Doing the work to write with AI
Notes on the launch of BookMagic.ai
I recently watched the soft-launch of BookMagic, an AI book writing tool. The company is co-founded by Daniel Priestley, who’s perspective I have found very valuable in many regards. I believe he’s the originator of a quote that’s perfectly borne out in my experience: “The book that changes your life isn’t one that you read, it’s one that you write.”
For a lot of reasons, that makes him the perfect guy to start a company like this. He understands that being a published author can change your life. But he also understands that it’s important that you write the book. Just a little detail that seems to be missing from most of the AI writing tools I’ve seen. I haven’t come across one yet that I would recommend to serious, ethical, scholarly authors. Will BookMagic be the first? Maybe. I’ll say that it’s the first one that I think has it’s head screwed on straight.
The demo
BookMagic is very clear that it's built for business owners and entrepreneurs to write books with the goal of sharing expertise that will attract new/bigger business. The website includes several statements like "Nothing sells you like a book—but it has to be a good book," and I wholeheartedly agree. I’d add that it has to be your book.
Ethics and authorship with AI
We’ve already laughed about the AI writing tools that sell themselves as the way to “write a book in 30 seconds.” One day I’m half expecting to see an ad that says “we already wrote your book!” That stuff is dumb and it’s going to be a flash in the pan, because it’s bad business.
One thing I know about Daniel Priestley is that he’s not dumb and he’s good at business. Because of that, this company is focused on helping one segment of people, and it’s a segment for whom a lasting reputation is important. So that should mean the tool veers away from such silliness.
In the demo they made it clear that the AI isn't meant to write for you, but rather to coach you through each step of the process. Of course, it is a generative AI so I wonder how flexible the system will be in terms of give and take. For example, how much material can you put into the system and how well can it pick up on your writing style? What is its proclivity for making stuff up?
I see a huge ethical difference between an author asking a system to “help me understand these facts” and one saying, “tell me what to think about.” This one is described by its makers as a combination of editor, coach, and research assistant, and I think it’s one of the first genuine steps toward the future of writing with AI that I’ve come across. It remains to be seen how it balances between boosting an author’s productivity and ability vs putting words in their mouth, but I am optimistic that the intent is correct.
How does BookMagic work?
BookMagic calls their process the W.R.I.T.E.R. method. That's probably been a useful model in working directly with authors in the past, but I suspect that it will take on less prominence in future iterations of this AI tool, since the writer no longer has to remember which part of the process comes next. The tool does that for you.
Core values
When an author starts a new book, the first step is to fill in a "Core Values" exercise, which is a useful way for an AI to gather information that can help it "feel" more like the real author. I haven’t seen any other AI writing tools that do this. Maybe it’s more common than I think—if you know of a similar approach by another company, let me know.
Ideal reader
It then helps build an "ideal reader" profile, which is very similar to how entrepreneurs or marketers build customer avatars. I do this by coaching authors through picking the real people they will write the book for. Bestselling author Michael Lewis says you should write to someone who loves you, which is good advice, but not if that person isn't the kind of reader you're trying to serve. Hopefully there are ways for authors to tweak the parameters of the "ideal reader" exercise so that it can very closely resemble the real person they are writing for (and maybe even share their name).
Bulletin board photo
When that process is done, BookMagic.ai puts a cartoonish image of that person on the screen where you'll do the writing, which exactly mimics my advice that authors put a photo of their reader on the wall over their desk to help them keep that reader in mind. It's corny advice, but it's surprisingly effective.
Planning
The system then walks through planning stages where you can use the AI to generate ideas, or, presumably, input your own ideas, resulting in a detailed outline. I like the drag-and-drop capabilities, as many authors will want to play around with the structure of the book or of a chapter before they start writing in earnest.
