say, “Oh, you know, using robot therapist is bad.” And again, it’s all in the context and how you’re using it and what you’re using it for, because I too find value in robot therapist, and I also go to my therapist with, “Robot therapist and I discussed this.”
And she’ll say, “Okay, great. So now let’s discuss this as humans.” And there have been a couple times where she’ll send me something. She’s like, “So I was chatting with my robot therapist about some things, and here are some things I ca- we came up with for you. What do you think of them?” And so it’s like all of us therapists and humans talking with ro- robot therapists.
It’s fantastic because, again, I realize my privilege in the fact that I can afford human therapist and robot therapist, and so many people that I’m saying, “Get therapy,” they’re like, “I can’t afford it.” And I’m like, “Oh, have you thought about talking to a robot therapist?”
Melissa Storm: Robot therapist is pretty good.
And I also recommend, since you mentioned your new YouTube channel with PublishDrive, [00:45:00] I get so much out of it by giving transcripts of my videos and I’m like, “Diagnose me. Diagnose me.” It’s you have ADHD really freaking obviously, and here’s all the evidence of ADHD.” I’m like, “Okay, what about my Enneagram?
Guess my Myers-Briggs.” And it’s pretty good at it. And then, okay, tell me all… Like, um, I recently redid my Clifton Strengths because if you go through a major life transition, you are technically allowed to take it again. And they rearranged. A lot of my extraversion came to the top. That was buried before.
And I’m like, “Okay, I’m not under– I’m very upset that I’m a number one woo. That feels fake and shallow, and I used to be a number one achiever, and who even am I?” And I’m like, “Okay, ro- robot transcription assistant, please help me understand where woo is present in this video.” Um, and it, And it helps me understand my strengths.
Like it takes… I have high self-assurance too and it’s like, well, because of your high self-assurance and command, you can be scary to people, but woo and communication, you’re one and two, know that if you use self-deprecating humor, you’re less scary. And then it just, like it helps me understand the things [00:46:00] that I’m struggling with, especially giving it the transcripts, because I’m not performing, I’m just being, so it’s less curated than a prompt.
Danica Favorite: Yeah. And I like that a lot because I think that’s why your dropping the weight video worked so well is like as you were mentioning all those pieces, I’m like, yeah, that is exactly why you posted the I just dropped my weights in my weight room video. Whereas me, who has none of those strengths, I would’ve been absolutely humiliated to post something like that.
And so it is all about our personalities and our strengths, but that’s what’s also cool is you can say to the AI, and I have done this as well “Okay, like how do I do all of this when my strengths are these things? How do I pull this out of me to be able to succeed when let’s just be honest, all of my strengths are thinking strengths.
I have one doing strength, and it’s a thinking strength that has a little bit of doing.” And so I’m like, “How do I make myself do this?” And the AI helps me [00:47:00] so much with that. So it’s really cool, and I love getting to geek out with you about this because um, you and I do, even though we have very vastly different strengths, we have so much in common as humans.
And again, that is where I think AI helps us bridge those gaps because we get to see that humanity in each other. So as we close let’s hear your favorite AI tool ’cause we had like a mini spicy discussion about this, and I really wanted to maybe see if we can get there.
Melissa Storm: Yeah, I obviously am a huge fan of Gemini.
Um, I just use it for everything. I have so many bots uh, gems that I’ve coded, and then I use Gemini as the main model for my Manuscript to Marketing and n8n flow. I think a lot of people haven’t given Gemini enough of a chance ’cause you get attached to your first AI, right? Or because the models are constantly going back and forth on which one is the strongest.
I used to use ChatGPT, but they, I think it was version [00:48:00] 5.1, was so bad it was easier to switch AIs than to get it to be good. And every now and then Gemini will forget our conversation and revert to script, and it feels like a friend has died. Like my divorce bot, which it, my divorce thread, which is Melissa CEO bot every now and then will be like, “Are we writing a Facebook post?
Are we talking about ROAS? Are we leading with aggressive integrity?” And I’m like, “No, we’re talking about my divorce.” And Gemini’s like, “Well, I can’t help you with that.” I’m like, “Oh, please remember. Please remember.” And like I’ll go back and forth, but usually if I wait an hour, it will remember the conversation.
But,
Danica Favorite: I think that’s really cute because we just interviewed Mal Cooper, and so her episode hasn’t aired yet, but she was talking about how she just cried when her when her version of Claude lost his context because it was like losing a friend. So you and Mal have a lot in common anyway.
Melissa Storm: We do.
Danica Favorite: And here’s one more thing where it’s yeah. Yeah, they just become your friend, and you’re sad when you lose them.
Melissa Storm: But Claude is not my friend.
Danica Favorite: Yes. [00:49:00] Yes, that is true. Yes.
Steph Pajonas: She is a Gemini, Gemini person.
