Aug 12, 2024 · 45m · startup-ideas
How to write a book with AI [step-by-step guide]
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gold bands on the timeline = statements, start to end. Hover to read, click to jump. CC turns on captions
Solopreneur expert Justin Welsh and host Greg Isenberg outline a comprehensive, step-by-step framework for building an automated AI book publishing empire while analyzing creator software consolidation and personal branding moats.
How this conversation actually went
Every chapter scored 0–10 on four independent dynamics. Hover any point for the reasoning behind the score. Greg holds 51.6% of the talking time here. How this is scored →
Greg as informed peer 5.9 Guest teaching 3.0 Guest disagreement 1.5 Greg pushing back 1.2
speaking balance: gold is Greg, purple is the guest (3 minute bins)
Sharpest disagreement ▶ 8:06 Justin questions the devaluation of human authorship
Justin directly challenges Greg's vision of pumping out a hundred AI books, quoting the sentiment that AI should do mundane chores rather than art and questioning if genuine writing dies.
Hardest push from Greg ▶ 9:03 Greg defends AI production and highlights creator upsideGreg counters Justin's skepticism by arguing that while baseline content will devalue, top 1% creators will 100x their earnings and failing to leverage AI tools creates massive vulnerability.
Biggest teaching moment ▶ 20:16 Justin reveals his empirical 7th-8th grade readability dataJustin explains his systematic use of the Hemingway app, demonstrating through tested newsletter reply rates and social engagement metrics why the 7th-8th grade reading level performs best.
Greg holds their own ▶ 6:06 Greg introduces Jungle Scout e-commerce data for book publishingGreg demonstrates deep operational knowledge by showing how e-commerce product analysis tools like Jungle Scout can be adapted to identify real-time market gaps in book publishing.
the scores for every segment, with the reasoning behind each
| Chapter | Topic | Greg as informed peer | Guest teaching | Guest disagreement | Greg pushing back | Why |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democratizing Publishing and Overcoming Industry Friction | 6 | 2 | 1 | 2 | Justin shares his thoughts on traditional book publishing friction and mentions Basecamp's once.com. Greg corrects him by identifying the exact product as WriteBook, demonstrating sharp industry awareness. | |
| The Step-by-Step AI Book Empire Framework | 8 | 1 | 2 | 1 | Greg lays out his tactical step-by-step blueprint for building an AI-powered book empire, introducing Jungle Scout for gap identification while Justin admits he has not heard of the tool. | |
| Sponsor Break: BoringMarketing.com and AI-Driven SEO | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | This is a brief commercial read by Greg for BoringMarketing.com without conversational interaction. | |
| The Differentiation Dilemma, Content Duplication, and AI Dependency | 6 | 3 | 4 | 4 | Justin pushes back philosophically against mass AI book creation, asking whether genuine artistry dies and worrying about instant knockoffs like Jack Butcher clones. Greg counters that top-tier creators will capture outsized value and that not adopting AI tools represents an even bigger risk. | |
| Editorial Workflows, Hemingway Readability, and Market Intelligence | 7 | 5 | 1 | 1 | Greg continues outlining tools including Claude Projects and Jasper, while Justin educates Greg on his precise editorial workflow using the Hemingway app to maintain a 7th-8th grade reading level. | |
| Production Logistics: Layout, Cover Design, and AI Narration | 8 | 2 | 1 | 1 | Greg rattles off tactical tools like Lulu, Blurb, and Findaway Voices for AI narration, showing deep knowledge of the production stack while Justin praises the comprehensive workflow. | |
| Mastering AI Prompting and Shifting Business Cost Structures | 6 | 4 | 2 | 1 | Justin reflects on prompt engineering becoming the primary creative lever and questions service agencies raising rates. Greg shares financial insights on substituting human salaries with monthly software subscriptions. | |
| Distribution Optimization and Draft2Digital Monetization Models | 7 | 3 | 2 | 1 | Justin questions having to juggle ten separate point solutions. Greg immediately brings up Hero Assistant to illustrate the emerging trend of AI unbundling and re-bundling. | |
| Justin's Content Operating System: Automated Cross-Platform Repurposing | 4 | 6 | 1 | 0 | Justin delivers an in-depth breakdown of his content operating system and pipeline from short X posts to long-form newsletter CTAs, highlighting software integration gaps he intends to build a solution for. | |
| Personal Branding Moats and the Mid-Day Squares Case Study | 7 | 4 | 1 | 1 | Justin analyzes commoditization in SaaS and the power of creator distribution moats. Greg reinforces this with a real-world case study of Mid-Day Squares packaging and creator tipping dynamics. |
Statements from this episode (19)
James Clear and Tim Ferriss are building a new publishing product
“I believe that James Clear and Tim Ferriss are working on something as well that seems at least tangentially related to that.”