Writing
The demo didn’t get into the writing process as much as I would have liked. The questions that remain for me all circle around how much writing the AI is doing, vs how much the author will input. One feature it has is that you can ask it to come up with sources or case studies. That makes me wonder how restrained the AI is in terms of making things up. If your reputation really matters, you DEFINITELY don’t want to accidentally leave a fictitious case study in your manuscript. When I’m coaching authors I’ll often throw out made-up examples to help them get their thoughts going along different lines, so I can see the value in generating these things—I just hope authors realize that it’s best used as a brainstorming aid and not as a “click me and you’re done” writer.
Design and production
Upgraded memberships will eventually have access to cover designers, interior design and layout, and other features. My guess is an AI-generated cover will still feel like an AI-generated cover for the next couple of years. Sure, start there if you’ve got access to a tool like this, but if you’re not 100% happy, think about spending a few hundred bucks on a real designer.
So far it seems like BookMagic is built in a way that tries to approximate the process of working with an author coach, and it seems like it was built by people who actually know what they're doing. How does it all fit with the reality that a writer writes and an author has to do the work?
Cool features—present and future
Currently available
Book outlines are color coded by content type, such as data and anecdotes, and they can be dragged and dropped around (much like the way I suggest using Excel to create a visual of your book's structure);
One feature that I'm sure will help a ton of stuck authors--the system allows you to dictate directly into the writing window, to be picked up by the AI.
AI coaches. This one feels a little gimmicky, but I bet a lot of people are going to love it.
Possible future features
They have received several requests to allow authors to drop in their finished or partial drafts and to get help from the system to refine or finish them. I think that will be a key strength of AI writing tools in the near future.
Citation manager—this could be a game changer for serious nonfiction writers.
Other features I’d like to see
A sophisticated AI that learns my core values could also be made to take both general and specific cues from my writing style.
I would also consider adding a “reference” or “knowledge base” section for each project so that authors could put material there, which the system could draw on as the source material for the writing it does on my behalf. Then I’d know that it’s working on stuff that came out of my own head/research/files and just helping me build on it.
Why use BookMagic?
There are two reasons I can see someone wanting to jump on this.
First, you’ve got a genuine idea for a book, but you’re running a business and you recognize that writing a book can be an overwhelming process. This tool looks like it’s capable of walking you through the process. I’m not clear yet on exactly how much work will go into it, but this solves the “blank page” problem at the very least, through brainstorming, questions, and draft writing that you can respond to.
Second, you’ve got a chunk of writing—maybe a partial draft of a book—and you’re stuck. Priestley described a metaphor of an unfinished bridge: "if you spend years and tons of resources to build a bridge and you don't finish just a tiny section of it, you still have zero bridges. Writing most of a book is like that." It looked like almost every hand in the virtual audience went up when he asked how many people had at least 10,000 words of a draft manuscript sitting in a folder somewhere. I know I do.
Who’s going to get the most value from BookMagic.ai?
Right now, the system seems very well developed for entrepreneurs, business owners, people who want to be thought leaders in a niche. It’s not well suited for academic books or highly-referenced books. That might come in the future. But for most of the people who fall into those categories above I think it’s a highly valuable tool.
They appear to be interested in branching out into additional types of writing post-launch. Fiction came up, as did the idea of adding in a citation manager, which could begin to open the door to scholarly authors (that possibility will take a MUCH longer post to cover, when it finally happens). I will say, though, that I think citations should be a thing that AI is perfect for. Why can't you just gather a bunch of DOIs and URLs and then say "hey AI, get me citations for all of these in Chicago style," or APA style... you get the picture.
This creates a huge opportunity for ghostwriters. Apparently an account allows you to create an unlimited number of books, which suggests that some enterprising ghostwriters might do extremely well with a maxed-out subscription. If I can get ghostwriting contracts for somewhere between $25,000—$100,000 I can make a pretty good living. If I can do 10x as many of those by leveraging an AI like this, I’d be wealthy.
Bottom line for scholars and serious authors: the future’s coming fast. I am definitely planning to play around with this one.
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Check out my website at www.writelikeanexpert.com for information on my Author Club, 1-on-1 author coaching, and of course my real job, where I’m the Senior Acquisitions Editor for health policy and public health at Johns Hopkins University Press.