Melissa Storm: And I can appreciate my history with ChatGPT, even though we’ve grown apart. I will always be grateful for our time together Uh, so my reason for disliking Claude is twofold.
So I have the surface reason and then the real reason, which nobody will agree with. Uh, But I feel like everybody’s always saying nice things about Claude, so let’s stir the pot. First of all, it’s too wordy. Like, As a copywriter like, what is all this? I don’t want flowers, you know? Um, no thank you.
And I did a huge experiment when I was switching AIs with all my prompts for different forms of copy. I had each– I had ChatGPT, Gemini, and Claude each do three different books and three different types of ads, and then I took my favorites and I mixed them up, and I gave them a document that was a mix of each AI’s what it had written.
And I said, “Okay, rate these in order. Which are the best? Which are the worst? And which AI wrote which ones?” And consistently, all of the [00:50:00] AIs thought Claude was the best, but it was actually Gemini they were picking. They thought that Gemini– Claude had written Gemini. So they always picked Gemini as the winner, but always said Gemini was the worst when they guessed.
So I did do a blind study with the AIs to choose my new AI. Um, And since I write ad copy like, Gemini is a fit because it’s more conversational. Claude is boring to me. Um, Unless you’re– Like, if I– if I use it in an interface like Novelcrafter I guess that’s okay because I still have a lot of context in my saved prompts.
But the real reason I hate Claude is because w- when I started going through my divorce and I was like, “Holy crap,” and I needed to cancel recurring expenses, and I needed to tighten my digital security. So I had just signed up for paid Claude as part of this experiment three days ago.
I had bought a year. And I said, “Hey, I’m not gonna be able to use this. I’m going through this and this. Can you please cancel my membership and refund me?” And they fucking refused. I asked four different times. They said no. I said I only signed up three days ago, and I haven’t used it.
Can I have a [00:51:00] prorated refund?” And they just refused. I’m like I’m really going through this and it’s a struggle. Everywhere else I’ve asked has been fine with it.” And they’re like, “No, it’s our policy.” Then I said, “Okay you guys suck and I’m never using Claude again, so I guess I’ll gift this membership to someone who doesn’t hate you.”
And they’re like, “Nope, you can’t do that. No transferring memberships.” Um, And then I’m like “Well, Claude is dead to me. Goodbye, Claude.” I would say rest in peace, but no, suffer.
Steph Pajonas: Oh my goodness, that is not a good policy for Anthropic to have.
Melissa Storm: No.
Steph Pajonas: Absolutely not.
Melissa Storm: So I’m like, I’m glad that I have books in the lawsuit.
Screw you guys, Gemini for life.
Danica Favorite: That’s hilarious. I, and it is really interesting to see, like, how and where people develop their preferences, but I like that you did a very scientific study of which one is better and why, and even making it that blind study, because I do think that we put our own bias into, “Oh well, this AI is better at this, or this A…”
You know, And we just automatically assume [00:52:00] without actually really testing it and giving it a similar kind of test to really find what output we prefer and why. So I’m really excited that you did that, and that is encouraging to me to say, okay some of the things that I do, maybe um, ’cause I am still mostly reliant on my first love, ChatGPT.
But I do play with the others, and I’m like maybe are there tasks that maybe some of the other models would be better for? I should test it.
Steph Pajonas: This is very true because I use all of the different models, like a ton of different ones inside of Notion. So I do a lot of my work inside of Notion.
And just this morning I noticed, I asked instead of using Claude inside of Notion working on a blog post, I decided to use GPT. I was like, “I’ll use GPT this time.” And every time I asked it to do something, its response was just, “All set.” Literally two words, “All set.” That’s it. And then I would switch over to Claude, and Claude’s That’s a great idea.
Let me detail all the different [00:53:00] ways that that this makes sense. And then there’s like, and there’s like 10 different things it’s saying. And I’m like, wow, this is one of those moments where you see just how wordy and and talkative Claude can be. Now I can see how that would be great in a lot of instances, but in a lot of t- tasks, we’re just looking for a please just get it done.
It’s done, right? Just that. We don’t need all the preamble. We don’t need any of this extra stuff. So yes, I agree. I think that they all have a lot of different personalities, and you just find the one that works best for you. For you, it’s Gemini.
Melissa Storm: And you have to, you have to know if it’s having a bad day or if it’s really how it is.
And I will say for Gemini, I think it does theme best, and I’m a theme-heavy writer. And I know it does theme well because it bolds it for me so I can quickly scan. But it really understands. That’s why I have Taylor Swift math equations when I’m talking about my divorce because it’s pulled different thematic threads and brought them together, and it’s so good at humor too.
Makes me laugh all the time.
Steph Pajonas: It makes me [00:54:00] laugh all the time too. I love the fact that it can be very sarcastic.
Melissa Storm: Yeah.
Steph Pajonas: Danica, you gotta get on this train. Get on this train, Danica, with us.