Greg Isenberg uses Claude 99 times more than GPT-4
“I'm actually, I'm using clode just like 99 times more than, yeah, it's just way better.”
Isenberg: AI will devalue the majority of content
“AI is going to devalue the majority of content period.”
Isenberg: Top 1% of artists will earn 100x more next decade
“The top one percent of artists are going to make a hundred times more
In the next 10 years than they will in the previous, because there's going to be such demand for curated experiences.”
Isenberg: Content creation is becoming a cat-and-mouse game against AI
“Content then becomes a game of cat and mouse. I think that's what, that's the trend that is, is, is beginning.”
Welsh: Writing and thinking skills atrophy like muscles outsourced to AI
“It's like riding a bicycle. Like once you stop writing on your own or thinking on your own and you let something else do it for you, it atrophies.”
Welsh: Claude Projects is light years ahead of ChatGPT memory
“I find that the project's functionality is light years ahead of, like, ChatGPT's memory and things like that.”
Welsh: Writing at 7th-grade reading level maximizes content engagement
“I've written in third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, ninth, all the way up to 12th. And I will look at impressions. I will look at reply rate on my newsletter. I'll look at engagement. And that's seven to eight for me is just like where, where it hits.”
Isenberg: Niche subscription data services will proliferate across industries
“It's basically a subscription data service, and I think you're gonna see a lot of these pop up, just a lot of these subscription data services in a bunch of different industries.”
Welsh: Non-expert AI image generation produces commoditized and identical visuals
“It's, it feels like commoditized to me at this point. It's supposed to be new and unique and interesting, but like every visual that I see, and by the way, I'm not an AI artist and most people who use it are not AI artists with the prompts. So they're just get…”
Isenberg: Book title and cover matter as much as YouTube packaging
“It's like one of those things where in YouTube land, they say, it doesn't even matter what your content is. All that matters is your title and thumbnail. It's very similar in books where the title matters a ton and the cover matters a ton.”
Isenberg: Software tools will take an increasing share of costs over humans
“So I think that's what's going to happen is these software tools from a percent of your costs are just going to increase versus human beings.”
Welsh: Copywriting and content service agencies will rapidly lose pricing power
“The service they provide, their prices should be going down or you should be like, you should be spending one day next week, like designing all of your prompts. And if you really want somebody else to write your content for you, like the following week, you sh…”
Isenberg: AI software verticals will consolidate, but not immediately
“I think that's what's going to happen in AI, but not yet. Because we're still in the soul searching, trying to figure out use cases phase.”
Justin Welsh starts all content on X for its 10-minute feedback loop
“Everything that I do starts with a tweet, right? Like I might try and think of something interesting or useful to say on, on X, right? I throw those out there because there's a short feedback window. So, you know, you get feedback in 10 minutes, you know, whet…”
Thibault Louis-Lucas sold Twitter growth tool Tweet Hunter for $10 million
“Like I just had Tebow from Tweet Hunter on, he sold it for ten million dollars.”
Welsh: Creator endorsements drive software adoption over commoditized competitors
“What I'm seeing is like the companies that are standing out in the publishing space, like a tweet hunter or a Tapleo have the big creators behind it. The big creators use it. The big creators talk about it. They sponsor the big creators newsletters. They're in…”
Justin Welsh buys creator products as financial tips without consuming them
“I actually think like I buy from a lot of creators just as a tip. Like there are creator friends of mine who create something that I absolutely have zero interest in consuming. And like when it comes out, I'll buy it because like, you know, if I read a hundred…”
Isenberg: Founders' faces will soon take up 50% of product packaging
“This packaging where the people are in the packaging is the beginning of a bigger trend, which is they're going to take more and more real estate. Like the chocolate you see over here, like is still 99% of the packaging. The people is only two percent. In the …”