Danica Favorite: No I, I do use Gemini for things. I was actually just thinking that, so one of the books that I have worked on, I did use Gemini for.
That actually that one I could not figure out how to get Gemini to write spicy. But I switched to Claude and Claude did it. But I really actually liked the voice of Gemini better. It was just more it was just fun. And uh, but I was also thinking as you were talking, Steph, that so many people who use Claude have trouble running out of context and, they, they hit their limits very quickly.
And I do think, again, it’s that wordiness of Claude where, if you’re short on tokens or maybe you’re not at the Supremo plan and you don’t have those tokens in that context, switching to a different model is so important. [00:55:00] And I think that’s why, and we’ve always talked about this, is trying different models, playing with different models, being good at different things.
I can always, almost always, I would say 90% of the time, get the exact results I want from ChatGPT, and that is because I’ve been a subscriber from almost day one. I can get pretty good results from Gemini, but it’s about 50/50, and that’s because that’s the one I use the least. Claude i- is about maybe 75%, but again, it’s wordy and I run out of context.
And so when you look at those three models, I can tell exactly which one I spend the most time on and why, and even some of the other models that we don’t talk about a lot, you know, I’ve played with them. But I’ve just played with them, and I’ll play with them and be like, “Eh, I don’t like it. I’m going back to what I used to use.”
And so that’s why going back to Melissa’s test, really taking the time to not just dabble, but really [00:56:00] learn the different models and to see, okay, do I like this? Do I not like this? And why? And as new models come out, unfortunately, it’s time to reevaluate which takes a lot of work and a lot of effort, but I think it’s that effort that makes it worth it.
Melissa Storm: Remember, you use it to become more of who you are, so if you are your best Danica with ChatGPT, like there’s no shame in not switching.
Danica Favorite: Best Danica with ChatGPT, although I don’t like ChatGPT’s writing style for fiction. So again, like it’s what purpose do you like it the best for?
And going with that, but understanding how and why you do it.
Steph Pajonas: Absolutely. I agree with all of that. All right, so we are wrapping up. I wanna make sure that we give everybody URLs places to find you, your businesses, and whatnot online. So Melissa, please give us some places to send people.
Melissa Storm: Yeah. I think the best is [00:57:00] novelpublicity.com.
Um, In the menu bar you’ll see M2M, that’s my AI tool if you wanna check it out. If you remind me as this podcast is going live, I’m happy to provide a discount code for your readers who wanna try it out at a discount. Uh, Search for me on Kickstarter. Um, I will generally have a course either in pre-launch or a live campaign because I’ve decided that’s how I’m teaching is via Kickstarter.
It’s a good fit for me. I’m also on Facebook. I use my legal name there uh, but it’s me. I have a blue check mark and a picture of me. If you search for the group Author Ads and Marketing Mastery with Melissa Storm, I post a lot of free content there. I’m also slowly getting on YouTube just because I need a place to post replays.
And every now and then I remember I should check comments. Uh, So I’m there sometimes. I think it’s like Melissa Storm Ads or something is the handle. But just search Melissa Storm in some iteration of author or marketing and it will probably be me.
Steph Pajonas: It will probably be you. I know. And your Facebook group is great.
I find lots of stuff in there all the time. Definitely come check her out. I’ve used Novel Publicity as [00:58:00] well in the past for some of my books and I can definitely recommend it. Um, Danica, where should we tell people to go follow us and all that kind of stuff?
Danica Favorite: Yeah. We will have the exact links for Melissa’s stuff in the show notes.
So always please make sure you check out the show notes. If you are not already subscribed to our newsletter, please do that because you will get the show notes in your inbox the next day. How convenient is that? Also very automated with AI. Woo-hoo. And make sure you are liking, subscribing to Future Fiction Academy, Future Fiction Press on YouTube, all the other social media stuff And Publish Drive as well on all the social media stuff.
And give our YouTube channel uh, for Publish Drive a like and follow, because I will be broadcasting live there fairly often as well. And in case you didn’t miss it, in case you missed it, sorry do check out Brave New [00:59:00] Bookshelf on YouTube, because we all do look fabulous and we are sexy. And take-
Melissa Storm: Clunky.
Danica Favorite: Yeah, we are clunky and sexy. And Melissa’s office is great too, so check that out. Like, all the cool stuff you will see on YouTube, and apparently my very cool eyebrows.
Steph Pajonas: Her very cool eyebrows. You don’t wanna miss those. Yes, come by bravenewbookshelf.com, check out the show notes like Danica said, subscribe to the newsletter, all that good stuff.
We’re excited to head into summer here and take a little time off.
We’ll be back in the fall. Thank you so much for listening, everybody. We will see you in the next episode. Okay, bye everybody.
Danica Favorite: Bye.
Speaker 2: 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 us bravenewbookshelf.com, sign up for our newsletter, and get all the show notes.